the role of news media in natural disaster risk and recovery

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The role of news media in natural disaster risk and recovery

Brian Miles⁎, Stephanie MorseThe Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, The University of Vermont; George D. Aiken Center, 81 Carrigan Drive,Burlington, VT 05405, USA

A R T I C L E I N F O

⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 802 355 2125E-mail address: [email protected] (B. M

0921-8009/$ - see front matter © 2006 Elsevidoi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2006.08.007

A B S T R A C T

Article history:Received 10 January 2006Received in revised form17 August 2006Accepted 21 August 2006Available online 5 October 2006

This paper explores the news media's role in constructing public perceptions of riskassociated with natural hazards. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita of 2005 provide a useful casestudy for exploring the social construction of risk that results from media coverage ofnatural disasters. The four capital types, natural, human, social, and built, will be used as aframe of reference from which to evaluate media texts. This paper shows that naturalcapital received relatively less attention in the media coverage of these recent disasters. Weapply the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) to argue that future perceptions of risk due tonatural hazards will reflect the attention paid to each capital in media coverage.

© 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords:MediaNatural disastersHurricane KatrinaRisk

1. Introduction

Media coverage of natural disasters (and major events ingeneral) defines and limits the discourse associatedwith theseevents. Natural disasters destroy capital resources whiledegrading the services they provide. Media coverage givespriority to the recovery of various forms of capital – natural,human, social, and built (see Ekins, 2000 for definitions) –based on cultural, social, political, and technical biases pres-ent in all media. This paper argues that these priorities shapehow the public perceives the risks posed by natural hazardsand that these perceptions will influence the set of strategiesfor the mitigation of future vulnerabilities that the publicdeems to be reasonable and worthy of expenditure (e.g. taxes,opportunity costs, lifestyle changes, etc.).

We begin by reviewing the theoretical aspects of the mediarelevant to its role in natural disaster response and recovery.Through quantitative and qualitative content analysis, we willdemonstrate how the media framed the events of HurricanesKatrina and Rita (of the 2005 hurricane season; henceforth“Katrina”) in terms of the roles the four capitals play in recoveryand future vulnerability. Television, newspaper, and opinion

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polls comprise the media texts of the analysis. Comparisonswill be drawnwithin and betweenmedia types aswell as acrosstime. The discussion will synthesize the theoretical roles of themedia with the framing of Katrina by applying the elaborationlikelihood model (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986 in Pidgeon et al.,2003, p. 127) to characterize future public perceptions of therisks posed by natural hazards.

The bridge from media theory to analysis is not easilytraversed. The ever-increasing volume of media texts out-strips the time available to interpret them. Content indexed indatabases (e.g. LexisNexis) are valuable research tools, butcurrent indexing techniques are far more effective for textthan for multi-media content (e.g. audio, video, etc.). Further,the results from searches on these databases are only as goodas the contentmetadata and database indices. These searchestypically involve the selection of keywords that are believed tobe associated with the topic being researched (cf. Robinson,2001). However, these keywords often have other connota-tions, indeed they are instances of Baudrillard's (1981) “sign-object.” They aremerely signifiers thatmay be associatedwithone or moremeanings. Therefore, one must be cautious wheninterpreting search results based on such keywords.

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2. Media roles: functions and consequences

The news media plays numerous roles in modern societies,ranging from primary functions such as informing andeducating to emergent functions that result from interactionsbetween the media and other social systems. It is theseemergent functions that dominate the media's relationship torecovery from natural disasters. In the course of reportingmajor events as they unfold the media provides metaphorsthat ineluctably promote particular readings of these events.These Roles of the media vis-à-vis natural disasters areconsidered in turn.

2.1. Social utility

A basic understanding of the mass media's purpose is that itspreads information to the populace. In the case of disasters,the media can provide vital information to those in andaround affected areas. In this role, the media follow theunfolding of events as roughly objective observers (for moreon the media and objectivity, see Anderson, 1997), reportinginformation to those directly affected by the disaster (victims,relief workers, etc.) andmore significantly – from a social pointof view – to society at-large.

