This body of literature fails to capture the impact of elections on media coverage of disasters. This response is often manifested in voter response ( Arceneaux and Stein, 2006) and voter turnout ( Debbage et al., 2014). Another factor in the inclusion of disasters in political agendas is the psychology of responsibility attribution, which entails that even when the government cannot be blamed for a disaster, they can be held responsible for response to the disaster ( Arceneaux and Stein, 2006). Thus, the concern is not if the government has the material and political capabilities to react to the disaster, but also if the disaster is pertinent to political culture, given other events and topics in the media agenda immediately following the disaster. According to Abney and Hill (1966), the extent to which the disaster event is considered by both victims and non-impacted audiences to be a political variable is a component of political culture. Studies of disasters and elections have traditionally focused on the psychology of responsibility attribution and the impact of disasters on elections ( Arceneaux and Stein, 2006 Abney and Hill, 1966 Debbage et al., 2014), but have failed to capture the impact of media agenda-setting on disaster response during presidential elections. Specifically, we introduce the media coverage of these disasters as an example of the intersection between political agenda building and media risk communication. This paper discusses the effects of inter-media agenda-setting during the 2016 presidential election on the coverage of two disasters: The 2016 Baton Rouge floods and Hurricane Matthew. Thus, when the media agenda is dominated by political events, crisis communication is thwarted, and the ability to solicit recovery resources is foiled. According to McCombs and Shaw’s media agenda-setting theory, “the press may not be successful much in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about” ( Cohen, 1963). However, this can be problematic in the event of a disaster if other events are placed higher in the agenda. Research has shown that mass media determine which issues are given priority, and act as “agenda-setters,” especially within an election ( McCombs, 1972 Golan, 2006 Sweetser et al., 2008). Disaster recovery is often dependent on response beyond the impacted community, and as so, affected victims and communities are left at the mercy of news cycles to generate response to disasters.

Nytimes 2016 election results