The Lifecycle of Humanitarian Visibility: A Longitudinal Analysis of Media Representation and Disaster Fatigue after the 2023 Morocco Earthquake

Sammanfattning

International news media play a central role in shaping public understanding of disasters and the visibility of humanitarian crises. This study examines how media coverage of the 2023 Morocco earthquake evolved across the disaster lifecycle and what these shifts reveal about the visibility of humanitarian needs and affected communities. Situated within humanitarian studies, it investigates changes in media attention, framing, voice, and humanitarian themes over time. A quantitative content analysis was conducted within a single-case study design using a dataset of 311 news articles published between September 2023 and September 2024 by The Guardian, Agence France-Presse (AFP), and Agence Marocaine de Presse (MAP). Articles were systematically coded across four analytical dimensions: attention, framing, voice, and humanitarian themes, including access restrictions, aid and response, and long-term recovery needs. The findings are interpreted through scholarship on disaster fatigue, media framing, humanitarian communication, sourcing hierarchies, and humanitarian access. Media attention was heavily concentrated in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, with more than 90% of articles published within the first four weeks, before declining sharply despite the persistence of humanitarian needs. Representation also changed qualitatively. Early coverage was characterised by emergency and human-interest framing, while later coverage became increasingly institutional, focusing on governments, diplomacy, and reconstruction governance. Institutional actors consistently dominated media sourcing and voice, whereas survivor and community perspectives largely disappeared as coverage progressed. The findings further suggest that Morocco's state-managed response shaped journalistic access and influenced the visibility of affected populations and their needs. Rather than representing disaster fatigue solely as a decline in media attention, the findings demonstrate that it also entails a transformation in humanitarian visibility. The concept of the lifecycle of humanitarian visibility is proposed to describe this process, comprising three interconnected stages: hypervisibility, institutionalisation, and residual visibility. These findings contribute to humanitarian studies by demonstrating how evolving patterns of media representation shape whose needs remain publicly visible, whose voices continue to be heard, and which humanitarian priorities persist beyond the immediate emergency.