EMPA Research and Development Centre is supervised by a committee of practitioners from government agencies and researchers from La Trobe University, Bond University and the Universities of Canberra and Southern Queensland.
Click here to go to research abstracts and papers from the 2009 conference.
One of our aims is to fund a number of research projects each year for presentation at the annual EMPA conference. Another aim is to encourage standards of rigour in research in this field that allow the use of this research across the world. Our research conference papers are double-blind peer-reviewed.
We welcome research ideas and encourage partnerships that might attract further funding through agencies and/or the Australian Research Council.
The 2011-12 Research and Development Committee is:
Alastair Wilson, Wilson Concepts Crisis Communications Consultancy, Canberra (formerly EMA)
In 2010, EMPA provided funding for two projects, each to be reported at the
2011 conference:
Project: Experiences of Black Saturday bushfire victims/survivors as
subjects of media attention and exposure.
Researchers: Dr Denis Muller and Michael Gawenda, University of Melbourne,
and Caitlin McMahon, DART Centre for Journalism and Trauma.
The broad aims of the research are to discover the effects on
victims/survivors of the Black Saturday bushfires of their being approached,
interviewed, photographed and portrayed by the media.
In 2009, Dr Denis Muller as chief researcher and Michael Gawenda as
co-researcher conducted similar research (funded by the Centre for Advanced
Journalism) among media practitioners who covered the fires. That research
revealed ethical dilemmas, particularly in relation to the treatment by the
media of victims/survivors, and how the media responded to those dilemmas.
The purpose of the current research is to look at these issues from the
point of view of the victim/survivor and so test the perspectives of the
media practitioners with a view to providing the basis for educating media
practitioners in how best to deal with disaster victims in the future.
Semi-structured interviews will be conducted with 30 victims/survivors, half
of whom will have been covered by the media practitioners interviewed in a
previous stage of the research, and half of whom will have been covered by
other media practitioners. It is important to find out from the people
portrayed what the effects were of the media attention they received, so
that best practice might be identified for the coverage of future disasters,
with a view to minimising harm to victims/survivors and generally improving
media practice.
This project was provided with $5,000 in funding by EMPA.
Project: Communicating with the community during a disaster: exploring how
affected people get information during an emergency.
Researcher: Barbara Ryan, Lecturer in Public Relations,
University of Southern Queensland
This project will investigate the information-seeking behaviour of
individuals during the dislocation and reaction phases of disasters.
It will use in-depth interviews at three locations that were subject to
fllood, bushfire or cyclone.
The communities under study will be:
* Airlie Beach in North Queensland, which was hit by Cyclone Ului early
in 2010;
* Gerogery in southern NSW, which was hit by bushfires in December 2009;
and
* St George in Queensland, which, in March 2010, suffered its worst
flood since 1890.
Between 15 and 20 interviews will be undertaken in each community.
This project was provided $5,120 in funding by EMPA.
