In relations between the media and humanitarian players – which have long been observed and analysed – a strategic interdependence between the two sectors stands out. What also stands out are challenges in the independence of each sector and in the veracity of information. Over the past fifty years, relations between the media and humanitarian work have greatly evolved. In the 1970s, journalists were often committed supporters of humanitarian operations. Yet in the 1980s, humanitarian crises were mainly told through sensationalist reports – like during the Ethiopian famine in 1984–85. Later, in the 1990s, humanitarian organisations made their public relations more professional – in tune with the creation of the European Commission’s Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations department (ECHO) in 1992.[1]Rony Brauman et René Backmann, Les médias et l’humanitaire. Éthique de l’information ou charité-spectacle, CFPJ Éditions, 1996 ; Susan D. Moeller, Compassion Fatigue. How the Media Sell … Continue readingIn the face of criticism of their media-dependence, and given their need to tackle crises that harmed their image, humanitarian players rethought their communication strategies to reconcile effectiveness with ethics.[2]Jonathan Benthall, Disasters, Relief and the Media, Sean Kingston Publishing, 2010; Johannes Paulmann (ed.), Humanitarianism and Media. 1900 to the Present, Berghahn Books, 2018.Then, in the 2000s, the rise of the internet and social media transformed their backdrop, making it possible for them to become media outlets themselves by directly publishing their journalistic messages and content to build up, rally and retain their communities online.
Through this evolution, humanitarian organisations have remodelled their relations with professional journalists. Yet this evolution has also brought about informational saturation and fiercer competition in attention-grabbing: messages from humanitarian players cannot always reach a broad readership online.[3]Glenda Cooper, Reporting Media Disasters in a Social Media Age, Routledge, 2019.In monitoring evolutions in practices, research into humanitarian communication firstly focussed on how non-governmental organisations’ public relations became more professional. But today, a growing body of research is enriching our understanding of ever more diverse players that contribute to humanitarian messages[4]For example, New Media Networks, www.newmedianetworks.net, which offers its solution LivingEvidence to support solidarity projects through “accessible and participative” real-time information.and ever more diverse geopolitical contexts of information-production in our globalised world where CNN competes with Al Jazeera and CGTN (China Global Television Network) – characteristics of what has been called “humanitarian journalism”.[5]Martin Scott, Kate Wright and Melanie Bunce, The State of Humanitarian Journalism, University of East Anglia, October 2018, … Continue reading
So, over the decades, the media and humanitarian players have learned to constantly navigate between cooperation and distance-keeping to guarantee responsible, ethical information. In short, these relations are based on a special link between an event as a media-based construction of information and the message of humanitarian players, developed in line with the communication strategies of organisations.
Solidarity projects in themselves redefine communication in this way. Not only do solidarity projects highlight crisis, causes and commitments, but they also highlight arguments that make action legitimate and they underline the principle of responsibility for different members of the public. Alongside traditional practices in institutional and fundraising communication, humanitarian players conduct specific campaigns in information-sharing, awareness-raising and pleas. This makes them true laboratories of adaptation and innovation. They develop new skills as producers and distributors of informative content.
Yet the issue of new informational stances among humanitarian players online goes beyond the field of communication tools and techniques. This informational dimension reveals changes in solidarity discourses, not only in relations between players but also in forms of commitment and, more broadly, in the political and civic expression of organisations that have gone beyond compassion-based narratives of classic pleas and have ventured towards “post-emotional” communication strategies that often relate to fun or ironic consumer practices.[6]Lilie Chouliaraki, The Ironic Spectator: Solidarity in the Age of Post-Humanitarianism, Polity, 2012.
Today, on social media, humanitarian players adopt a dialectical relationship between information (expertise and legitimacy) and communication. They generally follow a two-step strategy: first, they build up legitimacy based on information-sharing; second, they direct users towards loyalty-building tools, which help them create and run true communities of donors.
