Disaster Journalism in Print Media: Analysis of the Top 10 Hydrogeomorphological Disaster Events in Portugal, 1865–2015

Natural and human-caused disasters pose a significant risk to the health and well-being of people. Journalists and news organisations can fulfil multiple roles related to disasters, ranging from providing warnings, assessing disaster mitigation and preparedness, and reporting on what occurs, to aiding long-term recovery and fostering disaster resilience. This paper considers these possible functions of disaster journalism and draws on semi-structured interviews with 24 journalists in the United States to understand better their approach to the discipline. A thematic analysis was employed, which resulted in the identification of five main themes and accompanying subthemes: (i) examining disaster mitigation and preparedness; (ii) facilitating recovery; (iii) self-care and care of journalists; (iv) continued spread of social media; and (v) disaster journalism ethics. The paper concludes that disaster journalism done poorly can result in harm, but done well, it can be an essential instrument with respect to public disaster planning, management, response, and recovery.

This study identifies historical extreme events and analyzes their impacts on social vulnerability, stability, and resilience in ancient China. We reconstructed extreme event sequences, simulated social resilience response using our proposed Cascade Catastrophe-Resilience Dynamic Model, and discussed interaction of social vulnerability and stability. We found the following conclusions. First, historical extreme events had cyclic and periodic fluctuations, and usually led to cascade disasters. Cascade disasters enhanced risk and greatly reduced societal stability, while three types of disaster chains were observed: climatic extremes (flood/drought)-famines-wars (uprising/invasions)-epidemic plagues; climatic extremes (flood/drought)-famines -migrations; and droughts-locust plagues-famines. A climate extreme-earthquake chain was also recorded although the mechanism remains unknown. Second, extreme events were synchronous with dynastic changes, although strong social resilience enhanced the opportunity for dynastic survival and modified the stochastic magnitude–frequency relationship between extreme events and social vulnerability. The high frequency of extreme events is consistent with high hazard indices, declining population, high levels of social vulnerability, and low levels of social stability and resilience. However, the strong correlation between high levels of social vulnerability and high frequency of extreme events occurred at the end of dynasties but not when dynasties were thriving. Third, quick response to disasters, efficient disaster relief systems, and sufficient food supplies were essential parts of social resilience to disasters. Extreme events play important roles in shaping agricultural production, and thus food supply. Population fluctuation and migration, economic center shifts, and social and economic structure changes contributed to cascade disasters, which often led to societal instability throughout Chinese history.

Delineate the lessons that public health professionals learned during past disasters and information/resources found to be lacking during past disasters. Qualitative research consisting of 32 participants who attended the 2006 Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology Conference and participated in 1 of 3 focus groups. Focus group sessions were audiotaped; tapes were transcribed verbatim. Content analysis included identifying, coding, and categorizing participants' responses. Major themes were identified and categorized. Disasters can result in public health crises if infection prevention/control interventions are not implemented rapidly and appropriately. Gaps in past public health disaster response include infection prevention/control in mass casualty incidents, public education, internal and external communication, mental health, physical plant, and partnerships with outside agencies. Participants emphasized the need to provide consistent messages to the public, communicate between agencies, and provide public education on disaster preparedness. These tasks can be challenging during infectious disease emergencies when recommendations change. Effective communication is necessary to maintain public trust. Infection control issues in shelters, such as hand hygiene products/facilities, sanitation, outbreaks of unusual infectious diseases, overcrowded conditions, and poor environmental decontamination, were identified as critical to prevent secondary disease transmission. Public health and infection control nurses must partner and continue to address gaps in disaster planning.

