Students, earthquakes, media: does a seismic crisis make a difference? (original) (raw)
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In the aftermath of an earthquake, broadcast and traditional media play a crucial role, fulfilling complex social and psychological functions. Geoscientists are sought by the media to provide scientific assessments of seismic phenomena as to explain both what is happened and what is yet to come, also suggesting ways to mitigate risk at individual and societal level.The visibility of scientist and their ability to spread their voice across the media is a very important aspect of disaster narratives, as it provides an opportunity to disseminate and receive relevant messages about hazard, risk mitigation and resilience. The genuine appetite for scientific knowledge (Wein et al., 2010) stresses the role of journalistic mediation along the whole risk / science communication process, as it improves news media credibility along with public’s understanding of both seismic phenomena and related risks.The here presented research considered the media coverage of scientific issues during the Emilia 2012 and Amatrice 2016 seismic crisis by the four most circulating Italian national newspapers within the 31 days following the first earthquake shock. The comparative analysis of the two seismic crises considered 288 news stories, being analysed through content analysis, an empirical methodology that allows analysing media messages as well as other types of communicative texts, in order to formulate statistical inferences ontheir explicit meaning (Neuendorf, 2002).The analysis made emerge two relevant points. First, media coverage of geo-science follows the ‘typical’ life cycle of news. Most of the articles are indeed concentrated in the very first days, rapidly decreasing in the following days till to disappear at the end of the month. Second, the daily amount of news story is significantly defined by three variables: the maximum magnitude of aftershocks in the previous day, the number of days after the ‘zero event’ and the degree of controversy / conflict that arises from scientific evaluation of the ongoing phenomena.
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Population growth and spread have increased human exposure to natural hazards and potential disasters affecting people’s quality of life. This situation is especially manifested in marginalized or vulnerable areas. Moreover, within such vulnerable areas, children are especially affected, and are, at the same time, considered to be agents of change. However, children’s voices have been scarcely considered for disaster risk reduction planning, and science education has not widely addressed these ideas. This study explores the understanding of earthquakes and tsunamis by children living in high-risk areas of Chile during a learning unit and according to their geographical zone. The study was part of a context-based science education learning unit. One hundred and two students from four schools used explanations to draw and write the causes of the risk situation, revealing their understanding of each phenomenon. The results show most students attributed earthquakes to the Tectonic Plate...
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The last few years have seen the debate on the geoethics of environmental and climatic protection growing to include resilience as a central idea within this new discipline, which holds many similarities with geography. Resilience analysis often looks at the capacity to re-establish conditions of equilibrium within a system which has been hit by a serious shock, e.g. a natural or man-made disaster. Geoethics works, in tandem with geological analyses and the geography of risk, to inform a population and develop integrated risk management in such a way as to strengthen a community's resilience. The aim of this work is to study some people's capacity to overcome what was potentially a disastrous event and, through a process of reconstruction, turn it into an occasion for growth. The experiment, carried out in the primary and middle schools in Aiello Calabro (Calabria, southern Italy), was conducted on the basis of the belief that there is a close relationship between a population's having a realistic understanding of the risk of such an event, e.g. an earthquake, and high levels of resilience. We also tried to gain an insight into the relationship that may exist between resilience in primary and secondary school children