Mediated hierarchies of suffering? International refugee organizations’ public communication strategies for the Syrian and Central African crises (2015–2018)

As forcibly displaced people become increasingly marginalized, international refugee organizations create humanitarian communication to shape public opinions. Prior research has mainly examined how forcibly displaced people are represented in humanitarian communication, largely neglecting who and what are portrayed. This study examines who and what are (not) represented in the public communication of three major international refugee organizations regarding the Syrian and Central African crises (2015–2018). Drawing on a quantitative content analysis of 1244 press releases and news stories, we identified both hegemonic and partial counter-hegemonic humanitarian representations. The organizations predominantly covered the Syrian crisis, while forcibly displaced people and refugee organizations were the dominant sources, refining earlier studies. The former are represented in conventionalized, sociodemographically skewed ways. This study advances debates on hierarchies of suffering, demonstrating that humanitarian communication reproduces those not only through representational discourses but also through patterns of selection, (in)visibility and perceived deservingness, across and within crises.