Connect the Whole Community: Leadership Gaps Drive the Digital Divide and Fuel Disaster and Social Vulnerabilities

Covid-19 has become an issue that has been written about in the media since the end of 2019. Since the emergence of the first case in Indonesia in March 2020, efforts are needed to manage disasters that occur. The role of various parties is needed to provide information and communication to the public, one of which is through the mass media. Information on pre-disaster is important for the formation of security and community capacity in dealing with disasters. The mass media becomes a self-warning system in providing information and education to the public. Currently the media continues to grow, the internet makes it easy for every audience to access various information in the mass media, one of which is disaster information. This study aims to provide an overview of how disaster information is packaged in the mass media as a form of disaster communication to the public. The concepts used in this research are disaster management, and disaster journalism. This research method uses descriptive qualitative using literature studies and framing analysis on the online news portal Tribunnews during March 2020. The results of this study indicate that disaster communication determines community attitudes in dealing with disasters. The role of disaster communication in the mass media is very important, and can determine the success of the government in providing information for public safety and overcoming disasters that occur. This research contributes that the optimization of disaster communication is important in disaster management. The government is the main source of the media in finding news sources. Therefore, the government must provide information intake actively, periodically and with a positive frame.

The paradox of social resilience: How cognitive strategies and coping mechanisms attenuate and accentuate resilience

Inspired by the social vulnerability paradigm employed in hazard and disaster research and recent work connecting personal and housing vulnerabilities, this study uses the first wave of Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey data to: (a) examine immigrants’ legal status as an independent social vulnerability that increases the risk of two or more of the following situations deemed to be precarious: renting, crowding, and unaffordable housing; (b) identify the individual-, household-, and neighborhood-level vulnerabilities associated with overlapping housing problems; and (c) identify the distribution of housing disadvantages across social groups. The sample comprises those born in the United States who are Black, White, and Latino, and three distinct Latino immigrant groups categorized by citizenship and legal status. The descriptive and multivariate regression results have implications for expanding hazard, disaster, and housing research and practice.

The current thinking in the Disaster Risk Reduction field emphasizes assessment and reduction of vulnerability and especially social vulnerability as an important factor in mitigating the effects of disasters. In the process of emphasizing vulnerability, the role and complexity of social resilience was somewhat lost and at times minimized. For example, Terry Cannon and his colleagues include resilience as a factor of social vulnerability in a report to United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) (Cannon, Twigg and Rowell, 2002). The United Nations University, Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) delineates “Social Vulnerability” and “Individual Vulnerability” as working areas, but does not mention Social or Individual Resilience (Bogardi, 2006).

The utility of disaster preparation efforts involving volunteers is axiomatic, but a poor understanding of volunteer responder organizing may waste volunteer effort or, worse, endanger response. Effectively integrating volunteer effort during response necessitates understanding how volunteers figure into preparation, but most disaster research is concerned with best practices for response not preparation itself. Insights regarding the management of the political, rhetorical, and organizational challenges of implementing and evaluating disaster preparation are also needed. This study investigated how volunteer disaster responders—volunteers and volunteer coordinators in multiple Citizen Emergency Response Teams and Medical Reserve Corps—negotiated contradictions among and within institutional logics relevant to disaster preparation to justify their efforts. Their accounts drew on institutional logics of preparation and the professional to do so, and provided evidence of reflexivity about, mobilization of, and reconstruction of these logics—generative praxis that may enable innovation in disaster policy and preparation.

Flood risk assessment approaches have traditionally been dominated by measures of economic damage. However, the importance of understanding the social impacts of flooding are increasingly being acknowledged. Social vulnerability indices have been constructed in diverse geographical contexts to understand relative susceptibility of different social groups to flood hazards. However, integrated assessments of social vulnerability, exposure, and hazard information are lacking. Here, we construct a national social vulnerability index (SVI) for Denmark and combine this with direct and indirect social exposure data and coastal flood hazard data to construct a national social flood risk index (SFRI). Results show the spatial distribution of social flood vulnerability and social flood risk in Denmark. Our findings illustrate that including social data in flood risk assessment could significantly change our understanding of flood risk on a national scale. Methodologically, our work introduces a comprehensive flood risk modelling approach that explicitly considers the social impacts of flooding in all model components. The application of this model in Denmark reveals that the social impacts of flooding extend far beyond flooded areas, thus highlighting the importance of explicitly considering direct and indirect social exposure in addition to social vulnerability in flood risk assessment. By introducing a comprehensive, socially specific approach to flood risk assessment that is usable within existing risk management frameworks such as the EU Floods Directive, our work aims to mainstream social wellbeing, resilience, and justice as central considerations in decision making on flood risk management.

