Local News Representations of Women in Hurricane Katrina

Abstract

This mixed-method study examines the local news coverage of Hurricane Katrina, a natural disaster that hit the Gulf Coast region of the United States in 2005, with respect to the experiences of one vulnerable group: poor African-American women. The purpose of this investigation was to discover how the mainstream and black newspapers along the Gulf Coast covered the personal, social, economic and political issues that one representative sample of a predominately poor and marginalised African-American female population living along that coast said concerned them most during and after the Katrina storm. First, a textual analysis of 38 oral testimonies from a representative group of women, posted on two popular internet websites, was performed in order to identify the central concerns they held and problems they faced during and following the storm. Next, those concerns were compared with the coverage of three local Gulf Coast newspapers, including a black press publication. While the content analysis found a low representation of women throughout each paper, the black press publication had the highest percentage of quotes on topics that concerned African-American women.