Managing rumor, looting, and suicide not as breaking news but as community disaster culture

Abstract

Not many have realized the close relationship between rumor, looting, and suicide and disaster management, although some researchers have discussed each issue separately. The purpose of this paper is to understand better the nature of these three issues by mainly analyzing them in the context of distinguished models, ‘breaking news’ and the community’s culture when it comes to disaster management. As the key finding, the field of disaster management must not manage rumor, looting, and suicide only as breaking news. Instead, these three issues should be managed under the community’s disaster culture to dispel rumors and provide facts through the mass media and public information officers, penalize cases of looting coupled with education, and support and intervene in cases of suicide.

Keywords:

• Disaster management
• mass media
• natural disaster
• public information officer
• community intervention

Introduction

The field of disaster management has been surrounded by so many complicated issues (Ampuero et al. 2015). Some issues include rumor, looting, and suicide that have been frequently mentioned by mass media, but they have not been proportionally examined in the academic field of disaster management. Mass media, to include not only general media, but also old public documents, have historically documented or reported each issue as part of their breaking news, without elaborating on how to manage them effectively. Management is to prevent/mitigate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from the impacts of these three issues.

To elaborate, whereas some researchers have rigorously examined rumor, looting, or suicide in their research field, respectively, other researchers have maintained that not all three issues have happened in the field of disaster management, according to their own scope of disaster. In addition, the field of disaster management has not managed these three issues under the big picture of the community’s disaster culture (Heide 1989; Scanlon 2012). Thus, for this study, it is the right time to examine these three issues in the context of disaster management.

The short viewpoint aims to understand better the nature of rumor, looting, and suicide in the field of disaster management for the ultimate goal of mitigating human loss, economic damages, and psychological impacts. The biggest value of this paper is related to the comprehensive study of all the three issues, unlike previous researches. As a major tenet, this viewpoint maintains that the field of disaster management must not manage the three issues only as breaking news, but as part of the community’s disaster culture to help dispel rumors with the support of public information officers (PIO) and the mass media, prevent looting by utilizing appropriate penalty and education, and prevent and address suicide by community intervention and support.

Theoretical background

Rumors spread within a short period via various communication channels. Rumors about disaster issues or fake news play a role in shaping public opinion or affecting decision-making during disasters. They can have adverse effects and disturb the stability of a disaster situation by diverting public attention. Thus, rumors can cause anxiety and uncertainty among individuals and institutions (Huo et al. 2011).

Looting, traced to the Sanskrit word ‘lut,’ means to rob. After being introduced to the European languages, it now also means ‘goods, especially private property, taken from an enemy in war,’ according to the Oxford dictionary. When a tornado hit Arkansas in the United States in 1952, the National Opinion Research Center began to use the term systematically. In the field of disaster management, looting refers to taking of property by relying on illegal methods or stealing others’ belongings (Quarantelli 2007; Boyd & Hakenes 2014).

Suicide is an action of intentionally taking one’s own life or voluntarily killing oneself. After experiencing a natural disaster or man-made emergency, some victims including women, elderly, and single parents have shown more vulnerability to related effects of disasters in complicated ways, including resorting to killing themselves (Matsubayashi et al. 2013).

Mass media include Internet, mobile phone, and other electronic convergence as well as television, radio, newspaper, and historical documents. They have supported disaster management by defining and limiting the discourse on the subject (An & Gower 2009; Adams & Gynnild 2013). However, media sectors have not exactly fulfilled managing public information on rumor, looting, and suicide. Rather, they have tried to cover related news to get the public’s attention (Pasquarè & Pozzetti 2007).

To elaborate, mass media have discussed related implications of rumor, looting, and suicide, but they have not focused on how to mitigate and prepare for their consequence, despite diverse extent in affected regions. Media have made efforts to report them as breaking news to let the public know, but have not extended their reports to include in-depth management analysis (Mazur & Lee 1993; Constable 2008).

Community refers to the neighborhood, the residents of a town, or a group of people in a region. The attitudes, behavior, beliefs, and customs, among others, of a particular community or society make up its culture. It is deeply rooted into the lives of individuals and institutions. Culture is not a main object itself, but it can be considered an important tool during disaster management (Nakagawa & Suwa 2010; Zahari & Ariffin 2013). A community’s disaster culture is part of the integral approach toward disaster management, mainly because it requires collective and diverse efforts from a social group.

Community disaster culture may sustain and improve the outcome of managing rumor, looting, and suicide, because it puts the emphasis on recovery and rehabilitation through the culture of community support. Willingly or unwillingly, community disaster culture works to address the three issues in the long term. In summary, there is a clear reciprocal relationship between community disaster culture and management of these three issues (Cooper 2000).

Some researchers have studied rumor, looting, and suicide, respectively, based on their own criteria and interests. However, almost no rigorous research has ever attempted to comprehensively study these three issues as they relate to community culture during disaster management (Pesigan & Asahi 2004; Davidson et al. 2007). Thus, this study was pursued.

Treatment as breaking news

Rumor

When the 8.2 magnitude earthquake hit Kanto, Japan in 1923, a rumor spread that Koreans in the region planned an uprising against the Japanese. There were (false) reports that Koreans set fires, poisoned wells, raped Japanese women, and looted villages. Many Chinese as well as 6000 Koreans were murdered by irrational Japanese with bamboo spears. To cover up the massacre, Japanese Government published the Taisho era collection of heartwarming stories without clearly mentioning the fact and sincere compensation at all (Smith 2005).

