Book Review: In Case Of Emergency: How Technologies Mediate Crisis And Normalize Inequality By Elizabeth Ellcessor

1. Introduction

• Book Title: In Case of Emergency: How Technologies Mediate Crisis and Normalize Inequality
• Author: Elizabeth Ellcessor
• Place: New York
• Publisher: New York University Press
• Publication Date: 22 March 2022
• Edition Statement: © 2022 by New York University
• Pages: 240
• Special features: Figures, maps, author’s photographs, author’s screenshots, illustrations, flow charts, and bibliographical references.

2. Identification of the thesis

The author presents a provocative picture of how emergency media impacts daily lives by examining the underlying efforts and infrastructure supporting various emergency technologies. The book explores a wide array of contemporary services, devices and practices concerning emergency management and paints the socially differential impacts of emergency media in political and sociocultural lights. Hence, the author presents a fresh outlook on emergencies in her book to stir conversations about the overarching sociocultural dimensions of emergencies and their potential approaches. Through these explorations, the author puts forth the primary argument that emergency media serve as significant cultural artefacts that shape the concept of “emergency” as something that is a contrast to “normal”.  These depictions enable the author to achieve the book’s stated purpose of understanding the role of technology in mediating emergency crises and ensuring equal accessibility.

3. Summary of the book

In her book “In Case of Emergency: How Technologies Mediate Crisis and Normalize Inequality”, Ellcessor explores the role of emergency media and its associated technologies that help in identifying crises, understanding and responding to specific situations. Rather than focusing on the various representations of emergency, the author divulges the feelings and attitudes of diverse emergency circumstances through reports and responses. In the “Mediating Emergency, Maintaining Normalcy” section of the Introduction chapter, Ellcessor (2022) suggests that emergency media indicates technologies that have significant roles in identifying, making sense of and responding to individual crises. The book delves into the notions of mediating emergencies and ways to establish normalcy in seemingly abnormal circumstances such as 9-1-1 emergencies, national emergencies and fire alarms. Viewing emergency media as an emergency subfield, the author collects data and evidence through meticulous investigation utilising empirical research, interviews, cultural analyses and archival research. The book has relatively less focus on the historical backgrounds of emergencies and mainly prioritises understanding the distinctive subfields of emergencies through undertheorized histories, specific surveillance dynamics and distinctive forms of media work. Interviews play a central role in underpinning the person-specific perceptions of emergencies and establishing the cultural dimensions of diverse emergency circumstances. The concept of “emergency” is explored as a fundamentally cultural concept that perpetuates and reflects the normalisation of ideas on normalcy (Ellcessor, 2022). The evidence presented by the author posits emergency media and its supporting infrastructure as phenomena that mirror and sustain normalised notions of emergencies.

This book questions the very notion of emergency and how it deviates from normalcy and makes way for differentiation and discrimination. Focusing on the recent COVID-19 pandemic scenario, the author paints a comprehensive picture of how a sense of “emergency” creates inequitable access to medicine and healthcare facilities. Granted that an emergency protects a section of society, it simultaneously creates a gap in accessing equal treatment by marking some as “unworthy of protection” (Ellcessor, 2022). Reflecting on the recent health emergencies brought about by the pandemic, the author focuses on the multifaceted experiences of diverse patients in accessing equitable treatment across races and disabilities. Commenting on emergency media, the book contends that the normative constructs of “emergency” in these media hinder individuals’ capacity to acquire adequate care and security across diverse communities. Nevertheless, the book also asserts that emergency media also present a powerful locus on change and offer new outlooks to perceiving individual emergencies.

4. Strengths

This book by Ellcessor (2022), namely “In Case of Emergency”, is effective enough to convey important information about critical healthcare situations. The book offers thoroughly investigated insights into the various forms of emergencies and the role of media in defining the criticality of circumstances. The author’s research is commendable as it provides a deeply resonating overview of pressing global concerns in the contemporary era in terms of accessing equitable emergency services. In this book, Ellcessor brilliantly portrays the specific attributes of emergency media through the lenses of culture, technology, infrastructure and social positions. Through simple language, the author succeeds in resonating with a wider audience in understanding the social, economic and political factors associated with emergencies and the media that communicate information to the public.

