Understanding effect of mass media on disaster management: A case study

The general social science literature on media and disaster needs to focus on issues related to ethical concern that dominates the mass communication and journalism literature. To endeavor the benefits to the society a great deal about human and organizational behavior in crisis and disaster needs to be studied in order to reduce the dichotomy in the area of social sciences and mass communication and journalism.

Since the creation of this world, human beings are experiencing disasters and in spite of desperately trying to grapple with the disaster, there is any significant progress in this field. The very basic reason behind this is the complex nature of the system where this disaster takes place. Disaster can be broadly categorized as natural disaster and man-made disaster. The advancement in science and technology has made significant contribution to mitigate natural and some manmade hazards. However hybrid disasters like terrorism, which include bomb explosions, kidnapping, killings and hijacking are difficult to mitigate, as victims are targeted with a planned strategy. The one of its type is the recently experienced Mumbai terrorist attack of 26/11. Mass media plays a significant role in humanizing disaster by emphasizing ‘human interest’ stories as well as portrayals of the bureaucratic nature of the disaster management agencies. However, there exist up to some extent the portrayals of fiction too particularly through newspaper and movies. Mass media took up the cause with every major and minor disaster reported worldwide. But by doing so, what effect does it leads to, in case of hazards like that of Mumbai terrorist attack of 26/11. This paper investigates and identifies the role of mass media in mitigating the disaster of Mumbai terrorist attack of 26/11.