Why are the media so keen on catastrophes?

At first sight we could think that the media are so keen on catastrophes because people need information as well as they need food, shelter or water, especially in cases where lives are in danger and information can protect not only people but their properties as well as the environment- that’s what civil protection is all about.  But why is information on catastrophes so important for the media, to the point citizens are turn into into media consumers almost without a rest? As soon as one disaster is over they are offered news on other hurricanes, earthquakes or floods.

I’ll try to explain in this post how the media built their stories under two premises. One is that speed is what really matters -it was like this before social media appeared- and no doubt that nowadays it is so much more than before. Any journalist will agree that we work under great pressure and that you must be first, besides being credible and accurate.  And the other is related to the fact that the media built their reality on the common myths every society share. In other words, they reproduce not only the society in which they are but also the structures and beliefs related to them.

Tornado

Crisis communication and storytelling

In my opinion, social communication has one main goal: to reproduce society and their structures. To do so media produce their articles according to an established ritual, in which it is not that relevant what is said but how it is said. Audiences co-participate in this communication ritual by sharing the established codes. To achieve his goal, the speaker must be capable of staging information with ease, respecting the forms, rhythms, and structures. It is the ritual itself that attracts the citizens, making them feel participants within an integrated project.

Nevertheless, this gratification is not the only the reason why audiences are attracted by the media, but the fact that society can cope with every new catastrophe. In other words, even though society suffers one tragedy after another, institutions can “save them ” and restore the normal status quo, by defeating  again and again “the monster” (hurricane, earthquake…) and put order into the chaos. It is in this context, where crisis communication should be understood as a cohesion element. 

It will be easier to understand with an example. Let’s try to remember any well-known children’s tale. I’m thinking on Hansel and Gretel now. It can also work with Homer’s Iliad or the Odissey, as well as with a modern reference:  Irène Némirovsky’s Suite française. If we remember the beginning of any of these stories we have problems that need solving (a war in Homer and Némirovsky case and hungry children in the case of Hansel y Gretel). 

Achilles fighting Hector of Troy

Why do we keep reading? Because we are trapped by the characters and their problems. We want to know what will happen to them, as we want to be informed of what’s going on when a hurricane strikes. We keep reading for the same reasons we keep watching TV or live videos on YouTube. Because we “need” to be reassured that everything will be all right and that things will go back to normal, whatever normality means for a society. Hansel and Gretel will go back home, once the stepmother is out of their lives, the Nazis will lose second World Word, Hector of Troy will be buried according to tradition and the Greeks will return home safe (in the case of Odysseus).

“ What do you want to understand?”- said Maurice to his wife Jeanne in Suite francaise. They tried to leave Paris before the Nazis arrived, but they couldn’t and are back in the city. “There is nothing to understand.  The world is ruled by laws that have not been made for us or against us. When a storm breaks, you do not blame anyone, you know that lightning is the result of two opposite electricities , that the clouds do not know you. You can not reproach them. In addition, it would be ridiculous, clouds would not understand."

To end up, media are so interested in catastrophes because we, as human being, are so inclined. Why some catastrophes interest the media more than others is a different subject, and that will the topic of a different post.

Do PIOS cry wolf? Does the Media do so by themselves?

After reading  G Baron post  I’ve been thinking for a while on the topic whether or not Media in general and PIOs in particular over-hyped crisis information- or not- using social media,  and which are the consequences in case they do.

Before starting, let’s remember we are talking about crisis, situations in which many lives can be in danger, as well as goods, reputations and business, not to forget the environment.

If we accept that crying wolf is dangerous,  the opposite attitude is also very dangerous. In other words, when the alert is not given in time (I’ll talk about the reason later on) the consequences can be serious.

As an example of under-hyped communication we only have to remember Katrina Hurricane, where at least 1,836 people died in the actual hurricane and the subsequent floods and total property damage was estimated at $ 81 billion. Several agencies including the United States Coast Guard (USCG), 

National Hurricane Center (NHC), and National Wheather Service  (NWS) provided accurate forecasts with sufficient lead time  and were commended for their actions. Therefore, it was a political decision not to give the alert.

