"Hands off my property!": an assessment of the local, national, and international print media's portrayal of looting in disasters
Date
2006
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Despite empirical findings stating that widespread looting in the aftermath of a disaster episode is a myth, media accounts often focus on concerns of looting occurring. The purpose of this thesis is to revisit previous studies conducted on the looting myth in order to examine whether or not looting occurs in the aftermath of a disaster, to what extent the media reports of looting today are consistent with earlier findings, whether or not there are differences between local, national, and international accounts of looting behavior, and who makes claims of looting. In order to accomplish this, a content analysis was conducted on local, national, and international print news article reports made on Hurricanes Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne to discover to what extent looting was reported in print news articles, in what context looting was reported, and who made reports of looting. Reports of price gouging were also studied. To answer the question of whether or not looting occurs in the aftermath of a disaster, crime statistics from the time period during the hurricane were compared with crime statistics for the same time period during the previous year. Statistics were examined for the extent to which crime increased or decreased in the time period surrounding the hurricane. Results found that, overall, looting was not mentioned as often as it was in previous studies. In many instances, the number of crimes decreased in the time period during the disaster. However, there were cases in which crime rates actually went up during the time period of the hurricane. International news sources made the most reports of looting with the majority of articles being hard news articles. Local news sources were the least likely to report on looting with the majority of articles being soft news stories.