| Natural disasters cause major economic and human losses each year around the world. Therefore, most countries have devoted resources, technology, and efforts aimed at the mitigation of natural hazards. One of the most popular mitigation efforts has been the creation of a strong mass communication system. Nevertheless, the economic losses and human casualties associated with disasters have actually increased in most countries. The primary goal of this dissertation is to demonstrate that theories on the role of the mass media in natural disasters fail to consider important physical and cultural contextual factors that shape and define the media's role in natural disasters.; To analyze these contextual factors, I draw on the literature on the sociology of risk and data from interviews with key informants. The primary data presented in this dissertation is mainly based on direct observation and ethnographic interviews with disaster victims from several Puerto Rican communities, disaster managers at the municipal, state, and federal levels, and key informants from the media industry. This Caribbean island is fertile ground for exploring this issue because of its high propensity to the impact of extreme natural events and its vulnerable social conditions.; From the literature review we learned that the key to understand the media's role in natural disasters is to focus on defining local hazard cultures, and establishing how effective the media are in linking it with the physical conditions of the community. From the ethnographic interviews, we can extract that the contextual factors that influence the role of the mass media as a mitigation tool include basic and general assumptions about the media's role during disasters, rapid changes in the landscape produced by economic development, political fragmentation, and the acknowledgement of the media's changing roles across disaster phases. Also, the media is not a one-way transmitter of official information, but a mediator at the center of the managers-community relationship as they channel the information flow between the actors. They also provide unintended messages to the audience such as companionship, emotional support and communication bridges. |