On a social level, massmedia functions as a “social glue” bydisseminating common information to various populationsub-groups across geographic boundaries. This role is espe-cially important in light of the recent trends of civicdisengagement. As Putnam (2000) notes, mass media, partic-ularly television, “at its civic best can be a gathering place, apowerful force for bridging social differences, nurturingsolidarity, and communicating essential civic information.”(p. 243) By making the same information available to all, massmedia enables common social experience in heterogeneoussocieties. In this sense, the media is itself a form of socialcapital.

2.2. Frames and metaphors: linking events into narratives

Information disseminated by the media is shaped by manyfactors, most notably the characteristics of particular mediaforms as well as by journalistic and editorial practices.Satellite-driven television news and full-color newspapersthrive on the rapid transmission of dramatic images fromevent scenes. As Anderson (1997) notes, the intersection ofcomplex social, political, economic, and environmental issues“require journalists to transform technical jargon into layper-sons' language; this itself may involve processes of interpre-tation and selection.” Moreover, editorial decisions,influenced by diverse forces such as cultural biases and profitmotive, serve as a powerful selective force (p. 53). Interpreta-tion and selection processes lead the media away from mereinformation dissemination and toward the social constructionof problems (Vasterman et al., 2005) in which dominant sub-narratives can be perpetuated inmedia narratives of disasters.

Building on Lakoff's and Johnson's (1999) work on framingand metaphor, we can see how media narratives serve assemantic frames that “provide an overall conceptual structuredefining the semantic relationships among whole ‘fields’ of

related concepts and the words that express them.” Framesallow agents to generate inferences and assign meanings tosymbols (from words and sentences to images both still andmoving) enabling the cognition of events in terms of particularframes. In the process of framing, Vasterman et al. (2005)argue that the media relates individual events into narrativestructures that are built on metaphors. In an earlier work,Lakoff and Johnson (1980) show that metaphor affords thecoherent structuring of experience that enables the symbolicmanipulation necessary for narrative frames to operate (seechapter 15 in Lakoff and Johnson, 1980 and pp. 115–117 inLakoff and Johnson, 1999).

Narrative frames can be characterized by their degree of:objectivity (i.e. reflecting the “truth” of a situation), impartial-ity (i.e. giving equal time to competing points of view), andneutrality (Anderson, 1997, pp. 46–7). Entman (1993) points outthat this framing of events involves:

select[ing] some aspects of a perceived reality andmak[ing]them more salient in a communicating text, in such a wayas to promote a particular problem definition, causalinterpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recom-mendation for the item described. Typically frames diag-nose, evaluate, and prescribe…

(For a discussion of the importance of problem definitions inEcological Economics, see Farley et al., 2007) These narrativescast the available actors as villains, heroes and victims.Benthall (1993) suggests that such narratives are a variationof the folk narrative and provide familiar entry pointsthrough which the public maps disasters onto preconceivedmental models — models based on the “hierarchic distribu-tion of power in society.” The folk-narrative nature of mediacoverage of disasters lends itself to the identification ofvillains – from individuals and groups to technologies andprocesses such as levees and wetland loss – on whom thefailings of the disaster preparedness, response and recoverycan be blamed.

2.3. Positive feedback loops: media hype

Positive feedback loops operating in the media are enabled bythe self-referential nature of mass communications. To quoteVasterman et al. (2005) at length:

During a media hype, news coverage seems to lead a life ofits own, pushed forward mainly by self-reinforcing pro-cesses with the news production itself. Media hypes aretriggered by unusual or shocking events…which areframed in such a way that the media shift into a highergear, hunting for ‘newer’ news on the topic. A news waveis created by these intensive news making activities of themedia and are then reinforced again and again byextensive coverage of the social actors' reactions, respond-ing to the massive media attention to a topic. Once a topicgains a certain level of attention in the media, it attractsmore attention, and, because it attracts more attention, itbecomes more noteworthy. This self referential systemcreates positive feedback loops, expanding the news wave.(p. 111)

