Department Member, Institute of Communications Studies
PhD Candidate and Teaching Assistant
Institute of Communications Studies
Thesis Title: Public humanitarian advocacy: rhetoric and mediation of conflict-induced crises
About
The research focuses on the public communication activities, strategies and policies of humanitarian organizations operating in conflict–induced emergencies.
Beside the logistical exercise of distributing ‘relief’, these major players of the conflict-humanitarianism have recently become engaged and proactive actors in the ‘public humanitarian advocacy’. Aimed at pleading for the plights, rights and needs of war-affected populations, building awareness about specific humanitarian issues and concerns and raising the profile of humanitarian crises, nowadays this function has clear public communication contours and exploits a variety of vectors.
By raising the critical question ‘what shapes and defines today’s public advocacy of operational agencies intervening in conflict-induced crises?’ and more specific secondary questions, I will seeks to examine ‘what’ these agencies communicate, to analyse ‘how’ they communicate and, to investigate ‘why’ their communication outputs have assumed current forms and contents.
The research attempts the exercise not through the ‘grand theories’ but through an inductive reasoning and a ‘grounded’ enquiry. Narrowing the investigation on three case-studies, the analysis and comparison of data gathered at international and operational levels through desk research, interviews and participant observation should not only give knowledge of the particular cases but also provide empirical generalizations enabling a larger understanding of this strategic organizational function.
Humanitarian advocacy appears to be rather under-analysed within the humanitarian community and largely under-researched within the academic community. The project has the ambition to be a convergent point between the two communities and to stimulate further debate in both.
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