Covering Katrina: "The Washington Post," "The New York Times," and the sociology of disaster

The impact of Hurricane Katrina in August of 2005 was particularly devastating to New Orleans, Louisiana. Catastrophic damage threatened the lives of many unable to evacuate due to limited financial resources. The print media coverage of Hurricane Katrina exposed a long history of social inequality in New Orleans based on race, social class, and gender. These social demographics have emerged as useful in the sociological analysis of other catastrophes in recent history. I selected news articles published from August 2005 to December 2009, in two national newspapers, The Washington Post and The New York Times, and I used qualitative content analysis to consider emerging themes and patterns in this coverage of the immediate aftermath of the hurricane and the next four years of recovery. The intent of this thesis is to explore the extent to which reporting in these two national newspapers contains material useful to the sociological analysis of disaster informed by intersectionality. I employ Duane Gill's "Sociology on Disaster Framework" to address the basics of disasters and to provide a critical perspective on the importance of social demographics in understanding catastrophes, and I link literature on disasters to Patricia Hill Collins' conceptualization of "intersectionality." The analysis revealed important themes: the role politicians, the presentation of the black/white binary, the rich/poor extreme, and the language or terminology used to describe the surrounding Gulf Coast region and residents. The conclusions suggest how using the lens of the sociology of disaster informed by intersectionality furthers the discipline's contribution to understanding social inequalities and catastrophes.