Table 1 – Katrina time periods

Time period Stage of Katrina

8/30/2005–9/4/2005 Immediate aftermath — the floodingof New Orleans

9/5/2005–9/22/2005 Initial recovery — repairing the leveesand pumping the water

9/23/2005–9/25/2005 Hurricane Rita hits9/26/2005–10/31/2005 Long-term recovery begins

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Hypes are accelerated by journalistic competition (i.e. thedrive to be the first “with the scoop”) and benefit from shorternews cycles that have resulted from improvements ininformation technology. These technological developments –from newspaper and telegraphs, television and satellites, todigital technology in general – have made media hypes in-creasingly likely. These hypes act as a selective force in theformation of narratives around major events by promoting asmall number of mediagenic topics (selected for by theaforementioned journalistic, editorial, and media forces) thatjam the media, leaving little room for the discussion of topics“outside of the loop” (both related to and disparate from themajor event in question).

Opinion polls, especially those that ask questions about themedia, are an important component of feedback loops in themedia. The results of polls are frequently news topics in print,broadcast and electronicmedia. Many polls are commissionedby the news organizations that are reporting their results.Thus polls are both products and ingredients of the media –the output of these polls serves as input for subsequent mediaproducts (stories, editorials, future polls). Hence the results ofpolls must be carefully considered – however statisticallysound their sampling and analysis may be. In general, thesepolls cannot be expected to capture opinions outside of domi-nant media frames. In this sense they amount to little morethan pop quizzes registering howwell respondents are payingattention to the media source that commissioned the poll.

2.4. Risk amplification and attenuation

Modern mass media is a central force behind the social con-struction of risk. This is due to the social utility of the media,its narrative-forming tendency, as well as the focusing powerof media hypes. The media's function as social glue andtelevision's unique psychological power (discussed below)serve to legitimize the information received via the media.Thus legitimized, the information is more likely to be under-stood in terms of the narratives in which it is presented.

Vasterman et al. (2005) point out that post-modern peoplesfeel threatened by invisible risks that exist only throughsecond-hand information. Given the social origin of second-hand information, such risks are a priori subject to socialdefinition. The narratives constructed by the media necessar-ily select those items to include and those to exclude. Inclu-sion in media narratives serves to amplify, justifiably or not,certain risks. Exclusion from a narrative can attenuate, forbetter or worse, the risk posed by particular threats.

As suggested by Pidgeon et al. (2003, pp. 127–8) and others,the role of the media in the social amplification of risk can beunderstood in terms of the elaboration likelihoodmodel (ELM).This model can be used to predict whether communication onan issue will induce a change in opinion (in an individual)about the issue. In the ELM, changes in opinion can occurthrough either the “central” or the “peripheral” information-processing pathway. The former involves detailed introspec-tive analysis while the latter relies on social cues embedded inthe information being communicated (i.e. social informationprocessing). The source of the information and the nature ofthe risk contribute to how an individual processes theinformation. The peripheral pathway is more likely to be

used when hazards are thought to be under societal control,rather than personal, and when the individual trusts theinformation source. These two conditions will be evaluated inthe discussion.

3. Case study: media promotion of recoverystrategies for Hurricane Katrina

3.1. Hurricane Katrina timeline

Hurricane Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 storm nearBuras, Louisiana (approximately 50 miles southeast of NewOrleans) on the morning of August 29th, 2005. By August 30th,up to 80% of New Orleans was flooded — the result of stormsurges breeching the levee system of the largely-below-sea-level city. The evacuation of New Orleans, which began withthe mandatory evacuation order by Mayor Ray Nagin the daybefore the storm's Louisiana landfall, was more-or-less com-plete by September 4th. The repair of levees and the drainingof New Orleans began in earnest on September 5th. A secondhurricane, Rita, made its way through the Gulf of Mexico andapproached western Louisiana and eastern Texas by Septem-ber 23rd. Rita made landfall near Port Arthur Texas (approx-imately 175miles west of New Orleans) on September 24th. Asit approached and made landfall, Rita's outer reaches broughtmore rainfall to New Orleans exacerbating levee breeches andflooding. The above time periods will be used to examine thestrategies for recovering from Katrina emphasized by mediacoverage as the events unfolded. These time periods are sum-marized in Table 1.

