Media Constructions of Typhoon Non-Evacuees: The Case of Philippines

In a country with shared typhoon nightmares, it might be unfathomable to many why some Filipinos remained resistant to the calls for evacuation by authorities. Accounts of evacuation reluctance are a consistent journalistic angle among various news media outlets in the Philippines. Yet, the history of scholarship in the sociology of disaster and media reminds us that uncritical reading of the news risks the potential misrepresentation of disaster behaviors. As a response, I qualitatively examined numerous disaster-related online news articles among various news outlets in the Philippines from 2014 to 2024 to figure out how non-evacuees are portrayed in the media. Following a social constructivist approach, I presented emergent discursive patterns characterizing non-evacuees. Such patterns lean towards the portrayal of the non-evacuees as unreasonably dismissive of dangers, unmoved by their current dire situation, unwarrantedly defiant against authorities, overconfident in their subjective risk perceptions, and overly concerned with material possessions more than their lives. Collectively, it affirmed other scholars' concern that non-evacuees are typically misunderstood as ignorant, hardheaded, and irrational (in local terms, as “pasaway”) even though existing studies already pointed out that such disaster behaviors and decisions are shaped by various social and cultural factors. Above all, the findings from these news articles is a long overdue addition to the conversations about the tensions between differing epistemologies employed by authorities and laypeople in assessing risks when confronting these natural hazards. It is crucial to problematize it, as such representations, when reproduced, inform institutional reactions by the authorities to the disaster situations.