The Routledge Companion to Media and Humanitarian Action

According to the United Nations, there are currently more crises around the globe than at any other time in human history, and the number of people affected by complex emergencies and humanitarian crises has more than doubled in the last decade. We live in a moment of unprecedented humanitarian crises, and representations of global disasters are increasingly common media themes around the world. This volume explores the interconnections between media, old and new, and the humanitarian challenges that have come to define the twenty-first century. Contributors, including media professionals and experts in humanitarian affairs, grapple with what kinds of media language, discourse, terms and campaigns can offer enough context and background knowledge to nurture informed global citizens. Case studies of media practices and content analysis and evaluation of media coverage and representations of humanitarian emergencies and affairs offer further insight into the ways in which strategic communications are designed and implemented in field of humanitarian action.

Robin Andersen, Ph.D., is Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, and Affiliated Faculty in Peace and Justice Studies and Environmental Studies. She is the author of four books and dozens of chapters and journal articles, and writes media criticism for a variety of publications. Professor Andersen’s book, A Century of Media: A Century of War won the Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award for 2007. She often serves as a consultant for non-profit groups, and helped develop the curriculum for Fordham University’s MA Program in Humanitarian Action. Professor Andersen teaches the course Media and Humanitarian Action in the MA Program in Humanitarian Action, offered in partnership with the International Institute for Humanitarian Affairs (IIHA) at Fordham University. She is featured in numerous educational documentaries.

Purnaka L. de Silva, PhD., has taught Politics/International Relations in several graduate and undergraduate programs at universities in New York, New Jersey, Long Island, the USMA West Point, and the Queen’s University of Belfast in Northern Ireland where he was Lecturer in Politics at the School of Politics and the Centre for the Study of Ethnic Conflict. A specialist on conflict and peace studies, counter-terrorism and country risk, Dr. de Silva’s publications include the co-edited work Postmodern Insurgencies: Political Violence, Identity Formation and Peacemaking in Comparative Perspective published by Macmillan and St. Martin’s Press in 2000. The partly autobiographical book on morality, killing and warfare Political Violence and Its Cultural Constructions: Representations and Narrations in Times of War is forthcoming.