3.2. Methods

The quantitative content analysis of this paper examined howmedia focus during times of acute crisis compares with its focusduring less harried long-term clean-up efforts. Keyword analysisof headlines, abstracts (when available) and full texts (whenavailable) were the primary means of analysis. When consider-ing the role and effects of the media, it is necessary to considerits consumption as well as its production. To this end, the qual-itative analysis looked at opinion polls of audience interpreta-tion and response to media during the case study time period.

3.3. Media under consideration

The audience considered by this analysis are adults living inthe United States. As most Americans receive their news fromdomestic sources (Pew, 2005a), American media outlets werethe focus of the analysis. Given the broad social scope of this

Table 2 – Capital keywords

Capital Keywords

Built electricity, road(s), infrastructure, construction,real-estate, no-bid contracts

Human race, class, poverty, income, educationNatural wetland(s), delta, barrier island, sedimentSocial social, community, civic, church


paper, national media outlets received the bulk of theattention. However, local newspaper coverage was analyzedin order to explore the ways that national and local mediadiffer in their emphasis of Katrina recovery strategies.Television is the lowest common denominator of contempo-rary mass news media (and mass media in general). Morepeople receive their news by television than by any othermedia (Pew, 2002; Kull et al., 2003). However newspapers –even in the face of declining readership over the past decade(Newspaper Audience Database, 2004) – have arguably greaterinfluence over opinion-forming elite (Benthall, 1993; Putnam,2000). It was therefore necessary to analyze the content ofboth TV and newspapers when discussing the media's role inframing disaster recovery strategies.

National evening newscast texts were analyzed using theVanderbilt University Television News Archive. Analysis waslimited to the three traditional broadcast networks (ABC, CBS,and NBC) and the cable news networks CNN and FOX NewsChannel (with approximately 25% and 50% respective sharesof primetime cable news viewers in 2004 and 2005 according toNielsen Media Research). News stories, as well as editorialsand opinion pieces, in daily and Sunday newspapers wereanalyzed. LexisNexis was used for all newspaper text analysis.TheNewYorkTimesandTheWashingtonPostwere selected foranalysis due to their broad circulation (ranked 3rd and 5threspectively according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations,2004a,b) as well as their influence in national cultural andpolitical spheres. USA Today was selected because it has thelargest circulation in the nation (Audit Bureau of Circulations,2004c) and for its appeal to popular audiences. TheNewOrleansTimes–Picayune was chosen to provide a local perspective onKatrina recovery.

Opinion polls can shed some light on whether audiences'values agree with those promulgated by the media. Moreover,polls' role as media texts suggests that they will take part inframing events. However onemust bemindful of the potential“echo chamber” effects that result from media reporting onopinion polls. When attempting to glean a less subjectivesense of audience response tomedia it is necessary to consideropinion polls that are not commissioned by media producers.To this end, polls sponsored by The Pew Research Center forthe People and the Press (http://people-press.org/) were drawnon when discussing public attitudes towards the media.However, polls sponsored by media producers are valuablewhen analyzingpoll results asmedia texts. This analysis reliedon polls sponsored by various news organizations, including:The Associated Press, Newsweek, and FOX News.

New media, such as Internet news sites, were not analyzeddue to time constraints. Such analysis is indicated in furtherresearch, especially considering the prominence of online newsas a news source among those younger than 30 (Pew, 2002).

3.4. Keyword selection

The capital emphasis of recovery strategies discussed inmedia coverage of Katrina were identified by selecting key-words that are associated with the four forms of capital. Theguiding questionwas:what relativeweights (i.e. priority) did themedia place on the restoration of natural, human, social andbuilt capital in the aftermath of Katrina? Further, how did these

weights change as the disaster unfolded? The keywords chosenfor this analysis are summarized in Table 2. The methods usedto select keywords and analyze their occurrence in media textsbuild on those employed in Robinson (2001).

