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Apart from their primary role as news providers in disaster situations, news media can also assume a broader social role. Drawing on a critically informed qualitative content analysis of the Belgian news reporting on a national disaster, the article reveals a twofold articulation of this social role. The first consisted in newspapers highlighting the emotional dimension with potential societal implications of raising compassion and identification. Second, we found a strong articulation of a discourse of (national) unity and community, aimed at restoring the disrupted social order in the disaster’s aftermath. Both aspects were discursively established by a dominant presence of emotional testimonies, strategies of personalization and by the use of inclusive language permeated with references to nation or community. The study highlights the important social role of journalism in disaster situations and events involving human suffering.

Regarding the representation of Africa in western media, academic criticism often refers to the presence of Afro-pessimistic discourses, and more recently to a seemingly emerging Afro-optimistic discourse. However, Scott (2015, 1) points out that a systematic study of Africa’s representation is still missing as most research only includes mainstream media, news genres and formats and thus forms ‘an insufficient basis for reaching any firm, generalisable conclusions’. To address this, we explore the representation of Africa in MO* Magazine, a Belgian alternative news magazine that focuses on the Global South, including an extensive coverage of Africa. Applying Critical Discourse Analysis, we examined all articles covering Africa in 2015 and 2016 in addition to in-depth interviews with editorial staff. The study investigates how MO* constructs its alternative identity in the context of African news coverage. We argue that a mere empirical focus on features and narratives generally attributed to mainstream media, such as the presence of Afro-pessimistic and -optimistic discourses, is not sufficient to reach conclusions about the alternative identity of a magazine. The alternative value of MO* is reflected in the overall focus on the Global South and its key issues, the geographic diversity, editorial approach, and context-richness of the articles.

The current research focuses on the role of frame sponsors, more specifically politicians of the six main Flemish political parties (N-VA, Open Vld, CD&V, sp.a, Groen or Vlaams Belang), in framing the public debate about migration in the news as well as on social media. More specifically, we investigated the presence of four frames: the intruder frame, the victim frame, the wealth gap frame and the win-win frame (Van Gorp et al., 2018). We collected statements on migration or migrants made by Flemish politicians between 1 January 2016 and 30 June 2018 in four different types of media. We selected the five most read national newspapers: Het Laatste Nieuws, Het Nieuwsblad, De Standaard, De Morgen, and De Tijd. The television news items were collected from the 19h daily newscast VTM Nieuws (commercial broadcaster) and 19h daily newscast Het Journaal (public broadcaster VRT, Eén). On Twitter and Facebook, we included the official accounts of the political parties as well as the official accounts of their most important politicians (party leaders, Ministers and State Secretaries in the Federal and Flemish government, party experts on migration). In each of the four media, the units of registration are the statements by Flemish politicians containing at least one of the keywords “migration” or “migrant”. We only selected the verbatim quotes by politicians. The newspaper data were collected through the GoPress database, the TV items through the ENA (Elektronisch Nieuwsarchief) database, the Twitter data using the Twitter API, and the Facebook data by means of a manual scraping (due to practical limitations only the 50 most recent posts). The study was conducted by two independent coders. The intercoder reliability test resulted in strong kappa values (ranging from 0.617 to 1). We collected 1528 statements of 82 politicians representing the six parties; 47.9% (732) from N-VA, 27.1% (414) Vlaams Belang, 8.2% (125) Open Vld, 6.0% (91) CD&V, 5.9% (90) sp.a, and 5.0% (76) Groen. Importantly, only 245 of these statements contain one of the four researched frames (16.0%). This is not a surprise, since a lot of quotes are just factual and too short to contain framing or reasoning devices. The intruder frame is by far the most used frame (73.1%), followed by the victim frame (22.0%), wealth gap frame (3.7%), and win -win frame (1.2%). Vlaams Belang (38.8%) had the most framed statements, shortly followed by N-VA (35.9%). Both parties used the intruder frame the most. In contrast, the other four parties used the victim frame the most. We also found differences in frame use depending on the media type. The overrepresentation of the intruder frame on Twitter and television is related to the dominance of N -VA and Vlaams Belang accounts in these platforms. We also compared the framed statements in the media to the official views as carried out in the parties’ election programs (2014) which turn out to be more neutral, less emotional and comprise more alternatively framed statements about migration.

Journalists domesticate news about distant events to bring such events closer to the audience and thus make them more relevant and appealing; however, knowledge about the actual audience’s reactions toward domesticated news is lacking. Central to this study is understanding how an audience makes use of domestication strategies in viewing and reacting to mediated distant suffering. Earlier text-based research has found several ways of domesticating distant suffering that can invite an audience to care. Building further on this media-centered study, 10 focus groups reveal a two-flow model of domestication, consisting of first-level domestication on the production side by journalists and second-level domestication, in which audience members themselves use strategies of domestication to make sense of distant suffering.

News media play an important role in giving publicity and meaning to global suffering, as it is mainly through media reports that the world perceives international risk situations. This article focuses on natural and technological disasters as part of the contemporary risk society and their (de)construction by Flemish news media. Applying quantitative content analysis, the study reveals that 70.8 per cent of all disasters occurring between 1986 and 2006 are neglected by the newspapers, for the large part disasters in less developed countries. Regarding news coverage, proximity appears to be the guiding principle. Disasters developing in western or high-income countries are well covered while distant crises in the peripheral south are struggling to get attention, unless they affect a huge number of (western) people. In general, this article supports the claim that disasters and other instances of risk are essentially media constructs: they exist only when covered by the media.

