What I've been up to

I've just had a piece published in Global Magazine "Lights, Camera, Public Reaction" about the ongoing relationship between the media and aid agencies.. (you have to register to read it); the magazine has a sidebar as well on Twitter etc.

Or if you want a bit of light relief: this on 1509 and all that: what would have happened if girls could inherit the throne ahead of boys for the Telegraph.

Meanwhile I'm re-reading States of Denial (Stanley Cohen), Reporting War (Stuart Allan) New Media, Old News (Natalie Fenton)

Back to school

I'm finally back on the blog as I restart my PhD at the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism on social media and reporting disasters. First seminar today. In the meantime I've been reading David Campbell's blog discussing photography and famine.

Campbell comments as follows on our understanding of famine

Few if any of us have direct experience of disasters, so we necessarily rely on mediated knowledge. That means our reality comes through representation. NGO officials understand this. As Don Redding once observed, “the construction of the event (the humanitarian emergency) becomes the event – for the purposes of public opinion and policy flow.”

One of the questions I need to look at then is how social media mediates representations of disaster - is there a difference?