Aidnography

Every two weeks I am going to feature one of the chapters of our Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality which was published in spring 2024. This week we are taking a closer look at Chapter 20 - Media representations of humanitarianism - contributed by Valérie Gorin. From the introduction The twenty-first century has witnessed improvements with the growth of media development agencies and foundation-funded journalism helping independent journalists develop stories on underreported global issues and make them available to broader audiences. These new media outlets, as well as the expansion of citizen journalism and social media, open new lines of inquiry over their potential to disseminate information detached from mainstream media and institutional communication. Meanwhile, gradual attention was given this last decade to (1) criticism of the colonialist, imperialist and orientalist gaze dominant in humanitarian representations; (2) decentralisation of the hegemonic norms to non-W...