Malaysia Airlines Flight Research Articles

Malaysian and Mainland Chinese Social Network Community Users’ Perceptions on Post-Mh370 Incident

Aside from the world-of-mouth generated by popular portals and forums, the quality of an opinion community also affects their social media users’ perception on certain topics. The advent of social media technologies has dramatically changed the scene in the information world. When Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 went missing, the flow of information experienced complexity uncertainty and ambiguity in terms of information adequacy. Social media plays a vital role in building on a framework of re-trust and friendly perception towards Malaysia Airlines. This paper aims to compare social media users’ perception of the Malaysia Airlines missing flight MH370 incident in Mainland China and Malaysia respectively. It reveals a significant difference in user perception of active social media in these two countries. This paper argues that social networking sites, such as Facebook in Malaysia, Weibo and Wechat in Mainland China, become the public opinion field which illustrates sorts of openness and negotiation in Malaysia and Mainland China. In the law enforcement and emergency response community, the historical perception of social media was that it was an alternative option. However, the ubiquity of social media use and the role of social media as the front line of communications in a crisis event has changed that perception. In 2018, 200 questionnaires were collected from respondents in Mainland China and Malaysia respectively. The survey results contributed to the mechanism of crisis communication for henceforth similar incidents in the future. There is no doubt that the portrait of Malaysia Airlines on social media in these two countries affected its organizational reputation. Nevertheless, the participants from Malaysia and Mainland China showed a very average level of confidence to empower themselves to enhance dialog capacity among various stakeholders for this incident.

Cognitive therapy and EMDR for reducing psychopathology in bereaved people after the MH17 plane crash: Findings from a randomized controlled trial.

Experiencing a sudden/violent loss of a significant other is a risk factor for developing persistent complex bereavement disorder (PCBD), depression, and/or posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Cognitive therapy (CT) combined with eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) might be an effective treatment for bereaved people with PCBD, depression, and/or PTSD symptoms after sudden/violent loss. We tested the effects of CT + EMDR versus waitlist controls in disaster-bereaved people. In a multicenter randomized controlled trial, changes in self-rated PCBD, depression, and PTSD levels were compared between an immediate treatment and waitlist control group in 39 Dutch people who experienced loss(es) in the disaster with flight MH17, using multilevel modeling. Associations between reductions in symptom levels and reductions in maladaptive cognitive- behavioral variables were examined using regression analyses. The immediate treatment group showed a significantly stronger decline in depression (Hedges' g = 0.61) compared with waitlist controls (Hedges' g = 0.15). No significant between-groups differences were found in PCBD and PTSD levels. Symptom reductions were correlated with reductions in maladaptive cognitive- behavioral variables. Although CT + EMDR coincided with symptom reductions associated with reductions in negative cognitions and avoidance behaviors, more research with larger samples is needed to further examine the effectiveness of CT + EMDR in bereaved people after sudden/violent loss.

Books: The Inpatient Dr Lange. One Man's Fight to End the Global HIV Epidemic: A Hero for Today.

Seema Yasmin Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018, PB, 208pp, £12.96, 978-1421426624 This book is a biography of Dr Joep Lange. He qualified in Amsterdam in 1982, just as the AIDS epidemic started. According to his obituary ‘he was one of the world’s top HIV/Aids researchers and a prominent pioneer of antiretroviral therapy’ .1 He was killed by Ukrainian separatists when they shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, in 2014. The book is written for a lay audience in a vivid, journalistic style. …

Lessons from the MH17 transboundary disaster investigation

AbstractTransboundary crises, incidents and disasters, such as chemical spills, airplane crashes and critical infrastructure breakdowns, involving multiple levels and domains of governance pose a particular set of challenges. These challenges also pertain to the investigation and learning phase of a crisis. We study a typical transboundary case: the crash of a Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17), with 298 people on board from a variety of nationalities but the majority from the Netherlands, that crashed in Ukraine in a conflict zone near the Russian border. The MH17 case contains valuable lessons on transboundary disaster investigations. The Dutch Safety Board (DSB) took the lead of the international independent investigation into the causes of the crash. With an international group of stakeholders, the DSB investigated a crash that resulted from a bilateral conflict, requiring the support from Ukraine's powerful neighbour Russia that meanwhile stood accused of withholding evidence and supporting Ukrainian separatists. Retrieving evidence and researching the causality of the crash was no easy task. If countries wish to follow their ambition to learn from accidents in order to “prevent the past repeated,” they may more often need to investigate such transboundary cases. This case study probes into how challenges that are typical to transboundary crises affected the accident investigation into the MH17 disaster. We search for lessons on transboundary accident investigation that transcend the boundaries of this single case. Such lessons may prove invaluable for learning from future accidents.