In selecting keywords, we considered each capital form forits capacity to assist in the recovery from Katrina and toreduce vulnerability to future disasters. For built capital, thetheme was restoring services through rebuilding. The humancapital keywords were derived from notions of just distribu-tion. Our notion of natural capital focused on structures thatprovide ecosystem services relevant to tropical storm protec-tion. For social capital, we sought to identify institutions thatsupport individuals in the event of disaster. The selectionprocess involved brainstorming lists of keywords for eachform of capital. Individual keywords were tested against thenational newspaper sources (i.e. The New York Times, TheWashington Post and USA Today) for the entire time span ofstudy (i.e. 8/30/2005 through 10/31/2005). Keywords that re-sulted in matching articles—the number of articles tended tobe on the order of a half-dozen—were retained. The articlesmatching a keyword were randomly selected to verify that theusage of the keyword was in the context of the respectivecapital form. This selection process could be enhanced bymore systematic data mining methods such as choosingprominent keywords from an exhaustive list of words, withthe frequency of appearance of each, that appeared in thepublications specified over the time period of the study. How-ever commodity tools do not currently enable this relativelyadvanced analysis.

To identify newspaper articles related to recovering fromKatrina, the keyword “katrina” was searched for in the head-line, lead paragraphs and terms while the keywords “rebuild(ing)”, ”restore” and “restoring”were searched for in the head-line alone. Articles related to the capital types were identifiedby refining this search to search for the keywords for eachcapital type in the full text of the article. For television newscoverage, articles related to each capital type were identifiedby searching for “katrina” and any of the keywords associatedwith that capital type. The “rebuild(ing)”, “restore” and “re-storing” keywords were omitted as including them resultedthe exclusion of otherwise relevant pieces (a result of thecoarser search granularity afforded by the Vanderbilt Univer-sity Television News Archive when compared to LexisNexis).

4. Results

4.1. Major newspapers

Throughout the time periods, the major national papers em-phasized the recovery of built capital most heavily with social

http://people-ress.org/

Fig. 1 –Emphasis on four capitals in The New York Times,The Washington Post and USA Today.

Fig. 3 –Emphasis on four capitals in evening news broad-casts: ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and FOX.


capital a close second overall—excepting the initial aftermathphase (Fig. 1). Human capital received roughly equivalentfocus during the initial recovery (0.61 articles/day vs. 0.67 and0.50 articles/day for built and social respectively) and duringthe beginning of the long-term recovery (0.22 articles/day vs.0.28 and 0.22). It is reasonable that built capital recovery wouldbe emphasized during the immediate aftermath given theimportance of infrastructure to disaster relief efforts (e.g.evacuation, caring for the injured, etc.). However, there is ageneral lack of coverage of natural capital recovery across alltime periods, especially at the peak of Katrina coverage duringthe initial recovery period (9/5–9/22).

How does the coverage of a major New Orleans newspaper,The Times–Picayune, differ? (Fig. 2) Local coverage of Katrinarecovery appears to be increasing with time while nationalcoverage appears to be decreasing. This is not unexpectedgiven the national media's national and international focus.Also, the local paper is produced by people who were them-selves dealing with the direct effects of Katrina, so it isunderstandable that they would be consumed with thedaunting task of recovering from this major disaster.

Ignoring the understandable absence of local coverageduring the immediate aftermath, the balance of coverage is

Fig. 2 –Emphasis on four capitals in The Times–Picayune.

similar to that of the national papers. Built capital receives themost attention, with social capital a close second and humancapital a consistent third. Again, natural capital's role in re-covery receives far less attention (except during HurricaneRita). Natural capital coverage was a paltry 0.08 articles/dayduring the beginning of long-term recovery while the othercapital forms averaged 0.78 articles/day (Fig. 2). This result isconsistent with the paper's coverage four-years prior toKatrina (8/1/2001 to 8/1/2005). During this time, the Times–Picayune carried 185 articles featuring “hurricane” in theheadline, lead paragraphs and terms with the natural capitalkeywords appearing in the full text. In the same period, overone thousand articles related to hurricanes did not mentionthe natural capital keywords.

