An Image of Hope in a Week of Despair

Representations of Sam the Koala in the Australian Mainstream News Media

Bibliographic Data

ID5716355
AuthorsClemence Due (0000-0001-6485-6076), Kirrilly Thompson (0000-0002-2758-6537), Danielle Every
Year2014
Volume151
Issue1
Pages47-55
Publication date2014-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMedia International Australia (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1329-878X • E-ISSN: 2200-467X
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1329878x1415100107
OpenAlexW2286142223
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited16

Natural disasters are events with far-reaching humanitarian implications that frequently receive international attention through the use of an image that comes to represent the disaster in question. The most successful images often comprise 'identifiable' and therefore human victims. What is more unusual is for a single animal image to become representative of an entire disaster. This was the case with the 2009 Victorian bushfires in Australia, when the image of a firefighter offering a koala a drink gained international fame. Given that this image of 'Sam' the koala does not conform to traditional disaster imagery, we undertook a thematic analysis of mainstream news media representations of Sam in order to identify how she was represented by the media. In this article, we discuss these themes in relation to the 'identifiable victim', together with the implications of Sam's success in terms of disaster-relief campaigns

Advertising · Business · Geography · Mainstream · Media studies · Natural disaster · Order (exchange · Political science · Qualitative research · Relation (database · Social science · Sociology · Thematic analysis · Animal and Plant Science Education · Computer Science · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Human-Animal Interaction Studies · History · Law

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