Natural disaster news and communities of feeling: the affective interpellation of local and global publics

Abstract

This paper engages with contemporary debates around the mediation of distant suffering by examining the ways in which news selection and reporting interpellate audiences into communities of feeling, in which affective belonging is structured by multimodal rhetorical strategies. Concepts drawn from discursive psychology and systemic-functional linguistics (appraisal theory) are used to show how news coverage of natural disasters positions audiences affectively. Analysis of Australian print media coverage of the 2009 Australian bushfires and the 2010 Haiti earthquake will be used to show how this process differs for local and international events. The paper contributes to debates on the “emotionalisation” of public culture by exploring the precise functions of affect within disaster reporting; in particular, how the production of various kinds of affects in the wake of a disaster shapes local and global publics.

Keywords:

• disaster news
• emotions
• affect
• global public
• appraisal theory

Notes

1. The sole exception in The Age coverage is the story of Fabienne Cherisma, who died not as a result of the quake itself but of being shot by police as a looter.

2. Insertion of the audience into the story is a strategy for constructing the degree of affective connection to or ownership of the event. In reporting the bushfire death toll, the readership of the paper are inserted into the story as witnesses, whose day will be shaped by these events (“Victorians awoke today …”), whereas the Haiti earthquake is just one of many crises that may be occurring around the world, to which the readers may or may not feel connected.

3. The exception is the use of modality to invoke affects such as powerlessness in the face of the force of the fire or inability to cope with the devastating circumstances after the earthquake.