This article examines the development and implications of positive news media coverage of a crisis volunteer group across a decade of disaster responses. We investigate the case of the Student Volunteer Army in Aotearoa New Zealand, a group that has been positioned as a potential blueprint for youth-led disaster response. Drawing on in-depth interviews and news media sources, we trace how a distinct framing of the group as ‘good news’ consolidated across successive disasters, initially in media reporting and then through active cultivation by the group. The findings demonstrate the potential for positive media coverage of disaster volunteerism to assist people’s recovery and provide crisis volunteer groups with important leverage to further their operational abilities and challenge exclusionary power structures in post-disaster environments. However, our analysis also warns that simplifying accounts of post-disaster collective action to create ‘good news’ can produce internal tensions within crisis volunteer groups and reinforce the hierarchies and inequities that characterize disaster response.
Embedded in growing expectations for post-disaster volunteer participation are questions of volunteers’ psychological well-being. Witnessing destruction and suffering, and the intense pressures of the work itself, can place heavy demands on crisis volunteers, particularly in “informal” community groups that may lack the structure, systems, and supports embedded within “formal” disaster response organizations. This article examines how the Student Volunteer Army in Aotearoa New Zealand has negotiated volunteers’ well-being across two disaster responses: an earthquake in 2011 and terrorist attacks in 2019. We identify three interrelated practices adopted by the group to support well-being: “action” (enabling opportunities for people to engage in volunteering); “reflection” (facilitating processes of discussion and debriefing); and “connection” (creating physical space and practices to enhance social interactions). Our discussion considers the implications of multi-layered practices of support that can develop within informal crisis volunteer groups.
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