Publication details
Media Construction of Crisis: A Conceptual Framework
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2015 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Although Ulrich Beck emphasized the socially constructed and media-defined character of new risks and the disasters that arise from them, i.e. social crises, natural disasters and technological breakdowns, the subtheme of media remained under-theorized. Consequently, sociological research has paid surprisingly little attention to the role of media within the process of defining and constructing new risks and crises. A similar gap exists in the field of media studies: although media researchers have been traditionally interested in mediatisation of war or natural disasters, the research of interrelations of media, risks and crises still remains insufficiently systematic and comprehensive, lacking a conceptual and theoretical framework. Thus, the theoretical/conceptual paper approaches media as one of disaster infrastructures and deals with mediatisation of crisis. Firstly, I suggest why we need to pay more theoretical attention to media organizations and institutions and to conduct media-oriented sociological research of disasters (perhaps resulting in a special theory of media action within crisis situations). Secondly, the paper discusses conceptual tools capturing different aspects of the interrelation of media and disasters. Building on the concepts of mediatisation, new risks, crisis and its typologies, I address the following questions: how are media organizations plugged into other larger disaster structures? Regarding (media) research, is it fruitful to conceive social crises, technological breakdowns and natural catastrophes as modifications of a general “type”, a crisis situation? What are the specifics of different kinds of crises? Finally, I put forward the conceptualization´s methodological consequences for media-focused research. |