Lessons from the MH‐17 transboundary disaster investigation

AbstractTransboundary crises, incidents, and disasters, such as chemical spills, airplane crashes, and critical infrastructure breakdowns, involving multiple levels and domains of governance pose a particular set of challenges (Ansell et al, 2010; Boin, 2019; Kuipers & Boin, 2015). These challenges also pertain to the investigation and learning phase of a crisis. We study a typical transboundary case: the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17), with 298 people on board from a variety of nationalities but the majority from the Netherlands, that crashed in Ukraine in a conflict zone near the Russian border. The MH17 case contains valuable lessons on transboundary disaster investigations. The Dutch Safety Board (DSB) took the lead of the international independent investigation into the causes of the crash. With an international group of stakeholders, the DSB investigated a crash that resulted from a bilateral conflict, requiring the support from Ukraine's powerful neighbour Russia that meanwhile stood accused of withholding evidence and supporting Ukrainian separatists. Retrieving evidence and researching the causality of the crash was no easy task. If countries wish to follow their ambition to learn from accidents in order to “prevent the past repeated,” they may more often need to investigate such transboundary cases. This case study probes into how challenges that are typical to transboundary crises affected the accident investigation into the MH17 disaster. We search for lessons on transboundary accident investigation that transcend the boundaries of this single case. Such lessons may prove invaluable for learning from future accidents.

Cooperation in the Face of Transboundary Crisis: A Framework for Analysis

AbstractThe nation state is discovering the limits of its crisis management capacities. The Ebola and Zika outbreaks, the financial crisis, the downing of flight MH17 over Ukraine, sinking ships overfilled with refugees, cyber-attacks, urban terrorism and existential environmental threats serve as strong reminders of the complex origins and transboundary dimensions of many contemporary crises and disasters. As these transboundary aspects of modern crises become increasingly manifest, the need for international, collaborative responses appears ever clearer. But that collaboration does not always emerge in time (or at all). Even in the European Union, which has various transboundary crisis management mechanisms in place, the willingness to initiate joint crisis responses varies. This observation prompted our research question: Why do states collaborate in response to some transboundary crises but not others? We bring together the crisis and collective action literatures to formulate a theoretical framework that can help answer this question. This article identifies crucial factors that facilitate a possible pathway toward a joint response.

Emotions in Social Media: An Analysis of Tweet Responses to MH370 Search Suspension Announcement

Considered one of the deadliest incidents in the history of aviation crises and labelled a “continuing mystery,” the ongoing search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 offers no closure. With endless media attention, and negative reactions of stakeholders to every decision made by the airline, this study investigates the types of emotions found in social media posted by publics to the MH370 search suspension announcement. It content analyzed 5,062 real-time tweet messages guided by the revised integrated crisis mapping model. Our findings indicated that, in addition to the four original emotions posited, there was a fifth emotion because of the long-drawn crisis and only two dominant emotions were similar to the model. A redrawn version to better encapsulate all the emotions is offered for one quadrant in the model. Implications for both crisis communication scholarship and the importance of social listening for organizations are discussed.

