De-framing disaster: affective encounters with raw and autonomous media

In recent years, the massive devastation and suffering caused by global-scale disasters has fuelled intense flows of Web-based media and communicative exchange. Where studies of traditional broadcast disaster media have often sought to identify the frames that position victims and viewers, this paper focuses on those forms of emerging media that operate outside of and to some extent work to de-frame institutional coverage through modes of affect. A heightened affectivity can be identified in the modality of 'rawness' that characterizes contemporary social and mobile production of media from zones of disaster. The analysis engages specifically with some key forms of raw media circulating after the Haiti earthquake in 2010. Ultimately, in the context of post-disaster media, new modes of visual witnessing and distributed encounter facilitate the de-framing of disastrous events in a way that tethers global engagement and attention directly to the flow of affect.