64 - Disaster Education and Research

Background: Natural disasters and extreme temperature changes are increasing every year in various parts of the world. Disasters and extreme temperatures have physical, material, and psychological impacts on society. Because of the local community's low psychological readiness, this impact frequently causes mental health problems. Study Aims: This study aims to reveal research mapping related to psychological preparedness for natural disasters and extreme temperatures in population groups in Indonesia and in non-Indonesia countries. Method: The method used in this study is a systematic literature review (SLR) of psychological preparedness, disaster, and climate change-related extreme temperature research. Data collection was carried out with the PoP8 software and the PRISMA chart. The research data were analyzed by bibliometric visualization and narrative analysis with the VOS Viewers software. There are 60 eligible articles for analysis. Result: 1) Disaster research in the world has increased in the last ten years, but there is a decreasing trend in 2020-2022 due to a focus on the COVID-19 pandemic. 2) Disaster studies in non-Indonesia countries and in Indonesia differ. non-Indonesia countries research focuses on disaster anticipation and post-disaster management. Meanwhile, in Indonesia is focusing on the psychological impact of disasters, environmental damage, and non-psychological disaster preparedness. 3) Research on psychological preparedness and risk perception in foreign countries is developing quite rapidly. In Indonesia, studies regarding the identification of risk factors and efforts to overcome disasters based on local wisdom are quite prevalent. Conclusion: According to the findings of these studies, there hasn't been much research on psychological preparedness for disasters in Indonesia. This indicates that the opportunity to conduct psychological preparedness research in Indonesia is still open and needed.

Social and structural vulnerabilities: Associations with disaster readiness

This article contributes to the disaster literature by measuring and connecting two concepts that are highly related but whose relationship is rarely empirically evaluated: social vulnerability and community resilience. To do so, we measure community resilience and social vulnerability in counties across the United States and find a correlation between high levels of vulnerability and low levels of resilience, indicating that the most vulnerable counties also tend to be the least resilient. We also find regional differences in the distribution of community resilience and social vulnerability, with the West being particularly vulnerable while the Southeast is prone to low levels of resilience. By looking at both social vulnerability and community resilience, we are able to map communities' social risks for harm from threats as well as their capacities for recovering and adapting in the aftermath of hazards. This provides a more complete portrait of the communities that might need the most assistance in emergency planning and response, as well as whether such interventions will need to be tailored toward reducing damage or finding the path to recovery.

The National Science Foundation-supported CONVERGE facility was established in 2018 as the first social science-led component of the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI). Headquartered at the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, CONVERGE identifies, trains, connects, and funds researchers across disciplines in the hazards and disaster field. This article provides an overview of one of our most widely used tools, the CONVERGE Training Modules. These free, interactive, online trainings are designed for students, early career professionals, and others who are new to hazards and disaster research and practice. Since July 2019, our team has released 10 modules that cover a range of foundational topics in hazards and disaster research, including Institutional Review Board procedures, conducting emotionally challenging research, cultural competence, collecting and sharing perishable data, social vulnerability, and disaster mental health. In addition, CONVERGE offers advanced trainings in specialized topics such as broader ethical considerations for hazards and disaster researchers, reciprocity, gender-based violence in fieldwork, and public health implications of hazards and disaster research. Between July 2019 and November 2022, 6,311 unique users registered for the modules, and these users logged 7,222 module completions. Of the module completions to date, the largest percentage of users completed only one (46.0%) of the available trainings, although a small group of “superusers”—whom we surveyed for this article—have completed all or almost all of the available modules. When asked why they planned to complete the modules at the time of registration, most users indicated that it was to fulfill a classroom or other educational requirement (51.2%), for personal interest/to learn more (9.0%), or to prepare for or to support research (7.1%) or practice-oriented activities (5.8%). In addition to providing more information regarding module users, this article details the development of the technology and discusses the impact and success of this tool for transferring knowledge and skills to the hazards and disaster research and practice community. We conclude with a discussion of future directions for this research-based educational intervention.