‘One big team working together’ - Shifting narratives to encourage civic participation and collective action in disaster preparedness
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Date
2025-02-15
Open Access Location
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Elsevier Ltd
Rights
(c) 2025 The Author/s
CC BY-NC 4.0
CC BY-NC 4.0
Abstract
Disaster risks cannot be reduced by individual efforts alone and necessitate community participation and collective action. However, communicating and encouraging collective action is difficult. Existing studies show that stories and narratives are useful to convey complex less-understood phenomena, like disasters, in a comprehendible and relatable manner. As such, this paper explores existing disaster narratives and aims to understand how they encourage civic participation and collective action for reducing disaster risks. The findings show that the framing of disasters in mass media narratives are unlikely to encourage collective action as they do not emphasize citizen's agency and efficacy in reducing disaster risks. However, in the narratives shared at the local level between emergency management agencies and community members, there is currently a shift towards emphasizing community agency, efficacy, and responsibilities in reducing disaster risks. Four dominant themes are identified in these narratives: reframing the concept of heroes, promoting connection and care, emphasizing collective efficacy and collective responsibility. While the narratives are beneficial, they also cause some tensions, such as, confusion arising from lingering response-centric narratives; frustration around the collective responsibility narratives; and resistance to the current narratives as they are perceived as attempts by emergency management agencies to transfer emergency management responsibilities to people. The implications of the findings and the future directions are presented.
Description
Keywords
Narrative, Civic participation, Collective action, Disaster preparedness, Disaster risk reduction
Citation
Das M, Becker J, Doyle EEH. (2025). ‘One big team working together’ - Shifting narratives to encourage civic participation and collective action in disaster preparedness. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. 118.