Mediatized Humanitarianism: Trust and Legitimacy in the Age of Suspicion

The article investigates the implications of mediatization for the legitimation strategies of humanitarian organizations. Based on a (full population) corpus of ~400 pages of brochure material from 1970 to 2007, the micro-textual processes involved in humanitarian organizations’ efforts to legitimat...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Vestergaard, Anne (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer 2014
In: Journal of business ethics
Year: 2014, Volume: 120, Issue: 4, Pages: 509-525
Further subjects:B Discourse Analysis
B Mediatization
B Humanitarian communication
B NGOs
B Legitimacy
B Mediation
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Summary:The article investigates the implications of mediatization for the legitimation strategies of humanitarian organizations. Based on a (full population) corpus of ~400 pages of brochure material from 1970 to 2007, the micro-textual processes involved in humanitarian organizations’ efforts to legitimate themselves and their moral claim were examined. A time trend analysis of the prioritization of actors in the material indicates that marked shifts in legitimation loci have taken place during the past 40 years. A discourse analysis unfolds the three dominant discourses behind these shifts, namely legitimation by accountancy, legitimation by institutionalization, and legitimation by compensation. The analysis relates these changes to a problem of trust associated with mediatization through processes of mediation.
ISSN:1573-0697
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10551-013-2002-x