Abstract
This essay employs pentadic cartography in an analysis of media coverage of natural disaster with particular attention to the 1993 Great Flood of the Mississippi. It begins with a review of pentadic cartography. Next, the survey reports of the 1993 Great Flood of the Mississippi taken from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) are coupled with a synoptic pentadic analysis informed by scholarship from the disaster research field. A detailed pentadic analysis of 48 Hours: Flood Sweat and Tears (CNS 1993) follows. The critical discussion argues that Flood, Sweat and Tears is representative of media coverage that overstresses physical destruction and human suffering in natural disasters, while constructing a symbolic landscape in which disasters are, implicitly and explicitly, presented as “random acts of nature.” Through these analytical comparisons, I argue that media coverage of natural disasters functions to “close the universe of discourse,” contributing to a technological vocabulary of motives that tends to screen out the politics of disasters and disaster management policies.
- Journal
- KB Journal: The Journal of the Kenneth Burke Society
- Published
- 2012-04
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- Open Access
- OA PDF Gold
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