Disaster Journalism in Print Media: Analysis of the Top 10 Hydrogeomorphological Disaster Events in Portugal, 1865–2015

Abstract

Disaster communication guidelines emphasize that journalists should be aware of past major disasters and draw lessons from the coverage of those events. The press is an important source for the evolution of historical disaster and risk research paradigms over time. This study explored the top 10 damaging hydrogeomorphological events in Portugal selected from the disaster database, which includes events that caused human damages (fatalities, injured, missing, evacuated, and displaced) reported over a period of 151 years (1865–2015) by the Portuguese newspaper Diário de Notícias (DN). News analysis was guided by the news protocol. The analysis of the news published in DN enabled us to identify textual marks that present interconnections in the journalistic coverage and produce discursive standards for these disasters. The textual marks were associated with the hazard and risk paradigms. The discursive standards of DN did not clearly reflect the ruptures in the hazard paradigms. As a rule, the journalistic reports contributed to the naturalization of disasters and the gap in public understanding of risks, by presenting an approach focused on relief actions—ignoring social issues, vulnerability, and population resilience—reducing the discourse of preparedness for future disasters.