Several scholars have identified an important emotional role in news media’s covering of international disasters; inviting the audience to care for people in need who are not like us. This article addresses the question of how news media can attribute a local sense of relevance to global suffering by focusing on the journalistic practice of domestication. Following a case-based methodology, we investigate how two Belgian television stations have domesticated international disasters in 2011. As the study shows, rendering distant suffering more relevant to local audiences can be realized in several ways. A critical discourse analysis identified four key discursive modes of domestication. By drawing on these modes, news journalists try to incite involvement in their representations of distant suffering, hence inviting the local audience to relate with the distant other. Domestication can lead to possible feelings of cosmopolitanism and identification, although dominant power relations of global inequality remain largely unchallenged.

News carries a unique signifying power, a power to represent events in particular ways (Fairclough, 1995). Applying Critical Discourse Analysis and Chouliaraki’s theory on the mediation of suffering (2006), this article explores the news representation of the 2003 global SARS outbreak. Following a case-based methodology, we investigate how two Belgian television stations have covered the international outbreak of SARS. By looking into the mediation of four selected discursive moments, underlying discourses of power, hierarchy and compassion were unraveled. The analysis further identified the key role of proximity in international news reporting and supports the claim that Western news media mainly reproduce a Euro-American centered world order. This article argues that news coverage of international crises such as SARS constructs and maintains the socio-cultural difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’ as well as articulating global power hierarchies and a division of the world in zones of poverty and prosperity, danger and safety.

In 2007 nearly 17,000 people died because of natural disasters and more than 211 million others were directly affected. News media play a basic role in giving publicity to these numerous instances of global suffering as it is mainly through media reports that the world perceives international crises. Drawing upon theories on distant suffering (cf. Boltanski 1999), this study investigates the mediated representation of international crises, with a focus on natural disasters occurring in Australia, Indonesia, Pakistan and the USA. Applying critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 1992; Chouliaraki 2006), this article explores how discourses of hierarchy and inequality are realised in news texts about distant suffering. The cases of analysis are nine news items that were broadcast on a public and a commercial Belgian television channel on 2 January 2006. The comparative analysis of these news texts reveals glaring differences that reflect global hierarchies of place and human life. Suffering in the ...

News media play an important role in informing the world about international disasters, as it is mainly through media we perceive these crises. This study investigates how Flemish newspapers represented the aid agencies which provided support to the Philippines after it was hit by typhoon Haiyan in November 2013. Using a critically informed qualitative content analysis, we find that western aid agencies, in particular Belgian actors, receive more and positive media attention than non-western agencies. Initially, the importance of the news value proximity leads to distortions in the selection of disasters. However, the news itself is characterized by an extensive use of domestication and narratives of blame assignment. This effect is reinforced by the dependence on western elite sources. Finally, the news coverage articulates a discourse of Othering.

On the (de)construction of disasters by the media: How Flemish news media select and cover international disasters On the (de)construction of disasters by the media: How Flemish news media select and cover international disasters News media play a basic role in giving publicity and meaning to global suffering as it is mainly through media reports that the world perceives international crises. This article focuses on the (de)construction of disasters by Flemish news media. Applying quantitative content analysis, the study reveals that 70.8% of all disasters occurring between 1986 and 2006 are neglected by the newspapers, for the large part disasters in less developed countries. Regarding coverage, proximity appears to be the guiding principle. Disasters developing in Western or high income countries are well covered while distant crises in the peripheral South are struggling to get attention, unless they affect a huge number of (Western) people. A series of in-depth interviews with Flemish journalists confirm these results. Next to proximity, journalists refer to the severity of a disaster and a number of pragmatic considerations as determining factors for selection and coverage.

Inter Press Service (IPS) is widely considered to be distinctly different from the conventional news agency. Research on this alternative news agency has mainly focused on the IPS news to underwrite this statement, but much less attention has been paid to the broader production context. Drawing on the findings of twenty-six semi-structured in-depth interviews, this article explores the value and role of IPS in the digital news market of the 21st century as perceived by staff members, stakeholders and independent scholars. In general, interviewees argue that IPS and its news copy are a useful and necessary addition to mainstream news media, as well as a crucial source of information and a partner for the global civil society. However, the study also indicates that IPS will need to face a number of professional, organisational and financial challenges if the news agency aspires to continueits unique role of sensitising the public and bridging the information gap between North and South. Inter Press Service (IPS) je običajno obravnavan kot povsem drugačen od konvencionalnih tiskovnih agencij. Raziskave o tej agenciji so običajno usmerjene na proučevanje novic, s čimer naj bi bila dokazana različnost, mnogo manj pozornosti pa je namenjeno širšemu produkcijskemu kontekstu. Članek na temelju rezultatov 26 poglobljenih polstrukturiranih intervjujev obravnava vrednost in vlogo IPS na digitalnem trgu novic 21. stoletja, kot ju zaznavajo zaposleni v IPS, deležniki in neodvisni raziskovalci. Intervjuvanci vidijo v IPS koristno in nujno dopolnilo dominantnim medijem, bistveni vir informacij in partnerja globalni civilni družbi. Hkrati pa raziskava kaže, da se bo moral IPS soočiti s številnimi profesionalnimi, organizacijskimi in finančnimi izzivi, če naj bi agencija še naprej imela edinstveno vlogo v senzibilizaciji javnosti in preseganju informacijskega prepada med severom in jugom.