The Others Are Coming

Dr Shani Orgad, London School of Economics and Political Science
13 February 2014, 4.00-6.00pm, W/222
Chair: Tom Butterworth

Seminar synopsis

Today's global media overflow with 'others': migrants, asylum seekers, refugees, earthquake survivors, famine victims, victims of war, terrorists, and so on. What do media representations tell us about the 'others' in our world and how we do or should relate to them? What moral scripts are on offer in the contemporary media space about distant others and the relations between 'us' and 'them'?

Based on my new book Media Representation and the Global Imagination (Polity, 2012), in my talk I will explore these questions by focusing on representations of natural disasters. We tend to think of the visibility of natural disasters in the media and the response it engenders as distinct features of our times. I will challenge this view: by analysing a series of case studies from the 18th century till the present times I will evaluate continuities and changes and highlight what is specific about how distant others are imaged and imagined in the contemporary media. I will conclude by reflecting on 'intimacy at a distance' as one of the distinct aspects of how distant others are imaged and narrated today and offer from interviews I conducted with NGO communications producers, as part of my new research project on humanitarian communication.

Dr Shani Orgad

Shani Orgad is Associate Professor at the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science. She writes and teaches on representation and globalization, suffering, war and conflict in the media, and gender and the media. She is particularly interested in the public narratives of these issues in today's media and how they interact with people's personal narratives. Dr Orgad explores these issues in her recent book on Media Representation and the Global Imagination (Polity, 2012), in various journal articles, and a Leverhulme Trust-funded research project on humanitarian communication, which she co-directs. Dr Orgad's other areas of interest include online communication, narrative and media, and health and new media. She wrote about these in her previous book Storytelling Online: Talking Breast Cancer on the Internet (2005).