Themed Journal Issue on Crisis Communication

Media International Australia (No. 137, November 2010) is titled The Victorian Bushfires and Other Extreme Weather Events: Case Studies in Crisis, Culture and Communications. Edited by Louise North and Jason Bainbridge, its focus is on media coverage of the 2009 Australian bushfires (Black Saturday) that killed 173 people and displace some 7,500 others. In addition to articles on the bushfires the issue includes a content analysis of local news representations of women in Hurricane Katrina and a piece on the role of social media and public information management during the 2009 tsunami threat to New Zealand. The issue takes on a rather prescient tinge in light of the recent Biblical-proportion-flooding in Queensland. Hopefully the scholarship in this area, as the editors hope, has some influence on practice though it's hard to imagine on the local front with Mother Nature delivering her latest blow just a month after the issue's publication.

Media International Australia is available in the ASC Library.