Infrastructure Collapse and its Effects on News Practices During Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico

灾害中的社区依赖可靠的信息渠道来制定和传达响应，但在影响深远的基础设施崩溃的灾害中，这些信息渠道面临独特的挑战。该项目调查了2017年9月飓风玛丽亚袭击波多黎各时波多黎各媒体组织和记者如何履行职能。该项目研究了飓风之前、期间和之后的媒体内容，以及受众寻求和使用新闻媒体提供的有限信息的方式。这一科学研究的贡献，从而支持NSF的使命，以促进科学的进步和提高我们的国家福利。在这种情况下，这些好处将是实用的工具，以改善对未来自然灾害的通信反应，特别是当涉及到弱势群体时，并帮助波多黎各和其他地方的新闻机构更新其应急准备计划，以更好地应对自然灾害带来的挑战。因此，这种程序将使波多黎各和其他有弱势人口的地区的公民能够更好地了解情况，以应对紧急情况。该项目探讨了西班牙语媒体环境，已收到有限的学术关注。该项目将采用混合方法，包括与媒体专业人员和电信监管机构进行深入访谈，与波多黎各四个地点的居民进行重点小组访谈，对媒体对灾难的报道进行内容分析，并对应急准备计划进行文本分析。该项目在新闻内容影响的五个层次上审查新闻制作，并通过审查应急准备计划，电信政策和基础设施限制的作用，寻求在组织和社会机构层面扩展该模型。这些因素都没有在以前的危机报告研究中进行过研究。在飓风玛丽亚袭击波多黎各期间，岛上的在线通信几乎完全崩溃，但散居海外的观众打电话或在社交媒体直播上发表评论，试图收集有关亲人的信息或为救援工作提供帮助。 社会系统-媒体-受众之间的动态关系是媒体依赖理论的基本组成部分，在阻碍信息双向自由流动的灾难背景下进行了研究。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Communities in disasters depend on reliable information channels to formulate and to communicate reponse, but in disasters with far-reaching infrastructure collapse, these information channels have unique challenges. This project investigates how Puerto Rican media organizations and journalists performed their functions when Hurricane Maria pummeled Puerto Rico in September 2017. This project examines media content, before, during, and after the hurricane; and the ways audiences sought and used this limited information provided by the news media. This scientific research contribution thus supports NSF's mission to promote the progress of science and to advance our national welfare. In this case, the benefits will be practical tools to improve communication responses to future natural disasters, especially when it comes to vulnerable populations, and to help news organizations in Puerto Rico and elsewhere to update their emergency preparedness plans to better face the challenges imposed by natural disasters. As a result, such procedures will allow citizens of Puerto Rico and other regions with vulnerable populations to be better informed to respond to an emergency. The project examines a Spanish-language media context that has received limited scholarly attention. The project will use a mixed methods approach, including in-depth interviews with media professionals and telecommunications regulators, focus groups with residents of four locations throughout Puerto Rico, a content analysis of media coverage of the disaster, and a textual analysis of emergency preparedness plans. The project examines news production at the five levels of the hierarchy of influences of news content, and seeks to expand the model at the organizational and social institutions levels by examining the role of emergency preparedness plans, telecommunication policies, and infrastructure limitations. None of these factors have been examined in prior crisis reporting studies. During Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, online communication within the island almost entirely collapsed, but diaspora audiences called-in or commented on the social media live stream trying to gather information about loved ones or offering help for relief efforts. These dynamics between social systems-media-audience, which are the basic components of media dependency theory, are examined in the context of a disaster that prevented the free-flowing movement of information in a two-way channel.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.