Yasmin Ibrahim, Anita Howarth







The third narrative space: The human interest story and the crisis of the human form

Between the different models of broadcasting and publishing is an interstitial space of countering dominant paradigms. Their existence is both a symbolic and material affirmation of human struggles and narratives. Through a strand of medical humanitarianism, we examine the so-called 'migrant crisis in Europe'. While media reported the 'migrant' through their transgressions of state boundaries and as unnecessary entities in 'civilised Europe', there has been a quest to reconstitute the human from the third sector. While the conjoining of capital (i.e. the commercialisation of news) and the commodification of the human is a sustained endeavour in private and public models of publishing, the 'third narrative space' seeks to thwart and resist these imperatives by re-humanising refugee struggles as 'human struggles'. This reconstitution of the human works to gain both public attention and funding, and in the process invites both moral and altruistic challenges for these organisations

Keywords: human interest story, migrant crisis, commodification of the human, commercialisation


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Note on the contributor

Dr Yasmin Ibrahim is a Reader in International Business and Communications at Queen Mary, University of London. Her ongoing research on new media technologies explores the cultural dimensions and social implications of the appropriation of ICTs in different contexts. Beyond new media and digital technologies, she writes on political communication and political mobilisation from cultural perspectives. Her other research interests include globalisation, Islam, visual culture and memory studies.
 
Dr Anita Howarth is a senior lecturer at Brunel University and researches on political communication particularly issues that become politicised around perceptions of policy failure, conflict and social justice. Her particular concern is to investigate how and why the media legitimise or challenge, resist and disrupt policy. Her published work encompasses food as communication, the contested spaces of migration and environmental health risks.