Thistlethwaite, Jason; Henstra, Daniel:
Leveraging Media Coverage of Disasters to Support Disaster Risk Reduction.
Policy Brief  (2019) (157) 8 p.
Centre for International Governance Innovation, CANADA,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/resrep21055.pdf

Key Points

→ Disasters focus attention on hazards, creating a window of opportunity to
adopt new risk reduction policies.
The news media can shape post-disaster policy debate by directing
the attention of policy makers toward problems and solutions.

→ A content analysis of newspaper coverage around two of Canada’s
most significant floods reveals that the media are focused more on
the short-term impacts of hazards than on the policy problems
that underpin flood risk.

→ Broadening the constituency of flood risk management advocates and
improving outreach with stakeholders could help to better leverage the focal power of media coverage for
disaster management policy change.