Framing of Youth as a high-risk population in Canadian disaster news media

Abstract

Community disaster risk reduction practices have been tested repeatedly in the past decade. In Canada, for example, Ottawa-Gatineau and cities across Alberta have experienced numerous disasters, garnering widespread media coverage. Along with their families, youth were impacted by these disasters, but they also contributed to the response and recovery efforts in their communities. In this paper, we present a critical discourse analysis of the journalistic coverage of five Canadian disasters, including the Alberta floods (2013), Fort McMurray wildfires (2016), Ottawa-Gatineau flooding (2017 and 2019), and the Ottawa-Gatineau tornadoes (2018). This study is part of a broader project focused on the representation of high-risk populations in disaster-media. In this paper we discuss how disaster-media portrays youth, and their contributions to disaster preparedness, response and recovery. We inductively analyzed 259 articles across the five disasters to identify and document the patterns of discourse in news media around youth in a disaster context. Our findings reveal that the Canadian disaster news media framed youth using fives lenses: 1) the vulnerable status of youth; 2) youth as passive bystanders; 3) adult-centered narratives in media coverage of disasters: children as a burden on adults; 4) youth as active agents – jumping into adulthood; and 5) youth as a ‘legitimizing criteria’ in disaster response. The results of our study point to a need for a shift in the framing of youth in disasters to highlight their assets and actual/potential roles in disaster risk reduction efforts. Media can help to shift the narrative around youth by avoiding reductive, one-dimensional representation of youth as vulnerable victims.