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Charity representations of distant others: An analysis of UK charity visual communications in direct mail campaigns

David Girling, Deborah Adesina

School of Global Development University of East Anglia (2025), 29 pp.

"In this phase of our research on charity advertising, we aimed to examine how INGOs represent distant others in direct mail communications compared to newspaper advertisements, building on findings from earlier studies. While the direct mail format offers greater potential for nuanced storytelling, ... more

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Ethical judgments of poverty depictions in the context of charity advertising?

Shannon M. Duncan, Emma E. Levine, Deborah A. Small

Cognition, volume 245, issue 105735 (2024), [no pag.]

"Aid organizations, activists, and the media often use graphic depictions of human suffering to elicit sympathy and aid. While effective, critics have condemned these practices as exploitative, objectifying, and deceptive, ultimately labeling them ‘poverty porn.’ This paper examines people's eth ... more

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Charity representations of distant others: An analysis of charity advertising supporting international causes in UK national newspapers

David Girling, Deborah Adesina

School of Global Development University of East Anglia (2024), 32 pp.

"We are pleased that this project has provided evidence indicating an improvement in the representation of distant others in INGO adverts. On the whole, there is a marked difference in the organisation of cast and characters present in charity’s communications imagery and pitiful images are nearly ... more

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Aid and the news agenda: Examining the forces shaping NGO-produced humanitarian media

Michael Sunderland

Doctoral Thesis Bournemouth University (2024), 268 pp.

"This study examines the external influences that shape NGO-produced news content concerning humanitarian crises in East, West and Central Africa. Employing a thematic analysis of semi-structured in-depth interviews with humanitarian communicators and a content analysis of the humanitarian press rel ... eases of four major NGOs, it seeks to establish the types of content NGO communications staff consider most effective for achieving mainstream media coverage, how they access such content, and any forces influencing their eventual production of news. In line with notions of media logic (Altheide and Snow 1979; Cottle and Nolan 2007) and news cloning (Fenton 2010), it uncovers a reliance on hard-hitting humanitarian statistics and powerful first-person testimonies, which are considered essential for achieving news coverage. Statistics are found to be most often sourced from publicly available humanitarian datasets, often managed by the United Nations, and are considered susceptible to politicisation by authorities implicated in certain crises. First-person testimonies are usually gathered in-person by NGO staff and are affected by issues of physical access to crisis zones including monitoring by local authorities and demands for media sign-off. Additionally, a humanitarian NGO’s decision on whether to speak out publicly about a crisis is found to be often weighed up against threats to staff and programme safety. Examining these issues through a lens of agenda building theory (Cobb and Elder 1971), this study introduces the concept of agenda erosion, describing the phenomenon by which powerful actors, including host authorities and western governmental and intergovernmental donors, exert influence to undermine agenda building activities by NGOs in the context of humanitarian crises. Methods of agenda erosion might include demanding sign-off of media content, the control of physical access to crisis zones for communications staff, and the politicisation of humanitarian data. Unlike the traditional view of NGOs being producers of information subsidies (Gandy 1982), this concept recognises that, as news producers, NGOs also accept information subsidies, including humanitarian data, from other actors. These subsidies are used by NGOs to increase their own agenda building effectiveness but can also allow other, potentially conflicting, priorities to influence the media agenda too. NGOs are now widely regarded as important players in the production of international news (Cottle and Nolan, 2007; Cooper, 2011; Powers 2018) and these findings suggest agenda erosion is in-part responsible for the continuing adherence of aid organisations to established patterns of news construction (Cottle & Nolan 2007; Fenton 2010; Waisbord 2011; Powers 2018). Only crises with hard-hitting data or emotive personal stories are likely to achieve mainstream media coverage but exposure to such sources is often closely guarded by the most powerful actors in certain crises. As a result, some crises continue to go underreported and NGOs risk being silenced or, worse, used as proxy mouthpieces by powers implicated in the humanitarian context to which they are attempting to respond." (Abstract) more

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Decolonisation: The media challenge

Henry Roberts

International Broadcasting Trust (IBT) (2024), 28 pp.

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Voces con propósito: Manual de estrategias de comunicación para el desarrollo y el cambio social. Módulo del facilitador
Key Guidance

Jair Vega Casanova, Rafael Obregón Gálvez, Claudia Nieto Sánchez, Elizabeth Vargas Rosero, Camilo Pérez Qunitero, George W. Gathigi

Barranquilla: Editorial Universidad del Norte; Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) (2024), xv, 26 pp.

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Dóchas Guide to Ethical Communications

Dublin: Dóchas (2023), 22 pp.

"The Dóchas Guide to Ethical Communications is a resource for international humanitarian and development non-governmental organisations (NGOs) when designing and implementing their communications. The guidelines are founded on three core values: respect for the dignity of people concerned; belief i ... more

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Serie "Country Queen" auf Arte: Die Geister von Tsilanga

Jörg Häntzschel

Süddeutsche Zeitung, 21. Juni (2023)

"Die kenianische, auch mit deutschem Geld produzierte Serie "Country Queen"läuft auf Arte und weltweit auf Netflix. Sie ist raffiniert erzählt - und ein Glücksfall für das globale Lagerfeuer." (Einleitung)

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Das Afrikabild in der visuellen Kommunikation von Entwicklungsorganisationen

Alia Herz-Jakoby

Lausanne et al.: Peter Lang (2023), 417 pp.

