Casting heroes and victims of disaster events: representations of race and gender in Hurricane Harvey front page news images

ABSTRACT

Mainstream press coverage of public disaster events produce mythological narratives of heroism, sacrifice and authority. Press coverage of Hurricane Harvey in the late summer of 2017 proved to be an important historical moment in disaster coverage. A visual textual analysis of 106 front page photos of newspapers from August 28, 2017, to September 4, 2017 was conducted. The results show that news media represented people of color as displaced migrants and women as damsels in distress, while white men were represented as saviors and caretakers who brought order back to the chaos surrounding the storm’s social impact in the Houston community.

KEYWORDS:

• Semiotics
• photographs
• representation
• textual analysis
• journalism studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Latinx in this paper refers to an ethnic group with shared racial identities, immigration history, ancestry, and experiences.