Citation

Dhakal SP. Disasters 2018; 42(2): 294-313.

Affiliation

Lecturer, School of Management, Curtin University, Australia.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/disa.12244

PMID

28792075

Abstract

South Asia is one of the regions of the world most vulnerable to natural disasters. Although news media analyses of disasters have been conducted frequently in various settings globally, there is little research on populous South Asia. This paper begins to fill this gap by evaluating local and foreign news media coverage of the earthquake in Nepal on 25 April 2015. It broadens the examination of news media coverage of disaster response beyond traditional framing theory, utilising community capitals (built, cultural, financial, human, natural, political, and social) lens to perform a thematic content analysis of 405 news items. Overall, financial and natural capital received the most and the least emphasis respectively. Statistically significant differences between local and foreign news media were detected vis-à-vis built, financial, and political capital. The paper concludes with a discussion of the social utility of news media analysis using the community capitals framework to inform disaster resilience.

© 2017 The Author(s). Disasters © Overseas Development Institute, 2017.

Language: en

Keywords

community capitals; disaster resilience; framing theory; news media; thematic content analysis