Infrastructure Collapse and its Effects on News Practices During Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico

Michigan State University, East Lansing MI

Investigators

Abstract

Communities in disasters depend on reliable information channels to formulate and to communicate reponse, but in disasters with far-reaching infrastructure collapse, these information channels have unique challenges. This project investigates how Puerto Rican media organizations and journalists performed their functions when Hurricane Maria pummeled Puerto Rico in September 2017. This project examines media content, before, during, and after the hurricane; and the ways audiences sought and used this limited information provided by the news media. This scientific research contribution thus supports NSF's mission to promote the progress of science and to advance our national welfare. In this case, the benefits will be practical tools to improve communication responses to future natural disasters, especially when it comes to vulnerable populations, and to help news organizations in Puerto Rico and elsewhere to update their emergency preparedness plans to better face the challenges imposed by natural disasters. As a result, such procedures will allow citizens of Puerto Rico and other regions with vulnerable populations to be better informed to respond to an emergency. The project examines a Spanish-language media context that has received limited scholarly attention. The project will use a mixed methods approach, including in-depth interviews with media professionals and telecommunications regulators, focus groups with residents of four locations throughout Puerto Rico, a content analysis of media coverage of the disaster, and a textual analysis of emergency preparedness plans. The project examines news production at the five levels of the hierarchy of influences of news content, and seeks to expand the model at the organizational and social institutions levels by examining the role of emergency preparedness plans, telecommunication policies, and infrastructure limitations. None of these factors have been examined in prior crisis reporting studies. During Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, online communication within the island almost entirely collapsed, but diaspora audiences called-in or commented on the social media live stream trying to gather information about loved ones or offering help for relief efforts. These dynamics between social systems-media-audience, which are the basic components of media dependency theory, are examined in the context of a disaster that prevented the free-flowing movement of information in a two-way channel. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.