THE CASE STUDY OF EMERGENCY RESPONSE PLAN (ERP) IMPLEMENTATION DURING THE MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT MH370 DISAPPEARANCE

The unsolved mystery on the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines (MAS) Flight MH370 has been one of the most highly discussed air crashed incidents in recent times. The doomed flight was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with a total of 239 people on board. Even after years of investigation and searching efforts that ended recently, investigators have not been able to identify the reason that led to the deviation from its original route shortly after taking off. Accordingly, this case study evaluates the implementation of Malaysia Airlines’ Emergency Response Plan (ERP) in handling the incident, particularly in the early crucial weeks. The data were collected from the ERP practices retrieved from several articles, reports, and journals; and they were analyzed by using a qualitative case study methodology. This study hypothesizes that there were a number of loopholes that led to an ineffective implementation of Malaysia Airlines (MAS)’ ERP steered by the Emergency Response Team (ERT) and Malaysian authorities; that was further worsened by both internal and external crisis elements ranging from unverified information to the shortcomings in the Search and Rescue (SAR) operation conducted.

Responsibility of the Russian Federation for Shooting Down a Malaysian Passenger Aircraft on 17th July 2014

On 17 July 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down over Eastern Ukraine. On board Boeing 777 there were 283 passengers and 15 crew members who all lost their lives. The victims’ families and the states whose citizens were lost now seek remedies from those that are responsible for this tragedy. This paper discusses the incident of MH17 which took place in Western Ukraine. This paper uses the analytical approach method applied in legal research with the aims of answering the question presented in the paper. The MH17 incident also brings us many international legal issues, therefore it was necessary to examine the challenges of holding persons responsible for the MH17 tragedy and especially the supplier of the anti-aircraft missile that was used. It then considers international law’s capacity for preventing recurrences of this tragedy by constraining non-state actors’ access to anti-aircraft missiles. Under the doctrine of state responsibility, the Netherlands and/or Malaysia may be able to bring a case before the ICJ for violations of international law and internationally wrongful acts attributable to Russia and/or Ukraine. It seems that that Russia and Ukraine may have violated their obligations under the civil aviation conventions to communicate information, to investigate the situation and allegations against potential perpetrators, and to prosecute or extradite those that may be responsible. One of the two conclusions that could be drawn upon this paper is that not only Russia could be held responsible but also Ukraine is partly accountable for the tragedy. Based on both national and international legislation, it can be argued that Ukraine has a duty to protect foreigners legally passing through its airspace, which could form the legal ground for a case in Ukraine against the state. Second, a civil suit against the airlines could be brought before a court in several states based on Chicago and Montreal Conventions.

Unraveling Disinformation: The Case of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17

ABSTRACTDisinformation has become an important aspect within today’s security environment. However, despite the burgeoning literature on the topic, only few studies deconstruct the concept of disinformation by making use of empirical evidence. This article intends to contribute to our understanding of disinformation, by analyzing the numerous deceptive messages that were spread in the aftermath of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, that crashed in the summer of 2014 in eastern Ukraine. More specifically the article emphasizes what kind of deceptive messages were being disseminated, what the strategic narrative was behind these messages, what deception mechanisms were used, what communication channels were used to disseminate the messages and finally what effects these messages had.To do this, the article draws upon investigative research done by the Bellingcat collective as well as on an analysis of numerous newspaper articles, videos and web-blogs. The paper concludes with a plea for more evidence-based research to further unravel the concept of disinformation and the effects it has.

The Impact of Russian Anti-Western Conspiracy Theories on the Status-Related Conflict in Ukraine: The Case of Flight MH17

AbstractThe Russian Federation has a wide arsenal of tools at its disposal for conducting information warfare to achieve its strategic objectives in the ongoing status conflict with the West. The active exploitation of conspiracy theories has thrived since pro-Kremlin forces started armed conflict against Ukraine in 2013–2014. This article focuses on the crash of Flight MH17, widely used by the Russian media to fabricate various conspiracy theories which make out that the West and Ukraine are responsible for the disaster. This study examines several Russian outlets and TV channels and concludes that the Russian media often used falsified stories and emotional rhetoric in narratives they spread about the crash of Flight MH17. The narratives used to create these conspiracy theories claim that the incident was a Western provocation attempting to generate hostility towards Russia. In disseminating these kinds of conspiracy theories, the pro-Kremlin media created distrust against the West and the Ukrainian government among a larger audience and produced discomfort and disorientation about Western and Ukrainian news.

