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Dialogue is Destiny: Managing the Message in Humanitarian Action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2012

Ano Lobb  and
Nancy Mock
Ano Lobb*
Affiliation:
Center for the Evaluative Clinical Science, Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA
Nancy Mock
Affiliation:
Associate Professor, Department of International Health and Development, Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA Executive Director, Recovery Action Learning Laboratory, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
*
Ano Lobb, MPH 80 Lepage Rd. Barre, Vermont 05641, USA E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

During humanitarian response efforts, the mass media serves as the primary informational intermediary informing donors, policy makers, and the nonaffected public. A lack of professional standards within the current culture of journalism, the politics of media ownership, and media manipulation by governments has distorted reporting on humanitarian crises, with possible detrimental effects on response efforts. Humanitarian response organizations must assume a proactive, leading role in the management and sharing of information with each other as well as with donors, policy makers, and the public. This will require working with the media as partners, as well as exploring innovative methods of mass communication. A multi-stakeholder, cooperative communication initiative could help improve media involvement, and harness the media as a credible and knowledgeable communication tool for response efforts. A professional publication dedicated to the discipline of humanitarian relief also could optimize efforts, communicate the perspectives of beneficiaries, and manage the underutilized resource of the general public.

Keywords

communicationdisaster communicationshumanitarian actionmass media
Type
Special Report
Information
Prehospital and Disaster Medicine , Volume 22 , Issue 5 , October 2007 , pp. 423 - 428
Copyright
Copyright © World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine 2007

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