Media coverage of emergency response and government responsibility in domestic natural disasters: comparisons between Chinese and American newspapers

Abstract

Based on a comparative approach, this paper reports content analyses of news articles about a devastating earthquake occurred in the Sichuan province, China from six Chinese newspapers, revealing that the Chinese media in reporting the governments’ emergency responses demonstrated many similarities with the American media’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Further comparisons, however, suggest that the claim of a “watchdog” media culture during disasters, as measured by the frequency of media accounts of the governments’ responsibilities, is still relatively premature in China. Moreover, different media types in China, ranging from national to local media and from party-controlled to market-oriented newspapers, ran their articles with diverse focuses. The implications of these findings for effective disaster communication are discussed.