The Impact of Media on Donations
Maria Besiou, Kuehne Logistics University
Jennifer McCormick, Tennessee University
3rd International HumLogWorkshop, Essen
“Sustainability in Humanitarian Logistics”
23 September 2013
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The need for donations
• 1974 – 2003: 6.637 natural disasters, affecting more than 5 billion
people and caused $1.38 trillion in damage (Guha-Sapir et al.
2003)
• To deal with the increased demand for aid, humanitarian
organizations operate both disaster response and development
programs
How?
• Appeals for donations
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Types of donations
• Monetary
–
In-kind
• Solicited
–
Unsolicited
• Non-earmarked
–
Earmarked
How do media affect donations?
• All programs “newsworthy”?
• All types of donations in the same way?
• Amount of donations?
• Are the donations sustainable?
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Where would you donate?
theguardian.com
mydailynews.com
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All programs “newsworthy”?
• Newsworthiness can arise from the unusual nature of a disaster,
opportunities for reporting dramas (Stewart and Hodgkinson
1988), public fascination with horrific events (Payne 1994)
• Switak examined media on Haiti and Chile earthquakes (2010) in
New York Times: 1) more reports on Haiti, 2) on Chile focus on the
presidential response
• Disaster response programs take place continuously in Third
World countries and the aid does not seem to solve the problems
(McEntire 1997). Hence disaster relief within these disaster-prone
countries is likely to receive bad publicity and donor fatigue
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Media
• Definition: Communication channels through which news,
entertainment, education, data, or promotional messages are
disseminated (businessdictionary)
• Media broadcasting is a business
• Media want to report on stories that generate higher viewership
• Large amount of stories to choose from so naturally biased toward
the most newsworthy stories when filtering through the options
(Svitak 2010)
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Role of media
• Media sometimes arrive at the scene of a disaster well before
local emergency services (Payne 1994): Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) learned of people stranded at a
convention center after Hurricane Katrina during a National Public
Radio interview (Wachtendorf et al. 2010)
• They are the ones raising the awareness of a disaster
• They supply information and directions to victims
• They identify areas where governmental assistance is needed
stimulating response from the general public in terms of donations
and volunteerism (FEMA 1999)
• They assess flaws in response (FEMA 1999)
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Impact on donations
• Earmarked: Doctors without Borders asked donors not to send
more money for the Indian Ocean tsunami (Tomasini and Van
Wassenhove 2009)
• In-kind: 2002 Food Crisis in Southern Africa due to widespread
media coverage of this crisis, one big donor responded to the food
crisis by providing a large percentage of genetically modified
maize
• Unsolicited: After 9/11 media commented on how dogs were
burning their feet on rubble. Shortly after, a “tsunami” of dog boots
arrived from various sources (Holguín-Veras et al. 2012)
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Risk on fund-raising
• Nelkin (1991) and Garner (1996): the moral attitudes and “world
view” of a journalist significantly affect reports of tragedies
• Personal biases may result in inaccurate, inadequate and
“perpetuating popular myths such as panic and helplessness
among victims” disaster news reports (Garner 1996)
• “Blame game” (Rodríguez and Dynes 2006)
• Negative images of confusion and lack of integration among relief
agencies could damage fund-raising appeals
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“Sympathetic” reporting and
amount of donations
• Sympathetic reporting could inspire confidence in relief agencies,
encourage co-operation from government authorities, and
facilitate the execution of fund-raising programs (Payne 1994)
• A study by Massey (1994) showed that extensive news coverage
of a disaster increases the response to a fund-raising appeal
• Tsunami disaster in December 2004: amount of media exposure
can be an important factor in influencing charitable giving
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Our research
• Monetary and in-kind (converted to monetary) donations
• Amount of donations?
• Behavioral study involving appeals listed in the Financial
Tracking System and media database LexisNexis
• More global than previous studies, not focused on U.S.
• Covers disasters and development operations from 20072011 that occurred in countries that receive international
humanitarian funding
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Impact of media on relief donations
$1.600
$1.400
6.000
5.000
$1.200
$1.000
$800
$600
4.000
3.000
2.000
$400
$200
$0
USD
Donated
to Relief
Appeal
Media
Volume
1.000
0
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Impact of size of relief on media
2.500
2.000
6000
5000
4000
1.500
3000
1.000
Total USD
Appeal
Request
Media
Volume
2000
500
0
1000
0
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Our findings
• The volume of media related to a program does not affect
the proportion of need that is funded for that program
• The volume of media related to a program affects the
amount of donations that are received for that program
• The more media, the more donations are received
• The impact is stronger for the disaster response programs
• The size of the program affects the volume of media
• The bigger the program, the more the media
• The impact is stronger for the disaster response programs
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Are donations sustainable?
• We need to accept that media decide which disasters are to be
covered and perhaps try to coordinate for more coverage time on
other disasters…
• Is there a risk that NGOs will move more towards disaster
response programs and towards operations with more media
coverage to attract more donors? Would this be negative? (Let’s
remember Haiti…)
• Can we predict donations based on the media volume in order to
facilitate planning?
• Focus also on unsolicited donations
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