On the one hand, NGOs are becoming representatives of donor-players, even civic players, offering a form of participative empowerment.[7]Marion Carrel, « Injonction participative ou empowerment ? Les enjeux de la participation en France », Les Politiques Sociales, n° 3-4(2), 2017, p. 79-89.When well used, digital tools can showcase their positions on solidarity causes, on political and humanitarian crises, and on vulnerabilities and victims. And they can reveal crises forgotten by the media. These showcased positions, full of information, now often compete with a coexisting journalistic position, which usually focuses on crises that are more “visible”. They find themselves in competition in this way as they are based on different criteria in terms of agenda and editorial policy and they are not restricted by the same financial constraints as the media are. By placing donors or activists at the heart of their communication and by building communities centred on their commitments, NGOs are using social media as participative tools – both for communicating and exchanging information. So digital technology is reshaping civic involvement and creating new ways of committing, educating and showcasing actions in solidarity.
On the other hand, transparency and emotion – traits of online communication – tend to fictionalise these narratives, break up social bonds and create the illusion of a community that is actually just the sum of compassionate new-generation reflexes (the humanitarian clickbait syndrome). Even though commitment has been multiplied, it has become more volatile, built more upon ideals than causes – and often built in opposition to others. This trend is almost a paradox: while encouraging community-building, it aggravates divisions – like the algorithms of social media do.
And in this construction of information, you have to also consider fake news, the presence of which raises specific issues in the humanitarian sector. As sources of information for the media, especially in tough zones, humanitarian workers can regularly face the spread of fake news, as was the case during the Covid-19 epidemic.[8]World Health Organization, Rallying to combat COVID-19 rumours in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 4 March 2022, … Continue reading There were also rumours born during the Ebola crisis in 2013–14. And going back further, there were even rumours about child trafficking in the wake of the Asian tsunami in 2004. Moreover, humanitarian organisations are, increasingly, targets of disinformation campaigns that aim to undermine their actions and credibility. This erodes public trust. The most significant example of this was the disinformation campaign about the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) at the start of the conflict in Ukraine[9]International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), “Russia–Ukraine international armed conflict: Your questions answered about the ICRC’s work”, 26 June 2024, … Continue reading.
So, in this issue of Humanitarian Alternatives, we would like to focus on the challenges of humanitarian communication, which has evolved over time to reach its present-day state. Our age is characterised by the rise of digital communication, fake news and a “post-truth” approach,[10]Alain Cambier, Philosophie de la post-vérité, Éditions Hermann, 2019.where personal opinion, ideology, emotion and beliefs have the upper hand over factual reality, where the boundary between true and false gets blurred, and where facts are often interpreted or manipulated to serve specific interests. Humanitarian organisations need to reinvent their communication and, beyond that, their image and credibility – while respecting the principles of ethics, transparency and trust.
With the hindsight we now have with the past five decades of an activist humanitarian sector developing, spearheaded by NGOs alongside traditional players (the ICRC and the United Nations), what have been the main phases in the history of relations between the media and humanitarian players? What strategies should organisations adopt in the face of new informational challenges? How should they understand their role online and the impact of their communication on social media? What practices can they introduce to limit risks in the face of fake news and cyberattacks? And should they commit more to partnerships with the media or other players to encourage a civic critical spirit through better teaching about the media and ethical information?
In this issue, you will find responses to these questions, as well as solutions put forward by different players in solidarity, but also new questions about the challenges of digital technology and artificial intelligence (AI). Émilie Poisson casts light upon the ethical, methodological and political challenges of datafication and rightly pleads for data to be more contextualised, more transparent and co-built alongside communities in order to preserve its credibility and its capacity to guide fair, effective decision-making. More broadly, ethics in using humanitarian images is the fundamental matter here. Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert considers that distrust and disinformation characterise and complexify the general scene today, especially in light of the use of AI in creating and sharing images. Some NGOs have themselves become targets of disinformation campaigns. So NGOs should now be rethinking their visual strategy collectively, increasing transparency and maintaining trust without giving in to simplification or inauthenticity. This topic is extended by Valérie Gorin’s analytical review of a conference recently organised by the Brocher Foundation in Geneva. This conference brought together ethicists, visual culture specialists, image creators and public health experts to reflect upon the structural biases of generative AI. Rather than giving new leases of life to humanitarian representations, these forms of AI perpetuate bleak, dreary stereotypes and reveal gender and racial biases. The debates that the author reports on tackled the necessary reconfiguration of NGOs’ visual ethics. She underlines the need to rethink the challenges of participation from affected communities in visibility strategies in our all-digital era.