4.2. Television news

Analysis of television news broadcasts is complicated by thedifficulty of archiving and indexing video content. The broad-casts indexed in the Vanderbilt University Television NewsArchive rely on summaries written by the archive's editorialstaff. These summaries understandably do not include the fulltext of broadcasts. Thus, the keyword analysis employed fornewspaper content may not be as reliable a method whenapplied to television news. Additionally, the television archivedoes not allow searches at the same level of granularity asLexisNexis. For example one cannot specify that certainkeywords be searched for only in the headlines of broadcasts.However, the distinction between headline and story body isarguably less meaningful in television news given the serialinformation flow inherent in themedium (ignoring the affectsof “channel surfing”). Keeping these limitations in mind, it isworthwhile to perform keyword analysis of nightly televisionnews stories related to recovery from Katrina (albeit slightlymodified from the newspaper analysis). Firstly, the domi-nance of television in the media market makes it a centralplayer in issue framing and social risk construction. Further,television lends itself to less stoic andmore dramatic coveragethan newspaper accounts of even inherently dramatic eventssuch as natural disasters; this may lead to different emphasisin coverage.

Fig. 4 –Emphasis on four capitals in evening cable news: CNNand FOX.

Fig. 6 –Emphasis on four capitals in CNN evening news.


The coverage of the immediate aftermath of the disaster isdominated by social and to a lesser extent human capital-related coverage. This is to be expected given television'saffinity for human-interest interpretations. The emphasis onsocial capital in national evening news coverage of Katrina(Fig. 3) is overallmore pronounced than that of the other formsof capital. Although when focusing on the initial and long-term recovery phases, built capital again shows up as themostemphasized. Again, natural capital received the least atten-tion and even less than in national newspapers (Fig. 1). Similarto national newspapers, there appears to be a trend of lesscoverage of Katrina as time passes.

How does coverage by traditional network news compareto that by major cable news networks? Overall, cable news(Fig. 4) appears to have given more even coverage to thecapitals (giving a slight preference to the built), though againnatural capital receives relatively little attention. Networknews (Fig. 5) had a preference for social capital early on,especially during the crisis phases when Katrina and then Ritawere causing their primary damage. Both cable and networkcoverage seems to have settled on a rough balance betweenbuilt, social and human capital at the beginning of the long-

Fig. 5 –Emphasis on four capitals in evening network news:ABC, CBS and NBC.

term recovery. The complete absence of coverage for anycapital type for cable coverage during Hurricane Rita is sus-pect. It may be that coverage of Hurricane Rita subsumed thatof Katrina during this period, indicating that the keyword“Rita” should be added to the analysis. However this hypoth-esis is confounded by the strong coverage of built and socialcapitals from network news during the same period. Furtherresearch is indicated to understand this difference incoverage.

The cable news wars paralleled the Red State–Blue Statedivide in American politics that dominated the zeitgeist of thefirst half of the opening decade of the 21st century. CNN andFOXNews Channel are seen by some as occupying two ends ofthe political spectrum. How does their attention to the fourcapitals compare? CNN's coverage (see Fig. 6) is relatively bal-anced between the capitals—with the perennial exception ofthe natural—across all time periods (excepting the aforemen-tioned no-coverage anomaly for cable during Hurricane Rita).Human and social capital saw spikes in coverage during theimmediate aftermath of Katrina — as television is wont to doduring the unfolding of dramatic events. As with nationalnewspaper coverage (Fig. 1), CNN's coverage of Katrina in

Fig. 7 –Emphasis on four capitals in FOX News Channelevening news.

Fig. 8 –Emphasis on four capitals in USA Today.


general appears to be declining with time. One surprisingresult, given the results for othermedia outlets, is CNN's equalcoverage of built and natural capital during the immediateaftermath.

The data for FOXNews Channel's evening newscast's focuson the capitals throughout the unfolding of Katrina are sosparse that even tentative observations or conclusions arehard to draw. It seems that FOX's capital-related coverage ofKatrina (Fig. 7) was roughly on par with CNN's during theinitial recovery, the only difference being the reversal of theweighting of human and social capital. However, FOX'scoverage (again, as specified by the keywords) during theimmediate aftermath is only surpassed in spareness by that ofUSA Today (Fig. 8). It may be that the keywords chosen torepresent each capital type are poor choices for contentappearing on FOX News Channel and in USA Today. Furtheranalysis is warranted given these outlets' large audiences.

