commbox Disasters & Humanitarian Crises

"Internews surveyed more than 120 Syrian refugees in Zaatari camp, asking a set of 30 questions about information needs, sources, and trust levels. Additionally, 20 in-depth key informant interviews were conducted with humanitarian workers and media professionals in Jordan and in Beirut, Lebanon. As ... more

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Reporting Disaster and Disaster Preparedness: A Training Handbook

New Delhi: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ);Indo-German Environment Partnership Programme (IGEP) (2012), viii, 122 pp.

"The main objective of the media component of the Environmental Planning and Disaster Risk Management (EPDRM) programme of GIZ in India is to enable journalists to better and more efficiently perform their roles, functions and tasks in the context of disaster risk management, i.e. information to the ... public, awareness building with regard to disaster risks and preparedness, warning in case of disasters, information on response, relief and reconstruction. In order to achieve this objective, the project has been planned under different components, viz., orientation workshops for the practicing journalists in different high-on-disaster-risk states; facilitating a virtual platform for information exchange and knowledge sharing among participants from the orientation workshops as well as other experts; and developing curriculum on reporting disaster for the journalism students of various Indian journalism institutes. Orientation workshops were conducted in seven states (Tamilnadu, Odisha, Gujarat, Sikkim, Uttarakhand, Assam and Punjab) during 2010-2011. A Facebook community and a web portal have been established to facilitate the virtual exchange among the journalists and thematic experts. In order to extend awareness and capacity building activities related to disasters to journalists, the project also facilitated development of a curriculum on reporting disaster to be used in journalism departments of universities and media training institutes. A core-group of experts and trainers from media training institutes, as well as from other relevant organizations was formed, which deliberated upon the overall structure and outline of the DRR curriculum required to be introduced to the students of journalism. A team of authors and editors had then put together the contents of the curriculum along with guidance on how to use the contents, which is being produced in the form of this handbook. This curriculum was piloted in September this year, with journalism students in the North Eastern Region of India, and inputs on the training methods used were also received from faculty members during a ToT of this curriculum. This Training Handbook on "Reporting Disaster and Disaster Preparedness" provides basic concepts, case studies, and examples that can be customized as a module in a course or an entire course as part of the overall curriculum of a journalism course in Indian universities and institutes." (Preface) more

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Public Awareness and Public Education for Disaster Risk Reduction: Key Messages

Geneva: International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) (2012), 64 pp.

"DRR (Disaster risk reduction) advocates are increasingly asked by government and local partners what the exact scope and content of their subject is, and to explain, beyond generalities, the ‘actionable risk reduction messages.’ Key messages comprise the core, common and comprehensive informati ... more

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The Marketization of Foreign News

Bella Mody

Global Media and Communication, volume 8, issue 2 (2012), pp. 99-115

"Audience segmentation is generally associated with strategic communication (such as advertising and public relations), where content is manipulated to suit reader preferences. News has generally been considered truth-telling unvarnished by such concerns. This article compares how news of the same h ... more

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Still Left in the Dark? How People in Emergencies Use Communication to Survive – and How Humanitarian Agencies Can Help

Imogen Wall, Lisa Robinson

London: BBC Media Action (2012), 15 pp.

"In 2008, a BBC World Service Trust policy briefing argued that people affected by earthquakes, floods or other emergencies often lacked the information they needed to survive and that this only added to their stress and anxiety. Left in the Dark: the unmet need for information in humanitarian emerg ... more

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Do You Hear Me? Understanding Information Needs for Disaster, Preparedness and Compensation

Institute for Development and Humanitarian Advancement

Islamabad: International Organization for Migration (IOM) (2012), v, 70 pp.

"This report documents the findings, analysis and recommendations regarding key aspects of humanitarian communications gleaned from an assessment conducted in the aftermath of the 2010 and 2011 monsoon floods in Pakistan. The aim of the assessment was to assess communities' access to information aft ... more

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Chad and the Darfur Refugee Crisis: Internews Humanitarian Information Service's Program in Chad 2005-2012

Celeste Hicks, Meredith Kohut

Arcata, Calif.; Washington, DC: Internews (2012), 56 pp.

"Starting in 2005, Internews built three humanitarian radio stations in Eastern Chad to help those fleeing the violence in Darfur to receive the critical news and information they needed to survive. Seven years after the first station went on air, Internews has left eastern Chad as funding to intern ... more

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Perceptions and Sources of Information in the Zemio Region

Patrick Vinck, Jean-Pierre Dushime

Internews;Humanitarian Innovation Fund (2012), 10 pp.

