New ways to frame the mammoth horror' : media first responders and the Katrina event

This article explores the state of emergency of ‘the Katrina event’ with reference to the role of media ‘first responders’. While the hyper-productivity of the media could be said to have had a dilatory effect (its recirculation of highly racialised rumour deepening the social panic attendant to the evacuation of the city, complicating matters for the evacuees, and for their would-be benefactors), it also demonstrated a logistical and affective responsiveness to the crisis at a point when little else was being done. Even the media’s capacity to ‘get it wrong’ functions as a demonstration of its productivity; its reach instantiating referred belief—those half-credences about which cultural theorist Mark Seltzer writes. I argue below that the performance of the media throughout the Katrina event—its mediation of panic, and of the state of emergency—worked as a mechanism of technical re-mastery in the face of systemic breakdown.