Tom Ansell’s article explores two forms of humanitarian communication: one based on sharing “tacit” (emotional, narrative) knowledge for the general public and donors, the other centred upon “explicit” (technical, formalised) knowledge used in programming. He casts light upon tensions in knowledge hierarchies, including the impact of colonialism and universalisation of scientific knowledge, which can marginalise local knowledge. The author puts forward a “third way” that combines these two types of knowledge for communication that is more effective, contextual and respectful of the beneficiaries, giving value both to emotions and technical rigour to improve humanitarian results. It is worth remembering, as Lubiana Gosp-Server reminds us, that humanitarian NGOs now operate in a “post-truth” context where deliberate violations of international law and the spread of fake news undermine their actions. Such organisations are often the only on-the-ground witnesses in zones that are inaccessible to journalists. They are targets of disinformation campaigns and are wrongly accused of being foreign or military political agents. Information overload on social media drowns out major crises, limiting media coverage and reducing funding. To tackle all these threats, NGOs should invest in innovative communication strategies, develop joint appeal campaigns and strengthen humanitarian diplomacy, while giving more of a voice to affected populations, who are often marginalised in public debate. An article by Amal Abou El Ghayt-Huart, who works at Première Urgence Internationale, analyses the vital value of humanitarian witness stories in our age of AI. Indeed, authentic stories help ensure credibility, indebtedness, social impact and awareness-raising, while documenting crises that are often forgotten. AI helps share and analyse stories quickly, but it also brings huge risks, especially in disinformation and loss of authenticity. So humanitarian organisations should control the use of AI by respecting ethical principles like “do no harm”, while ensuring coherence between messages and actions, particularly in regard to the environmental impact of technology. Lastly, governance that is collective and responsible is needed to manage these challenges. Issues in the role of witness accounts can also be found in considerations from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in their development of a public communication strategy in our age of disinformation. In their article, Andrea Bussotti, Anaïs Deprade and Agnès Varraine-Leca, from MSF’s French section, consider the importance of witness accounts, not just as a moral obligation, but, above all, as a political gesture in contexts of war, where humanitarian workers find themselves to be, ever more often, the latest direct witnesses of violent acts. In Syria, Ukraine and Gaza, MSF documents and decries these violent acts, though internal tensions often emerge when information is gathered to highlight responsibilities. MSF therefore has to check the credibility and accuracy of its messages, often in relation to its firm conviction, by backing up its witness statements with observations and cross-verification of information.
And to extend this issue’s rich, though non-exhaustive, Focus, we have included an account from Sandrine Kaké, a Cameroonian who founded Fondation DAKS, a Canadian organisation. This account can be found in the Forum section of our website (in French only). This modest organisation, which is as rooted in Cameroon as deeply as it is connected to countries of the Global North, especially Canada, aims to improve living conditions in rural regions of Cameroon, particularly through access to drinking water, education and healthcare. The foundation insists on the importance of transparent, authentic, appealing communication in solidarity, involving donors and beneficiaries, and it gives an important role to on-the-ground monitoring, witness stories and digital tools to keep its community informed.
Through these many contributions and keywords that reflect the theme, we can clearly see the issue’s topic: a backdrop “complexified” by crises, “information overload”, “fake news” and use of “AI” in “content creation”. In a public digital space that never stops heightening risks and challenges in their work to inform and communicate, NGOs need to rethink their sense of responsibility, coherence and ethics, without straying from what on-the-ground experience can “tell” their audience, and always contextualise information, while preserving, through innovative strategies and practices, the power of their own voice.
Translated from the French by Thomas Young
Picture credits: Afif Ramdhasuma