The 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti in 2010 killed about 200,000 residents. Pat Robertson, an American Christian televangelist who hosted the 700 Club, mentioned that the disaster was the outcome of a curse from the devil. According to him, when the nation achieved its independence from France, its founding fathers made a deal with the devil. Based on the pact with the devil, the earthquake hit the nation (Riley 2010). Mass media reported the case as breaking news for a period. The said two incidents showed how rumors, in relation to the disasters at that time, were reported as breaking news.

Looting

Major disasters frequently generated looting in the United States. At the same time, cases of looting were historically reported by mass media as breaking news. To illustrate, the Altoona Mirror ran a story on looters and thieves during the Johnstown flood in 1889, while the Los Angeles Times reported looting among friends during the San Francisco earthquake in 1906. In 1983, a local radio in Texas mentioned several looters during Hurricane Alicia (Gray & Wilson 1984). Looting was also widely spread in libraries and archives services in Iraq, before the downfall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003 (Johnson 2005).

Contrary to expectation, some researchers disregarded the existence of looting in the field of disaster management. They tried to prove that looting did not frequently happen during disasters, but during riots and civil disorders. They assumed that such disasters did not include riots, civil disorders, or civil disturbance unlike the scope of disaster in this paper (Quarantelli 1985; Fischer 1998). Despite different scopes of disasters, some previous studies also agreed that mass media treated looting as breaking news, in general.

Suicide

Political, economic, social, and health-related challenges occur after a natural disaster. In some worse situations, some people committed suicide, and again, the mass media have treated these unfortunate events as breaking news, but have not extended their reporting to management and prevention. Notable cases include Hurricane Andres in the United States in 1992, the state of New South Wales’ subsequent drought in Australia from 1964 to 2001, the Sichuan earthquake in China in 2008, and the L’Aquila earthquake in Italy in 2009. In addition, many disaster victims have been haunted by suicidal ideation for a long time (Kõlves et al. 2013).

Similarly, various critical consequences were emergent after man-made emergency. Mass media including historical documents wrote or reported related suicide as breaking news. For example, many from the 960 Jews committed suicide in Israel around AD 72 before Lucius Flavius Silvius invaded the country. About 1000 practitioners of Puputan in Bali, Indonesia took their own lives in 1906 to avoid Dutch invaders. While 918 Americans self-murdered around Peoples Temple in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978, about 74 members of the Solar Temple committed suicide in Quebec, Canada from 1994 to 1997 (Brainz.org. 2010).

Management through fostering community disaster culture

Rumor

Community residents have high regard and trust on information from the PIO. Thus, the credibility of PIOs is crucial in dispelling and managing rumors during disaster situations. Accordingly, timely dissemination of appropriate information is important. The PIO must also investigate the sources of such rumors (e.g. from mass media) and then efficiently disseminate the truth to the community residents (Zhao et al. 2012).

During the setup or expansion of its own information network such as FEMA’s Hurricane Sandy Rumor Control Website in 2013, it was necessary for the PIO (with mass media support) to identify, diagnose, and control the sources of rumors. Diverse information networks have been utilized in the international community, but many networks have struggled to address information scalability and retrieval (Li et al. 2014). Thus, the PIO must provide routine procedure toward emergent rumor with the support of mass media, as part of the community culture.

Looting

If looting is confirmed during or after a disaster in a community, it should not be reported only as breaking news or regarded as a ‘myth’ or a non-issue. Looting should be looked at as part of a reality in the field of disaster management, especially on occasions where people resort to looting in order to survive. Thus, disaster management should include the issue of looting into the community’s disaster culture (Frailing 2007). In doing so, the community will work on addressing the issue by way of penalizing looters, but more importantly, by way of education, disaster coordination plans, and overall community support.

In many cases, the community has not seriously included the issue of looting in its programs. It is imperative that communities prepare to address the issue through outlining an educational program or campaign as part of its disaster management culture.

Suicide

Some researchers have tried to figure out the pattern of suicide in disaster situations, but nothing specific has been identified. Therefore, although difficult, communities must intervene by getting rid of related barriers through review of existing information on suicide and by maximizing communication technology. Such information may come from various sources such as residents, local governments, or media networks. By combining all data, each community may create new culture to intervene and prevent cases of suicide (Kurata et al. 2012).

Many suicide intervention programs have been implemented in the international community, but some programs have not been successful at all. Therefore, community-based suicide intervention programs must be sustained with the cooperation of all stakeholders and networks by education and monitoring, and by providing support such as counseling, if considering that nobody has exactly known who, where, or how suicide will happen during and after disaster (Fountoulakis et al. 2011).

Conclusion

This viewpoint analyzed the treatment of rumor, looting, and suicide as breaking news and as part of a community’s disaster culture. Among several challenges and alternatives, the key finding is that the field of disaster management should no longer regard these three issues as breaking news. Rather, these issues should be pursued and addressed as part of a community’s disaster culture: dispel and manage rumors through timely, effective, and responsible PIOs and mass media; mitigate looting through education and penalty, where applicable; and prevent and address suicide through community intervention and support.

Some researchers have discussed rumor, looting, and suicide in the academic field, respectively. As a result, important findings on each issue have been provided. In this context, this short paper has somewhat simplified the direction of the three issues focusing on two major frameworks of breaking news and community’s disaster culture. This very attempt may be a limitation of this viewpoint. However, based on the commonality, the paper has paradoxically examined the distinguishing points of these three issues.

To manage these three issues as part of a community’s culture, it is necessary for all stakeholders to recognize the reality of the said issues. There has to be admission of poor management of the three issues in the field of disaster management. Based on this acknowledgment, all stakeholders should work toward addressing the issues through comprehensive disaster plans in their respective regions. When doing so, they may approach the three issues within the whole context of community culture.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.