This paper reviews the role of news with respect to the mental health of a population exposed to a disaster. It is based on the five essential elements of psychosocial care presented by Stevan E. Hobfoll et al. (2007) that can be introduced after a potentially traumatic event: promoting a sense of safety, calming, self and collective efficacy, connectedness, and hope. This study developed a method to relate these elements to television coverage and applied it to the stories (n=1,169) aired by the main networks in Chile in the 72 hours after an 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck on 27 February 2010. Of the five elements, promoting a sense of safety occurred most often (82.72 per cent), whereas the others were barely present (less than 10 per cent). The study argues that these elements can increase the possibility of framing the news, given that the audience watching can also be affected by a disaster.
En los noticiarios de América Latina, es frecuente la utilización de recursos melodramáticos: focalización en historias personales, exacerbación de emociones, uso de figuras retóricas y recursos como primeros planos y música dramática, etc. Este fenómeno tiende a ser criticado por expertos, profesionales y miembros de la audiencia que asocian melodrama con sensacionalismo o con la cobertura de hechos de escasa relevancia. Este artículo presenta los resultados de dos investigaciones realizadas en Chile, las cuales, a partir de la aplicación de metodologías cualitativas (grupos focales, en el primer caso, y entrevistas en profundidad, en el segundo), tienen por objetivo explorar las percepciones que la audiencia tiene sobre el uso de recursos melodramáticos en los noticiarios de televisión abierta de Chile, cuáles son las características que valoran y las que rechazan de estos recursos, y distinguir si existen diferencias en tal percepción cuando se trata de la cobertura informativa de noticias de alta carga emocional como los desastres. Los resultados dan cuenta de percepciones mixtas, entre la crítica y el optimismo, pues los participantes de ambos estudios resaltan que, si bien les molesta el exceso de melodrama, su inclusión en los noticiarios incrementa la empatía y mueve a la acción. Durante la cobertura de desastres se advierte, además, que se produce una percepción diferenciada de las historias entre los afectados y no afectados por sus consecuencias.
It has long been theorized that the exchange of information in the aftermath of large-scale upheavals ensues dynamics that follow a stage model, which would be a societal equivalent of individuals’ psychological processing of traumatic events. Nowadays, a relevant portion of this informational exchange occurs on social media platforms. In this study, we use the digital footprint of three independent earthquakes to analyze their communication dynamics. We find empirical evidence of a stage model previously proposed by Pennebaker (Pennebaker in Handbook of mental control, Prentice-Hall Inc., Hoboken, 1993) in the aftermath of the earthquakes. In addition, we further explore the role of emotions within the model stages through time using natural language processing tools. Our results show that emotions with low activation levels, such as interest and sadness, are expressed in higher proportions and are the most useful for predicting the expression of emotions with higher activation levels. Employing newly available computational methods like digital trace data, natural language processing, clustering, and causal analysis, this study extends Pennebaker’s model from offline to online social communication.
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