The use of numbers by journalists in the coverage of crises: a study of seven humanitarian emergencies in the UK press

Numbers are used across the communication of humanitarian crises to identify the scale of suffering, to refer to the causes of emergencies and to outline the solutions provided by the international community. But these numbers do not operate in an apolitical, scientific capacity; instead, they are intimately linked to notions of power and governance. Therefore, it is important to understand how those communicating quantitative information engage with these numbers. The use of numbers by journalists working for UK news media organisations is the focus of this thesis. My research design centres on seven humanitarian crises that occurred during 2017: Manus Island detention centre, Hurricane Irma, La Puebla earthquake, NHS winter crisis, Rohingya refugee crisis, conflict in Yemen and the South Sudan famine. These emergencies are analysed through a mixed-methods process that involved five stages. First, a content analysis of a corpus of 978 articles on humanitarian crises. Second, a focused thematic analysis of specific articles. Third, a case study approach to place certain stories within an information flow. Fourth, the analysis of publicly accessibly interviews with journalists who use numbers. Fifth, the collection and analysis of semi-structured interviews with journalists who authored at least one article in my corpus. My findings outline that the use of numbers is widespread across news coverage of humanitarian crises. There was a stark difference, however, between the way the domestic “humanitarian crisis” (the NHS winter crisis) was covered compared to the six international crises. My textual analysis highlighted how those covering international crises often used the numbers they received from humanitarian sources uncritically. In doing so, reporters often legitimised the interventionist policies put forward by these statistical sources – facilitating humanitarian governance. Those that covered the NHS winter crisis, on the other hand, were more likely to derive statistics from publicly accessible databases. These statistics were often used to criticise the NHS and the government, pointing to significant problems within the health service. In this context, more emphasis is placed on the concept of “open-book governance” where the logics of the database, and the power of certain institutions to manipulate these databases, is of primary concern. These findings make three clear contributions to scholarship. First, the thesis provides a nuanced and comprehensive insight to journalists’ use of numbers. Second, it emphasises the need to examine quantitative governance through its communication. Third, my findings emphasise the role that numbers have in meaning-making. Taken together, this thesis offers important theoretical and empirical insights into the communication of numbers during humanitarian crises.