The Mediation of Humanitarianism: Toward a Research Framework

Abstract

This article examines existing research on the role of mediated narratives and images of distant suffering in cultivating moral response, identifying two central strands: Philosophically oriented accounts and empirical studies of text, audience, and production. On the basis of this critical review, we suggest a research framework that simultaneously builds on and departs from existing work, helping to expand and strengthen a program of research on the mediation of humanitarianism. This framework highlights the importance of: (a) studying mediated humanitarianism as a multisited dialectical process; (b) moving away from prescriptive normativity to studying how the mediation of humanitarianism is experienced, affected, and negotiated; and (c) “undoing” despair as the motivation and consequent impulse of critique of the mediation of humanitarianism.

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