Paper details

Paper authors	Rathnayaka Mudiyanselage
In panel on	Children and Improved Crisis Response
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

This paper examines the portrayal of Rohingya children in Save the Children’s (SC) humanitarian campaign in the UK. Based on the theory of multimodal semiotics and drawing purposive samples the paper analyses different communication forms used by SC in this particular crisis for awareness raising, advocacy & policy engagement, fundraising and SC’s image building. Rohingya refugee crisis has caused major humanitarian violations since the late 1970s. Myanmar throughout the history has not recognised Rohingya Muslims as an official ethnic group. The military junta came into power in 1988 and they governed Myanmar until 2011 and time by the time they questioned Rohingya’s citizenship and released violence against them. The precarious condition for Rohingya in Myanmar made them flee neighbouring countries and many have been going to Bangladesh. Many of the photos in SC’s campaign depict the enormity of suffering by showing a large number of people or a large number of camps. And in individual portrayals, their emotions are highlighted. Finally the representation appeal to the emotions of the readers/viewers. Thus, the paper concludes that still even in the post-humanitarian communication the negative representation of distant other is predominant especially in the large humanitarian crisis.

Brooten, L., Ashraf, S. and Akinro, N. (2015) ‘Traumatized victims and mutilated bodies: Human rights and the ‘politics of mediation’ in the Rohingya crisis of Burma/Myanmar’, International Communication Gazette, 77(8), pp.717-734. DOI: 10.1177/1748048515611022 (Accessed 1 Jan. 2018)

Chouliaraki L, (2013). Post-humanitarian communication: Contemporary portrayals of distant suffering have left us as self-satisfied consumers, rather than cosmopolitan citizens Available at: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/post-humanitarian-communication-contemporary-portrayals-of-distant-suffering-has-left-us-as-self-satisfied-consumers-rather-than-cosmopolitan-citizens/ (Accessed 1 Jan. 2018)

Parnini, S., Othman, M. and Ghazali, A. (2013) ‘The Rohingya Refugee Crisis and Bangladesh-Myanmar Relations’, Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 22(1), pp.133-146. DOI: 0.1177/011719681302200107 (Accessed 1 Jan. 2018).

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