Like To Dislike

Humanitarian organizations and the traditional news media have been the designers of non western suffering for decades. Through the years their representation of non western suffering has known different phases and elements. The western public is addressed by these representations of suffering and is being convinced to support the humanitarian organizations or to consume the expressions of the media. Shock effect campaigns, positive imagery campaigns and more recently post humanitarianism campaigns in both news media and humanitarian communication have shaped the way we think about non western suffering. With the rise of social media, humanitarian organizations are given a new stage for their expressions regarding non western suffering and they have been given a chance to reach the western public without interference of the news media. Humanitarian organizations therefore have to change their communications to keep addressing the western public and to remain distinctive amongst other organizations. This research tries to give a clear view regarding the representation of non western suffering in humanitarian communication on the social medium Facebook. With a directed qualitative content analysis and a summative quantitative content analysis the Dutch Facebookpages of three humanitarian organizations have been analyzed and have given some clear results. The Facebook pages of the Dutch organizations are being used to activate the western public and to close the gap between the western public and the organization itself. While doing this the organizations use subjective representations of non western suffering which are detached from the emotional discourses which have been used in the past. Therefore the humanitarian communication is becoming detached from their previous storylines which evoke compassion through the use of emotional texts and images. Instead the organizations aim to create “brand awareness” with the western public to reduce the gap between the organization and the western public.