Abstract
As scholars aim to inform justice through their work, considering how their research can extend beyond academics is essential in contributing to societal change. Elizabeth Ellcessor demonstrates how this can be accomplished in the book In Case of Emergency: How Technologies Mediate Crisis and Normalize Inequality through analysis of emergency media and mediation in constructing understandings and experiences of emergency. Ellcessor defines emergency media as technologies that mediate experiences and produce reactions to emergencies (2022: 3). These technologies range from an individual’s immediate connection with emergency departments, such as phone calls and text messages to 9-1-1, to activated alarm systems, such as loudspeakers and tornado sirens, to inform large numbers of people simultaneously. Directly connected to journalism, these media also include television, radio, and emergency push notifications utilized to inform the public about emergency situations. Thus the book illustrates the role of mediation through analysis of multiple emergency media objects to support the argument that these media are cultural in their contribution to discourse, and their ability to produce meanings and affects.
Additionally, Ellcessor argues the necessity of considering normalcy alongside emergency given the ideology of emergency, rooted in a state of constructing and restoring normalcy. In other words, an emergency arises when something is not operating as “normal.” However, “normal” is not a universal concept. As the book details, this results in inequalities as technologies are utilized to mediate a state of emergency, which oftentimes marginalizes vulnerable groups. To illustrate this point, the author references the interaction between Amy Cooper and Christian Cooper in Central Park in 2020. Amy Cooper called 9-1-1 to report that an “African American man” was “threatening” her and claimed she was being “assaulted” (2022: 112). The man, Christian Cooper, was bird watching and asked Amy Cooper to leash her dog when she passed, as it was in violation of park rules. This resulted in an argument, in which Christian Cooper utilized his cell phone to document the event. In this way, his video served as a testimony which mediated the shift in emergency for him, which became part of the “evidence” that journalists used to report the event. Ultimately, Amy Cooper was charged with filing a false police report. However, given the historical and contemporary tensions around racialized violence and police brutality, this example demonstrates how one person’s interpretation of emergency could have potentially put the person being reported in danger. Therefore, this example is one of many that emphasize how the inequalities reinforced in emergency media impact marginalized communities given that normalcy is not universal. Furthermore, this also demonstrates the author’s call for an ethics of care to recognize that mediation in emergency can inform change, ultimately informing justice by destabilizing the normalizing ideology of emergency.
Ellcessor makes a useful connection with journalism studies, especially in Chapter 5 through a consideration about the way journalism media contribute to affect and mediation. Ellcessor references the publicity of activism through historical references to the photography of the murdered Emmett Till in 1955 and the televised beating of Rodney King in 1991 (2022: 124–25). The author analyzes how social media testimony mediates emergency through the form of an emergency bid in the Movement for Black Lives through the posting of videos that reframe traditional thinking of emergency to emphasize the emergency of structural racism (2022: 126). These examples also demonstrate how visual media remediate through other media and reform reality, as argued by Bolter and Grusin (1996). Thus, Ellcessor’s argument about the power of testimony and emergency bids situates social media as a remediation of emergency. Therefore, journalism scholars could use this book to bridge mediation theories and form a more robust understanding around the affective and reformative nature of media. Journalists respond to moments of emergency and crisis, making a nuanced understanding about the affective nature of emergency media essential, as reporters consider coverage of these events as well as the implementation of technologies used to notify and inform.
This contribution to the field gestures toward an understanding about how the affective nature of media can help inform ideals about trust between journalists and their audiences. For example, Ellcessor elaborates on the influence of vulnerability as a social responsibility for others, which recognizes the situated experience of emergency response through an ongoing commitment to care (2022: 150). These commitments build rapport and ultimately trust, through the constant pattern of care work. Ellcessor claims that emergency media should follow a similar model to encourage care for all (2022: 151). Extending the author’s ideals on care work to journalism could help shape practices that emphasize journalism’s social responsibility through communication that prioritizes access and equity, through a lens of care, as an ongoing commitment.
In the conclusion, Ellcessor outlines strategies and practical steps for change in the emergency media system. These ideas serve as a launchpad for journalistic work to respond and create awareness of these concepts by informing others, which the author recognizes as important to reframe emergency and its mediation. For instance, Ellcessor explains how the mass number of mobile notifications one receives ranges from text messages, email and app notifications, game pings, news articles, and more. Given that these are all similar to emergency alerts released by the federal system, it complicates the ability to discern emergency from other forms of notification, such as news alerts (2022: 156). News organizations could start by not only considering how to differentiate their alerts, but also considering how, when, and why an alert is pushed. Additionally, taking up Ellcessor’s call to disrupt normalcy should be considered by journalism scholars given the criticism about journalism’s maintenance of the status quo. Journalists who are attentive to the ways in which their practices can disrupt what’s considered “normal” can push against the criticism of reporting on information that promotes dominant discourse by those in power. Recognizing the inequality of emergency systems and media on marginalized groups and the lack of a universal acceptance of normalcy is one way that journalists can work toward a more equitable practice.
The most intriguing part of this work is its contribution to collective action that extends beyond academic communities. This book could also serve as a useful training resource for emergency responders, particularly Chapters 4 and 5, where the author explores emergency media workers’ role in interpreting emergency narratives as part of their communicative labor. For example, Ellcessor details how an emergency responder, such as a 9-1-1 dispatcher, has the power to interpret which calls get coded as emergencies and which ones do not, exposing the subjective nature of such decisions. This can result in denial of emergency for some claims, as well as “racist fabrications that can produce disastrous outcomes” (2022: 21). Given that journalists report on emergencies, they are also considered a type of emergency media worker. Therefore, journalists should be mindful of discrepancies in emergency reports when covering emergency events as a way to approach their reporting from a more equitable vantage point. By asking what is missing (what wasn’t reported as an emergency) rather than what is present, reporters can scrutinize the inequalities that might exist.
Furthermore, anyone in society who wishes to contribute to new ways of considering the impact of technologies on informing the future of emergency responses would benefit especially from the conclusion chapter. In the conclusion, the author proposes seven interventions, grounded in an ethics of care, which allow readers to personally contribute to prompting true change in the emergency media system. Additionally, Ellcessor references a Facebook post from 2020, contextualized with the Black Lives Matter Movement, to speculate a technosolutionist imaginary as a potential future version of emergency media designed with more inclusive intentions (2022: 145–46). The author is attentive to the challenges of this fantastical future, but references it with the purpose of encouraging readers to imagine a “different relationship between emergency, mediation, responsibility, and aid” (Ellcessor, 2022: 147) that interrogates dominant ideologies about normalcy. This also reinforces how multiple actors inform the emergency media infrastructure, all of which experience the meditation of emergency media, through various types of affect. While the bulk of the book caters to interdisciplinary scholarship, there is value in Ellcessor’s approach of extending the scope of the audience to encourage change through daily experiences and responses to emergency media. This demonstrates how this book works to serve not only the purpose of encouraging scholars to analyze the cultural power of emergency media forms, but also to provide solutions for a more just and equitable future, empowered by all.