Communicating Anxiety in Disaster Contexts: A Macro-Interpretive Study of Earthquake Communication in West Sumatra, Indonesia

We will examine how anxiety is formed, circulated and negotiated through discussions of earthquake disasters in West Sumatra, Indonesia; anxiety is an organisational as well as discursive process in social and communication domains, in which communication is often shaped as the only means of communication. A primary aim of this research thus is to identify how these kinds of anxiety are influenced socially and culturally through messages from above the public stage, media discourse as well as neighbourhood and personal contacts to a crisis point of view and to see how these factors influence each other in order to address anxiety post-disaster. As a result, anxiety is not only the outcome of disaster but is one of the primary organizing forces affecting meaning making processes, public trust and group participation. The institutional narratives, media representation and community interactions help drive anxiety and how it is expressed in a social context through an interdependent interaction. In short, disaster anxiety should be seen as a communicative symptom instead of just a psychological state. While this article is presented from a Global South perspective we believe it contributes to the field of communication theory because it expands both affective and constitutive ways to describe crisis communication and challenges the technocratic paradigms in disaster management. We also believe it can bring some practical understanding to the field on how to practice a more reflexive, context-sensitive and socially conscious communication (CD) of disaster victims in the following situations and in the near future to give a better and more supportive way to respond.