MEDIA COVERAGE ON DISASTERS – THE PRESENT STATE OF AFFAIRS

This conceptual paper has two main objectives. First, to shed light on the previous studies done in the field of applied linguistics exploring the skilful use of language by media and the role it plays in societies. Second, it draws the attention on the lack of language studies on manmade disasters represented by those calamitous events other than natural disasters such as the tragedies of the 11th of September, the crash of the Malaysian Hospitality Flight (MH17) and the mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (MH370/MAS370). This gap is represented by two observations. First, in most of the studies done, manmade disasters were approached from other perspectives than language. Most of the studies were from political, technical or administrative perspectives. Second, the few studies done from language perspective had not covered the many sides of language use in media. Thus, unlike the studies on natural disasters, there is a lack of study that used various methodologies and lack of indepth studies addressing significant issues related to the language use in the media. This paper identifies the gap and invites researchers and scholars to bridge this gap by widening the range of research to cover other characteristics of media language like the mediaaudience relation, the power of language represented by influencing the perception of people, the impact of authority on media and the difference between local and international media in relation to the area of the disaster.