Media and INGO Decision Making
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2019-06-24
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en
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It is impossible to open a newspaper or watch a news broadcast without confronting the horrors happening in countries that are in conflict or crisis. Most crises and conflicts receive attention for a limited time span, quickly fading from collective memory. Sometimes however, footage relating to a conflict or crisis hits so hard at the collective consciousness that these images become synonymous with that conflict or crisis and in turn can generate unprecedented attention from media, politics, NGOs, and the public. An example is the picture of Aylan Kurdi, a three-year-old boy from Syria who drowned in the Aegean Sea while fleeing to Europe with his parents. According to researchers at Sheffield University the picture reached 20 million screens in 12 hours and changed the public debate on migration, softening opinions on refugees (Press Association, 2015). The refugee crisis certainly was not new at that point, and before Aylan and his family tried to cross the sea, hundreds had already lost their lives in the same waters. The softening effect on public opinion and policy was temporary; a year after the public outcry policy became stricter and countries started closing their borders again (Kingsley, 2016). The mediatization of conflicts and crises from all over the world is a relatively new phenomenon. The Biafra war in the late 60s and early 70s is considered to be the first conflict of its kind to be mediatized on such a grand scale.1
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen