Local media coverage of wildfire disasters: An analysis of problems and solutions in policy narratives

Deserai A Crow, John Berggren, Lydia A Lawhon, Elizabeth A Koebele, Adrianne Kroepsch and Juhi Huda

Environment and Planning C, 2017, vol. 35, issue 5, 849-871

Abstract: Many communities face increasing vulnerability to the risks posed by natural hazards, such as floods, wildfires, and hurricanes. In the public policy literature, natural disasters can garner the attention of the public and elites and therefore become focusing events that can open windows of opportunity for policy change to reduce community vulnerability to local risks. Past decisions by governments to ignore or leave hazard risks unaddressed can also be viewed as policy failures when the disaster results in loss of life or property. Whether risk from such disasters persists depends on whether governments learn and adapt based on their experiences with disasters. This research examines two catastrophic wildfires that occurred in Colorado, USA, to determine how policy narratives about these events may influence policy change. Media coverage is analyzed as a measure of the policy narratives within communities. Findings indicate that patterns of policy narrative construction in these cases may preclude public dialog focused on mitigating wildfire risk through policy change.

Keywords: Natural hazards; policy narratives; natural disasters; policy change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0263774X16667302 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envirc:v:35:y:2017:i:5:p:849-871

DOI: 10.1177/0263774X16667302

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning C
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().