"Die visuelle Kommunikation von Entwicklungsorganisationen ist geprägt von Spendenplakaten. Anhand einer eingängigen Bildsprache wird Aufmerksamkeit generiert. Mit einer postkolonialen Perspektive zeigt die Autorin auf, wie das vermittelte Afrikabild visuellen Stereotypen folgt, die bis in die Kol ... more

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Panser les solidarités internationales: (re)penser la communication solidaire

Florine Garlot

Paris: L'Harmattan (2022), 278 pp.

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Who owns the story? Live financial testing of charity vs participant led storytelling in fundraising

Jes Crombie, David Girling

London College of Communication; University of East Anglia (2022), 53 pp.

"This project demonstrates that there is another way of gathering and sharing the stories of people living in poverty around the world. Until now, there has been much positive and enthusiastic discussion amongst INGO communications and fundraising professionals about how to change the way we tell st ... more

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Communicating Development Through US News: Toward Decolonizing “News About Development”

Michael Dokyum Kim

Journalism Studies, volume 24, issue 6 (2022), pp. 738-762

"Drawing on a content analysis of 263 news articles on US development assistance from 2011 to 2020 across three US media outlets, the study investigates the media's performance in covering and representing US development assistance to the public. The analysis reveals that the media focus their cover ... more

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How to Write About Africa in 8 Steps: An Ethical Storytelling Handbook
Key Guidance

Rebecca Pointer

Africa No Filter (2021), 31 pp.

"Storytelling is the most powerful way for donor and non-governmental organisations to convey their work because stories allow audiences to connect on both intellectual and emotional levels. However, much of the storytelling about development work in Africa is unethical and perpetuates harmful and s ... more

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Meinungsmonitor Entwicklungspolitik 2021: Medieninhalte, Informationen, Appelle und ihre Wirkung auf die öffentliche Meinung

Sebastian H. Schneider, Jens Eger, Nora Sassenhagen

Bonn: Deutsches Evaluierungsinstitut der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit (DEval) (2021), xxii, 116 pp.

"Die Medieninhaltsanalysen in Kapitel 2 zeigen, dass Entwicklungspolitik absolut und anteilig betrachtet in den Medien nur eine geringe Rolle spielt. Während der ersten Monate der Corona-Pandemie Anfang 2020 ging die Aufmerksamkeit, die TV-Nachrichten und Beiträge in Printmedien auf das Themenfeld ... more

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Ethical Traditions in Humanitarian Photography and the Challenges of the Digital Age: Four Conversations with Canadian Communications Officers

Dominique Marshall

Journal of Humanitarian Affairs, volume 3, issue 2 (2021), pp. 57-64

"As the production, content, and display of humanitarian images faced the requirements of digital media, humanitarian organizations struggled to keep equitable visual practices. Media specialists reflect on past and current uses of images in four Canadian agencies: the Canadian Red Cross, the Multic ... more

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Checklists for Racism-Critical Public Relations Work in the Field of Developmental Policy

Berlin: Berliner Entwicklungspolitischer Ratschlag (BER) (2021), 15 pp.

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Evaluation of the Implementation of the Strategy for Information and Communication Operations, Including Through Organisations Within the Civil Society During the Period 2016-2022

Jonas Lövkrona, Johanna Stenersen, Nordlöf, Karin

Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) (2021), 75 pp.

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Humanitarian Relief and Development Organizations’ Stakeholder Targeting Communication on Social Media and Beyond

Chih-Hui Lai, Jiawei Sophia Fu

Voluntas, volume 32 (2021), pp. 120-135

"Nonprofit scholars have long considered stakeholder targeting communication (STC), an important mechanism of organizational accountability to meet stakeholders’ diverse interests and needs. However, research has yet to systematically examine the antecedents and outcomes of organizations’ STC to ... more

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Repräsentation ferner Wirklichkeiten: Umstrittene Wissensproduktion in wissenschaftlicher und humanitärer Praxis

Michaela Zöhrer

Baden-Baden: Nomos (2020), 387 pp.

"Welche Darstellungen von ‚fernen Anderen‘ finden im Globalen Norden Verbreitung und Anklang? Welche nicht? Wer spricht für wen? Wer bleibt ungehört? Und: Weshalb scheint es zunehmend wichtig und geboten, diese Fragen zu stellen? Die sozialwissenschaftliche Studie analysiert und diskutiert kon ... more

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Neutral Press, Negative Opinions: Development Cooperation and the Dutch Media

Mirjam Vossen

Development in Practice, volume 30, issue 6 (2020), pp. 825-836

"Recent high-profile scandals raise concerns about how development cooperation is represented. This article examines how the subject gets in the media, examining the tone of voice and framing in newspaper articles and NGO advertisements in the Netherlands. It reveals a remarkable difference between ... more

Voces con propósito: Manual de estrategias de comunicación para el desarrollo y el cambio social. Módulo del facilitador Key Guidance

How to Write About Africa in 8 Steps: An Ethical Storytelling Handbook Key Guidance

Voces con propósito: Manual de estrategias de comunicación para el desarrollo y el cambio social. Módulo del facilitador
Key Guidance

How to Write About Africa in 8 Steps: An Ethical Storytelling Handbook
Key Guidance