4.3. Opinion polls

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press regular-ly polls public attitudes toward the press and public policy. Itspolling in the immediate aftermath and early recovery ofKatrina charts public reaction to media coverage of the eventsas they unfolded. In a poll conducted September 6–7, two-thirds of respondents gave “news organizations excellent(28%) or good (37%) ratings for their coverage of the impact ofKatrina.” (Pew, 2005a) This suggests that the extensive cov-erage of Katrina by television and print media sated people'sdesire to learn about the disaster and share in the experience.This conclusion is reinforced by the finding that 62% of re-spondents thought that the amount of coverage was appro-priate, while only 21% felt that there was toomuch coverage ofKatrina.

A poll conducted September 8–11 (Pew, 2005b) showedvague consideration of recovery strategies.When respondentswere asked if the federal government should help pay forrebuilding New Orleans or if it was “too risky” to rebuild in thecurrent location, 51% thought that the government shouldhelp pay while 41% thought it too risky to rebuild (8% did notknow or refused to answer). Leaving aside the flawed nature ofthe question (i.e. its conflation of federal involvement in re-

construction with the orthogonal notion that alternatives torebuilding in the same location should be considered), asubstantial portion of respondents appeared to be criticallyconsidering potential recovery strategies. Similar notionsappeared in a poll sponsored by the Associated Press con-ducted September 16–18. Respondents were asked if peoplewho choose to live in areas susceptible to natural disastersshould be given government recovery assistance or if theyshould live at their own risk (in this poll the question did notsuffer the same conflation as above). Fifty percent of re-spondents believed that the government should help affectedpeople recover, while 45% felt they should live at their ownrisk (5% were unsure).

In the same AP survey, half of the respondents were askedif the then 200 billion USD expected to be given over by the U.S.Congress for Katrina recovery was too much, about right, ortoo little. Twenty-four percent thought this amount toomuch,while 52% thought it was appropriate. Fifteen percent felt thatmore should be spent. The other half of respondents wereasked their confidence that recovery funds were being spent“wisely.” Fifty percent were confident (8% very, 42% some-what) while 49%were not (31% not too confident, 18% not at allconfident). However, these questions illustrate the danger ofecho chamber effects of the media and opinion polls. It isreasonable to infer that most respondents' only knowledge ofthe proposed recovery funds and the sagacity of theirapplication came from the media. Indeed, Pew (2005a) foundthat 89% of respondents felt that television was their mainsource of news on “the impact of Katrina.”

As late as October 12–14th (six weeks after Katrina madelandfall in Louisiana) 69% of those surveyed were followingHurricanes Katrina and Rita “very closely” (Pew, 2005d). How-ever, opinion polls conducted during the beginning of thelong-term recovery period tended to be concerned with howwell/poorly local and federal officials responded to Katrinaand with how the federal government should pay for relief(e.g. FOX News poll September 27–28; Newsweek Poll, Sep-tember 29–30; Pew, 2005c). None of the polls reviewed dealtdirectly with how people felt about specific recovery strate-gies. Therefore it was not possible to compare the media em-phasis on the four capitals with corresponding audienceresponse. Moreover this poll analysis demonstrates, anecdot-ally, the difficulty of using poll results – especially from pollssponsored by media producers – to understand public opinionon subjects that are outside of the stream of media coverage.This difficulty, however, illustrates the socially- or at leastmedia-constructed nature of peoples' opinions of masscultural events.

