The media, affect, and community in a decade of disasters: reporting the 1985 Bradford City stadium fire

Abstract

This article examines the 1985 Bradford City stadium fire through the coverage of the national, local, and specialist print and broadcast media. Drawing upon extensive media coverage, it argues that the reporting of the fire provides a useful lens through which to understand the emotional environment and construction of communities during Britain’s ‘decade of disasters’. Moreover, archival sources have been consulted to reveal the multiplicity of personal and collective responses to the media reporting of the fire, covering both the immediate and longer-term aftermath. Through letters sent by members of the public to the Bradford Disaster Appeal Fund, it shows how people received media narratives and articulated their own affective bonds with the tragedy. These included declarations of belonging, through which the disaster became the impetus for the creation of a multicultural civic identity in Bradford. Finally, it uses social services records to show how survivors and the bereaved continued to be affected by the disaster even as the story of the fire—as told in the mass media and through memorial ceremonies—turned towards resilience and recovery.