"Between June 30th and July 10th, 2012, a team of four trained interviewers conducted interviews with 400 randomly selected adults, representative of the adult population of the town of Zemio and its surroundings, over 1,000 km east of the capital Bangui in the prefecture of Haut Mbomou, near the bo ... more

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Perceptions and Sources of Information in the Obo Region

Patrick Vinck, Jean-Pierre Dushime

Internews;Humanitarian Innovation Fund (2012), 11 pp.

"Between May 19th-27th, 2012, a team of four trained interviewers conducted interviews with 400 randomly selected adults representative of the adult population in Obo, the capital of Haut-Mbomou, one of the 14 prefectures of the Central African Republic (CAR), and its surroundings [...] Radio is the ... more

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Addressing Mistrust Between Humanitarians and Local Media: Baseline Assessment for “Integrating Local Media and ICTs Into Humanitarian Response in CAR”

Patrick Vinck, Jean-Pierre Dushime

Internews;Humanitarian Innovation Fund (2012), 8 pp.

"Internews' project to integrate local media and ICTs into humanitarian response in CAR takes place in a context of distrust between journalists and humanitarians. According to this report, humanitarians view the media as lacking credibility, depth, independence and fairness, and as monetizing news ... more

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Human Rights Journalism: Advances in Reporting Distant Humanitarian Interventions

Ibrahim Seaga Shaw

Houndmills, Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan (2012), xvi, 281 pp.

"Shaw argues that journalism should focus on deconstructing the underlying structural and cultural causes of political violence such as poverty, famine and human trafficking, and play a proactive (preventative), rather than reactive (prescriptive) role in humanitarian intervention." (Publisher descr ... more

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Final Reflections: Integrating Local Media and ICTs Into Humanitarian Response in the Central African Republic

Patrick Vinck, Jean-Pierre Dushime

Internews;Humanitarian Innovation Fund (2012), 8 pp.

Internews' project Integrating Local Media and Information and Communications Technology (ICTs) into Humanitarian Response in the Central African Republic (CAR) was an project aimed at improving emergency response, community participation and community resilience. This report presents the final refl ... more

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Information and Communication Technologies for Development

Shaun Ferris

International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED);Sustainable Food Lab (2012), 33 pp.

"Despite the massive uptake of mobile phones by agricultural producers, there are few quantitative studies that provide hard evidence of a link between technology and poverty reduction. Those studies that have explored this, however, found that farmer access to market information through radio, mobi ... more

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Mapping with Mobiles: Lessons Learnt from the Use of Smartphones for Fast Humanitarian Surveys in Zimbabwe

Harare; Copenhagen: Humanitarian Information Facilitation Centre (HIFC);International Media Support (IMS) (2012), 10 pp.

"SMS services have become a very efficient tool to warn people of health threats such as epidemics or water pollution, but smartphones can also be utilised to stream information in the opposite direction when they are used as tools for snap surveys. In both emergency settings and well-planned nation ... more

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Ann Kite Yo Pale: Let Them Speak. Best Practice and Lessons Learned in Communication with Disaster Affected Communities: Haiti 2010
Inspiring Practice

Imogen Wall, Yves Gerald Chéry

BBC World Service Trust;Internews Europe (2011), 88 pp.

"This publication is an important contribution to literature on disaster and humanitarian crisis communication. It analyses in detail the response to two major but very different emergencies in Haiti: the 2010 earthquake and, later that year, the outbreak of cholera. While humanitarian agencies stil ... more

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Beneficiary Communications Evaluation: Haiti Earthquake Operation 2011

Catherine Chazaly

Geneva: International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) (2011), 40 pp.

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Disaster Relief 2.0: The Future of Information Sharing in Humanitarian Emergencies

United Nations Foundation;Vodafone Foundation;United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA);Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (2011), 71 pp.

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Communication in Crisis: Assessing the Impact of Mayardit FM Following the May 2011 Abyei Emergency

Nina McMurry

Turalei, Warrap State (SS): Internews (2011), 21 pp.

Ann Kite Yo Pale: Let Them Speak. Best Practice and Lessons Learned in Communication with Disaster Affected Communities: Haiti 2010 Inspiring Practice

Ann Kite Yo Pale: Let Them Speak. Best Practice and Lessons Learned in Communication with Disaster Affected Communities: Haiti 2010
Inspiring Practice