The role of event relevance and congruence to social groups in flashbulb memory formation

ABSTRACTFlashbulb memories are vivid, confidently held, long-lasting memories for the personal circumstances of learning about an important event. Importance is determined, in part, by social group membership. Events that are relevant to one’s social group, and furthermore, are congruent with the prior beliefs of that group, should be more likely to be retained as flashbulb memories. The Fukushima nuclear disaster was relevant to ongoing political conversations in both Germany and the Netherlands, but, while the disaster was congruent with German beliefs about the dangers of nuclear energy, it was incongruent with Dutch support for nuclear power. Danish participants would not have found the disaster to be particularly relevant. Partially consistent with this prediction, across two samples (N = 265 and N = 518), German participants were most likely to have flashbulb memories for the Fukushima disaster. Furthermore, event features thought to be related to flashbulb memory formation (e.g. ratings of importance and consequentiality) also differed as a function of nationality. Spontaneously generated flashbulb memories for events other than Fukushima also suggested that participants reported events that were relevant to national identity (e.g. the Munich attacks for Germans, the Utøya massacre for Danes, and Malaysian Airlines flight MH-17 for Dutch participants).

Optimism and attribution about uncertain events: What happened to missing flight MH370?

This study examines how individual optimism affects attributions about uncertain phenomena. Using a motivated reasoning lens, we theorize that optimism drives people to overestimate the effectiveness of measures meant to prevent accidents. We tested this theory with two studies. The first study assessed attributions about Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 immediately following its disappearance. Individual optimism positively related to the perceived likelihood of an unpredictable explanation, a mentally unstable pilot, and negatively related to the likelihood of mechanical failure. The second study examined attributions about the causes of a hypothetical car crash, finding optimism positively related to preventable factors under the control of drivers. Optimists overestimate their own agency (in the car crash scenario) for promoting safety and the infallibility of institutional systems (airplane disappearance).

Strategies for simulating the drift of marine debris

ABSTRACT Modelling the drift of marine debris in quasi-real time can be of societal relevance. One pertinent example is Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. The aircraft is assumed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean, leaving floating wreckage to drift on the surface. Some of these items were recovered around the western Indian Ocean. We use ocean currents simulated by an operational ocean model in conjunction with surface Stokes drift to determine the possible paths taken by the debris. We consider: (1) How important is the influence of surface waves on the drift? (2) What are the relative benefits of forward- and backward-tracking in time? (3) Does including information from more items refine the most probable crash-site region? Our results highlight a critical contribution of Stokes drift and emphasise the need to know precisely the buoyancy characteristics of the items. The differences between the tracking approaches provide a measure of uncertainty which can be minimised by simulating a sufficiently large number of virtual debris. Given the uncertainties associated with the timings of the debris sightings, we show that at least 5 items are required to achieve an optimal most probable crash-site region. The results have implications for other drift simulation applications.

Markov-chain-inspired search for MH370.

Markov-chain models are constructed for the probabilistic description of the drift of marine debris from Malaysian Airlines flight MH370. En route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, MH370 mysteriously disappeared in the southeastern Indian Ocean on 8 March 2014, somewhere along the arc of the 7th ping ring around the Inmarsat-3F1 satellite position when the airplane lost contact. The models are obtained by discretizing the motion of undrogued satellite-tracked surface drifting buoys from the global historical data bank. A spectral analysis, Bayesian estimation, and the computation of most probable paths between the Inmarsat arc and confirmed airplane debris beaching sites are shown to constrain the crash site, near 25°S on the Inmarsat arc.

Social Actor Representation of the Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in the Malaysian and Foreign News Reports: A Critical Discourse Analysis