4.4. Perceptions of risks post-Katrina

Frewer et al.'s application of the elaboration likelihood model(ELM) to risk communication (cited in Pidgeon et al., 2003)predicts that communication can induce relatively rapid,though not necessarily long-lived, changes in risk perceptionthrough the use of social information processing. Recall thatsocial information processing will be favored when hazardsare out of the control of the individual. The hazards associatedwith hurricanes can be mitigated to some degree by theindividual (e.g. by choosing not to live in areas affected by


hurricanes, advanced evacuation planning, etc.). Howeverthere are many social, economic, and natural forces operatingthat can effectively remove the control that many individualshave over their vulnerability to hurricanes (e.g. family ties toplace, not being able to afford to relocate, etc.). Recall furtherthe role that people's trust of an information source plays inpromoting the use of social information processing in the ELM.It has been suggested that television is an instance of the“transitional object” concept of psychoanalysis. A transitionalobject is the first object towhich a child becomes attached thatis not herself or her mother. This object provides an associa-tion to a child's first feelings of comfort and is embedded inthe psychological makeup of adults (Benthall, 1993, p. 214). Iftransitional objects are retained into adulthood and if tele-vision does serve as such an object then it follows that tele-vision should have profound influence over its viewers,providing a source of comfort that arguably involves a trustrelationship.

Were the media a trusted source of information forKatrina-related information? Pew (2005d) summarized favor-able views of news media across five time periods (October1997, February 1999, December 2004, March 2005, and October2005). For the two most recent time periods, 56% (Mar. 2005)and 52% (Oct. 2005) of respondents had a favorable view ofnews media. Favorability ratings for the two oldest polls were50% (Oct. 1997) and 49% (Feb. 1999). (The anomalous 43%favorability in December 2004 may be explainable by its fol-lowing a presidential election) These are not convincing datafor the case of public trust in the media in general. Withrespect to Katrina coverage however, remember that 65% ofrespondents gave themedia positivemarks (Pew, 2005a). Thusthere is some argument to be made that the media were atrusted source of information regarding the risks associatedwith Katrina.

5. Summary and conclusions

If, according to the ELM, the media coverage of strategies forrecovering from Katrina did contribute to risk perception,what aspects of hurricane hazards is the public likely to beconcerned with? This paper has shown that the built, humanand social capital components of hurricane vulnerability andrisk will be emphasized over the natural capital components.This can be seen by looking at the emphasis on the fourcapitals during the beginning of the long-term recovery phaseof Katrina (9/25–10/31) in television evening news (Fig. 3) andin national newspapers (Fig. 1).

The underweighting of natural capital in media coverageof the recovery from Katrina is not surprising consideringthat the services provided by natural capital are also under-weighted in policy making (Costanza et al., 1997). It appearsthat the dominant media takes as its frame of reference apolitical-economic system with natural systems in the peri-phery. However, our own experience of media coverage ofHurricanes Katrina and Rita demonstrate that there havebeen minority voices calling attention to the value of eco-system services and their role in mitigating future naturaldisasters. One of the major limitations of our analysis is thatonly topic frequencies were recorded. We did not analyze

column-inches or minutes of airtime let alone the subjec-tive notions of journalistic and editorial quality. Furtherresearch focusing on more sophisticated content analysis isindicated.

It is too early to tell if Katrina will help to catalyze a changeto a natural system reference frame (with the political–eco-nomic system as a sub-system). The sustainability and desir-ability of our society depends on better knowledge of the risksassociatedwithwhere and howwe choose to live. Themedia'srole in building social cohesion and constructing narrativeshas made it an important element to social change (e.g. bycontributing to problem definitions). However, the forces ofprofit and politics impel themedia to reproduce the status quorepresented by market fundamentalism. Given these hege-monic forces, ecological economics must work within theconstraints of the mass media to define the problems andpresent the policy solutions thatwill uncover the fundamentalrole that ecosystem services play in our economic system.However, a true shift to a natural system reference frame willlikely require a combination of mass media savvy as was wellas a jolt from beyond the socio-economic discourse; soundscience and policies alone are not sufficient to bring about thischange (see Opening the Policy Window for Ecological Economics:Katrina as a Focusing Event, Farley et al., 2007).

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the anonymous reviewers as well as to KarenRefsgaard, Charles Kerchner, and Robert Costanza for review-ing early drafts of this paper. The advice and suggestions ofAdrian Ivakhiv were instrumental in the early stages itsdevelopment. Thanks also to Barry Chad.

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