New Orleans after Katrina Hurricane

Why didn’t the Government alert the affected areas if they have all the information? The reasons are probably related to reputations to be saved. Though, in the end, they were lost, since the hurricane protection failures in New Orleans prompted a lawsuit against the  US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), the designers and builders of the levee system as mandated by the Flood Control Act of 1965 and  an investigation of the responses from federal, state and local governments, ended up in the  resignation of Federal Emergency Management  (FEMA) director Michael D. Brown  and of  New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) Superintendent  Eddie Compass.

A different topic is why media are so keen on catastrophes, and that will be commented on a new post.

Katrina versus Irene. What would have you done?

September 11, how would it had been with social media?

For 102 minutes on September 11, 2001, the world watched in horror as terrorists flew hijacked passenger planes into New York City's Word Trade Centre twin towers, destroying the iconic buildings and killing more than 2,700 people. For 102 minutes that day what we watchers were offered through the media was basically George Bush as an official spokesperson informing the world of the terrorist attack. Ten years ago, we did not have Twitter, nor Facebook, Skype, Ustream or Youtube among all the Social Media possibilities. That would have made a great difference in the way things were broadcast.

Would things have been different if they would had been recounted in a different way? In other words, would it have been possible to save more lives or to have had less injured people? Would reality have been different if told in a different way? Though this is, obviously, a science fiction exercise, I believe that probably social media would have not only offered different points of view, but also would have become civil protection agents, as we have recently seen in some other catastrophes recently.

102 minutes- the time the North Tower in Word Trade Centre took to collapse- is a long time. Surely, we would have not only had the official version against Al Qaeda and the Muslim terrorist attack coming from the media, with all the practical information given by President George Bush,  but also we could had had the opportunity to listen live to many people's needs and feelings in those terrible moments. What for? To help them. As in Japan, or Troy, New York, where Major Harry Tutunjian (@TroyMayor) and other elected Troy officials have been using social media in  emergency situations. 

September 11 victims: workers, civilian an emergency services

 Among the 2,973 victims who died in the World Trade Center there were 343 firefighters and 60 police officers from New York City and the Port Authority, and 8 private emergency medical technicians and paramedics. Another 184 people were killed in the attack on the Pentagon and 24 people were missing. There were no survivors from any of the flights and the overwhelming majority of casualties were civilians, including nationals of over 70 countries.

Nevertheless, we know that some passengers were able to make phone calls using the cabin airphone service and mobile phones and provided details that there were several hijackers aboard each plane.

What could citizens in the towers have done if they had had social media at their disposal?

          

Smartphones. The key to social media

If we consider that nowadays more than one third of American adults own a smartphone, it could had been possible for them to know, through Facebook, Twitter and other social media, what was going on, and, for some of them, to take action to, maybe, save their lives or at least to communicate with their loved ones and say goodbye, as some of them did from the aeroplanes via mobile phones. They could had been geolocated. Therefore, it could had been possible for the emergency services to reach their position and, maybe, to take some measure to protect them.

It is important to remember that over 90% of the workers and visitors who died in the towers were above the points of impact. In the North Tower 1,355 people at or above the point of impact were trapped and died of smoke inhalation, fell or jumped from the tower to escape the smoke and flames, or were killed in the building's eventual collapse. There was no much hope for them anyway. Also a further 107 people below the point of impact did not survive. In the South Tower, one stairwell remained intact allowing 18 people to escape from above the point of impact. 630 people died in the South Tower which was fewer than half the number killed in the North Tower. Casualties in the South Tower were significantly reduced by the decision of some occupants to start evacuating when the North Tower was struck.

I'm especially thinking in those people when I wonder how it could have been with social media. It is among this group of people with whom it could have been possible to communicate and listen to their needs.   

We should as well remember that the total number of people in the area was about 190.00 people, if we consider the 50.000 workers of the Towers plus 140.000 tourists.

Police and emergency services overwhelmed

It is now known that communication systems and protocols that differentiated each department were hampered by the lack of interoperability, damaged or failed network infrastructure during the attack, and overwhelmed by simultaneous communication between superiors and subordinates.

It is also well documented that landlines failed and telephones went dead, so people were unable to know where their relatives where and civil protection services did not work properly.

A quick look at any of the last big catastrophes, such as Japan's eartquake, would give us a lot of ideas of how September 11, 2001 could had been if social media had been there.