Natural and human‐caused disasters pose a significant risk to the health and well‐being of people. Journalists and news organisations can fulfil multiple roles related to disasters, ranging from providing warnings, assessing disaster mitigation and preparedness, and reporting on what occurs, to aiding long‐term recovery and fostering disaster resilience. This paper considers these possible functions of disaster journalism and draws on semi‐structured interviews with 24 journalists in the United States to understand better their approach to the discipline. A thematic analysis was employed, which resulted in the identification of five main themes and accompanying subthemes: (i) examining disaster mitigation and preparedness; (ii) facilitating recovery; (iii) self‐care and care of journalists; (iv) continued spread of social media; and (v) disaster journalism ethics. The paper concludes that disaster journalism done poorly can result in harm, but done well, it can be an essential instrument with respect to public disaster planning, management, response, and recovery.
This forum brings together food, (in)security, and communication. The authors participating in this forum center communication as both process and tool for understanding, mitigating, and making meaning of food (in)security. The nine authors together discuss the role of communication in food (in)security, the central challenges for scholars and practitioners working on food (in)security, and the creative possibilities and impacts influencing the future of food (in)security. The forum produces a call for applied scholars to re-imagine communication frameworks in order to make meaningful differences in their communities.
Millions of college students in the United States lack access to adequate food, housing, and other basic human needs. These insecurities have only been exacerbated in recent decades by the country's neoliberal approach to higher education, with disproportionately negative consequences for historically underserved populations (e.g., racial/ethnic minorities, low-income students, and first-generation college students). For each of these reasons, this study explores the organizational paradoxes faced by students attending a public, 4-year Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) in southern California. Drawing upon 30 semi-structured interviews with undergraduates who self-identified as historically underserved, our three-stage conceptualization of data analysis revealed three specific paradoxes: (1) provision vs. dependence, (2) sympathy vs. distancing, and (3) bootstrapping vs. unattainability. We conclude with practical and theoretical implications for alleviating the repercussions of neoliberal policies on today's college students.
As the United States has become increasingly polarized, policymakers have had difficulty gaining bipartisan support for policy proposals. Political polarization can lead to the othering of individuals, a process characterized by the tendency to construct members of an opposing party in negative ways. In this article, we examine the creation and disruption of othering through the lens of language convergence/meaning divergence (LC/MD) and pragmatic ambiguity. LC/MD and pragmatic ambiguity framed our case study of the successful bipartisan passage of the Global Food Security Act (GFSA) in 2016. We found that othering was produced through a maestro Discourse of Polarization that structured interactions between other Discourses, including the Discourse of National Security and the Global Good Discourse. Discordant framings of the three Discourses created the ambiguity necessary to disrupt othering and achieve collective action. The findings provide new theoretical insights into othering processes while pragmatic ambiguity broadens LC/MD in important ways.
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