Mediatized Humanitarianism: Trust and Legitimacy in the Age of Suspicion

Journal of Business Ethics 120 (4):509-525 (2014)
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Abstract

The article investigates the implications of mediatization for the legitimation strategies of humanitarian organizations. Based on a corpus of ~400 pages of brochure material from 1970 to 2007, the micro-textual processes involved in humanitarian organizations’ efforts to legitimate themselves and their moral claim were examined. A time trend analysis of the prioritization of actors in the material indicates that marked shifts in legitimation loci have taken place during the past 40 years. A discourse analysis unfolds the three dominant discourses behind these shifts, namely legitimation by accountancy, legitimation by institutionalization, and legitimation by compensation. The analysis relates these changes to a problem of trust associated with mediatization through processes of mediation.

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Distant suffering: morality, media, and politics.Luc Boltanski - 1999 - New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
The spectatorship of suffering.Lilie Chouliaraki - 2006 - Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE Publications.

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