Interpreting flood disasters and flood hazard perceptions from newspaper discourse: Tale of two floods in the Red River valley, Manitoba, Canada

Abstract

Based on content analysis of the Winnipeg Free Press reports on the 1950 and 1997 floods in the Red River valley, Manitoba, Canada, this study demonstrates that newspaper discourse on these historic floods provides a basis for assessing a number of research assumptions dealing with media framing of disaster news and the role of newspapers in risk communication and hazard perceptions. Although most of the coverage of these two historic floods was framed as discrete disaster news, such as the rising flood levels, flood damage, dike failure, flood evacuation, and flood relief, the Free Press discourse had some of the characteristics of in-depth local reporting of disaster news. Most notably, unlike the national news media, which tend to de-contextualize disasters, the Free Press discourse was rich in contexts, providing explanations of the causes of these high-magnitude floods and their impacts on the residents at risk in the Red River valley. Further, the Free Press has been publishing contextual reports on different types of flood management and flood mitigation issues in the Red River valley. In addition to assessing such media framing of the disaster news, several findings from the content analysis seem to indicate a potential influence of the rich contextual reports on floodplain residents’ perceptions of risks and hazards. However, in the absence of empirical data on risk communication and hazard perceptions, the study concludes that further cognitive research relating newspaper discourse on flood disasters to floodplain residents’ perceptions will be required to explore specific relationships postulated through discourse analysis.