Analysis of the Use of Formulas in Reference to Hurricane Katrina

In many different genre of popular culture, including music, literature, television, and movies, we see an organizational strategy known as formulas.  Formulas are roadmaps for how a particular genre will be laid out.  For example, in most country music songs, the formula would be the singer loses the significant other, goes through a period of self destruction where the singer loses their house, dog, and all their money, the significant other returns, and all is well.  While one wouldn’t think that natural disaster, such as 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, necessarily conforms to a formula, the media coverage of that disaster (and many afterward) does.  Since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, media coverage of disasters has exploded.  Any and all weather events are now reported on an unprecedented scale.  Such coverage has begun to be known as “apocalyptic coverage” and has coined phrases such as the “snow apocalypse.”     

This weather reporting formula tends to follow the following categories: Pre-disaster, disaster, and recovery.  Within each category can also be subcategories, depending on the disaster.  These subcategories usually involve reporting on what the local, state, or Federal government is doing to prepare, respond, or recover from these events. 

As Hurricane Katrina made its way off the Florida coast and headed toward the western Gulf States, mass media jumped heavily into the pre-disaster division.  Reporters were stationed all along the Gulf Coast in anticipation of Katrina’s landfall.  Pre-disaster subcategories such as evacuation preparation, shelter information, and other helpful hints were reported on heavily.  When the storm struck land on August 29^th, 2005, media switched to disaster mode; covering every measured wind speed, storm surge, and other storm warning.  As the winds and rain subsided, media switched to post disaster or recovery mode; reporters began reporting on food distribution centers, status of shelters, and other sound bites that dealt with what the government was doing (or wasn’t doing) to help people recover. 

This formula has been followed time and time again since Katrina; you will see it in the coverage of the Indiana’s devastating floods in 2008, the February 5-6, 2010 North American blizzard (Morrissey, 2010) and most recently in the Hurricane Irene overage this fall.