Hurricane Katrina, the Politics of Pity, and the News Media.

Abstract

This thesis seeks to account for how and why particular interpretations of Katrina achieved dominance or were undermined, and how the ethical crisis after the Convention Center was resolved without upsetting the balance of power, by examining the ‘politics of pity’ as it unfolded by and through the news media. As the crisis unfolded in New Orleans, the media’s presence on the ground produced what Frank Durham has described as a ‘decentered media,’ in which media interpretations diverged from those of mostly distant government officials. As the news media’s narrative became dominant, it provided an answer to what Luc Boltanski refers to as existential uncertainties, evaluative uncertainties and uncertainties over the motivations of the actors involved—all of which are products of communication over distance. I show how the ‘politics of pity’ eventually led to a recentering and a reconciling of media and official interpretations; repairing, as it were, this ideological breach. The recentering was set in motion by efforts from various quarters to contest the parts of the media’s narrative that threatened existing power relationships by reestablishing key uncertainties. The analysis situates the politics of pity within a framework of mass media as a site of hegemonic struggle by examining shifts in dominant frames as they signal evolving notions of what type of commitment to the victims of Katrina is just and who should bear ultimate responsibility.