The objective of this study is to examine the linguistic representation of social actors in the selected Malaysian and foreign news reports on the circulated event of the missing MAS flight MH370. Despite extensive studies of news discourse, less attention is paid on how news event are speculated and the extent the social actors are relegated. Hence, the study explores the role of newspaper editorials in promoting stereotypical depictions through the representation of self- and other- in their reporting of the MH370 tragedy. The study retrieved a total of fifty (50) news reports of the missing MAS flight MH370 incident from ten news press, twenty-five (25) published by five local (Malaysian) English newsagents: The Star, New Straits Times, Sun Daily, Malaysian Insider and Malaysiakini, and twenty-five (25) others from five foreign newsagents: Daily Mail (UK), The Guardian (UK), Washington Post, New York Times and USA Today. The corpora were collected from March 8, 2014, to November 5, 2014, and analysed using Van Dijk’s (1998) Ideological Square framework, as well as Reisigl and Wodak (2000) Discursive Strategies. The analysis of this study discovers evidence of the “intergroup bias” made by the selected news press in representing the MH370 social actors. The selected news press displays an overt preference for own group and obvious demotion of the other group. The study also reveals the occurrence of lexicalization of the ‘other’ in the foreign news reports indicating positive representation of their in-group and exhibiting apparent disapproval of the actions by the out-group. On the other hand, the analysis also reveals an impartial representation of the MH370 social actor by the local news press both for in-group and out-group.

The responsibility of a State in the shooting down of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17

The aim of the article is to discuss the issue of state responsibility in the aspect of the downing of the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 during military operations in Eastern Ukraine. The subject of the considerations contained in the article is to determine how the state is responsible in the light of international law for this type of action. The authors undertake to prove the thesis that in the light of international law, the state, in addition to liability for voluntary commitments, may be responsible, due to territorial authority, for ensuring that its authorities and persons on its territory comply with other generally applicable rules, such as for example the rules of the non-use of weapons against civil aircraft.

Bones Talking Back: Theology and Public Mourning after the Crash of Flight MH17

In this article I formulate a theological response to the shocking event of the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight 17 (MH17), which was shot down over Eastern Ukraine on 17 July 2014. None of the 298 passengers survived the crash. Moreover, since the plane crashed in territory where separatist militias were involved in an armed conflict with the Ukrainian military, the victims’ bodies could not be removed from the crash site for several days. I address how displays of public grief, such as those in the aftermath of MH17, are embedded in a ‘politics of mourning’ in which feelings of loss and despair are expressed against the backdrop of particular political entanglements and national histories. In the case of MH17, these entanglements included a construction of the civilized Western mourner versus the barbaric Ukrainian separatist who does not know how to properly treat a body. Taking the body as my point of departure and using Mario Aguilar’s notion of a ‘hermeneutics of bones’, I trace some of the ‘past narratives of God and bones’ in the Old Testament. These narratives show that Old Testament accounts of bones testify to the deep notion of human beings as created by God and are therefore a place to locate God in times of despair (e.g. in Job). Moreover, Old Testament renderings of bones can offer the comfort of language and speakability. They show how bones can be a site of ultimate humiliation, but also the site where dignity is restored. I then turn to a more in-depth reading of Rizpah, who in 2 Samuel 21 publicly mourns over the bones of her sons for six months until they receive a proper burial at the hands of King David, thereby changing the power constellations that had led to their deaths in the first place.

Strategies and Means of Presenting a Crisis Event in Modern Media

The article deals with an analysis of media reports covering Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crash in 2014. Russian and American media (CNN and RT news channels) giving significantly different portrayal of the incident have been chosen for the research for the purpose of comparing strategies of communication used and analyzing language means. The strategies of responsibility attribution (substrategy of attack), transcendence, concern, and casting the actors are relied on by CNN journalists when presenting the MH17 crash, whereas the strategies of responsibility attribution (substrategies of distance, denial and shifting the blame), transcendence, and concern are used in the RT coverage. Keywords: Malaysia Airlines MH17, media report, crisis event, event image, communication strategy.

Sentiment, richness, authority, and relevance model of information sharing during social Crises—the case of #MH370 tweets

The study introduces a model of crisis information sharing based on Twitter discussions of the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. Grounded in the Elaboration Likelihood Model, the study tests four salient factors: Sentiment, Richness, Authority, and Relevance, which can be measured by peripheral cues in tweets and in user profiles. Findings suggest that information sharing is positively associated with the presence of peripheral cues indicative of a confident, self-revealing and positive emotional language style, and is negatively related to an angry and informal style. Additionally, information sharing is related to the presence of multimedia cues and cues indicating source popularity.