This information allows one to deal with critical situations, changing the concept of emergency. It considers emergency media as a part of the total media environment; telecommunication is the most essential part of the crisis and emergency media environment. Telephonic communication allows individuals to be connected with emergency institutes; furthermore, a self-report system is another important part of crisis management. In this concern, this book analyses the way education and awareness can be spread through emergency media among ordinary people. Moreover, this book highlights the significance of “webs of care” in assisting the community in different emergency situations. Grusin (2010) points out that media plays a pivotal role in developing human constructs and maintaining assemblages of “human, technologies, and nature” to maintain the paradigms (p. 90). In this regard, the book highlights the significance of “webs of care” through media in assisting communities in diverse emergency situations. In the COVID-19 pandemic, such “webs of care” support was beneficial to promoting communication between individual and communal health crises (WHO, 2021).

The strength of this book of Ellcessor (2022) is the mention of alarm systems for emergency situations. This is a strength as such an alarm system allows one to vacant a risky place for safety, for example, a fire alarm. Furthermore, it also suggested that alarm system offers people an opportunity to think about the affective and logical dimension of emergency media. Emergency public social structures are associated with the situation of risks and emergencies; in this state, logical media incorporates regular media and the financial and social conditions of ordinary people. Furthermore, this book mentioned that COVID-19 trackers and self-report systems are beneficial for increasing awareness about the issues. Furthermore, a clear idea of social media and testimony bids permits common people to use consumer media technologies for dealing with social issues. Alfano (2021) opined that moral and epistemic dispositions of social virtue improve the use of social networks and emergency media. 

5. Weaknesses

Daurte (2017) highlighted the concept of technology and its relation to indigeneity; in the industrial era of modernity, indigenous people are also being developed. In this case, emergency media needs to be associated with indigenous culture for the development of emergency situation management. In this concern, emergency medical teams have core concept for managing the critical healthcare situation. Ellcessor’s book (2022) did not have any information regarding the development of indigenous culture through the involvement of emergency media; hence, this is its weakness. This book does not mention any information about the way logical structure and infrastructure can be developed for managing emergency situations. It required detailed information about the way ordinary people can use emergency media, a self-report system and testimony bids. Again, this book did not mention any information about telehealth services during the critical situation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Shen et al. (2021) opined that emergency media should convey the information that telemedicine supports to manage emergency healthcare situations. However, this book lacks information on emergency health services as a part of emergency healthcare media. Furthermore, the chapter “The Affective Life of Media” opined for incorporating technologies and media with social, cultural, and political values. This chapter mentioned the way human value and individual needs are mediated through communication media (Grusin, 2010). Socio-technical networks and communication devices are mediators of feelings and emotions of individuals, as a part of “media everyday”. These are some important aspects for managing emergency situations through the media involvement, which is not mentioned in Ellcessor’s book (2022) and increased its weaknesses.

6. Personal assessment of the book’s strengths and weaknesses

This study reviews a book by Ellcessor (2022), namely “In Case of Emergency”; it analyses the way the sense of emergency is being changed due to the change of critical situation. Furthermore, this also analyses the way the concept of testimony and emergency bid is changing the definition of an emergency situation. In addition, it mentions the idea of emergency alarms and its connection with emergency media. I believe information in this book, such as television and telecommunication are important emergency media to make ordinary people aware of crises, as well as communicate them with emergency institutions. I also observed that this book did not mention the modern technologies for emergency healthcare services, as well as media management. A critical comparison of this book with other works highlighted that this book has critical information to increase people’s awareness of critical situations. An analysis based on others’ books and articles allowed me to understand that there can be information about the way indigenous culture can be balanced through technical improvement. Furthermore, information about socio-cultural and political involvement, along with human and non-human actors in “media everyday” is essential to understand emergency media. Hence, Ellcessor’s book (2022) needs information on advanced technologies, indigenous and technology communication, and everyday media for in-depth analysis of emergency media.

 

References

Selected book

Ellcessor, E. (2022). In case of emergency: How technologies mediate crisis and normalize inequality. NYU Press. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=9pxcEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA1&dq=In+Case+of+Emergency:+How+Technologies+Mediate+Crisis+and+Normalize+Inequality&ots=RCFuk46bzf&sig=Sbn4mAK3-gdhDla10Qwj_lX9kP4

Other references

Daurate, M.E. (2017). Network Sovereignty: Building the Internet across Indian Country, University of Washington Press, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/utd/detail.action?docID=4987329

Alfano, M. (2021). Virtues for agents in directed social networks. Synthese, 199(3-4), 8423-8442.  https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03169-6

Grusin, R. (2010). The Affective Life of Media. In: Premediation: Affect and Mediality After 9/11. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230275270_5

Shen, Y. T., Chen, L., Yue, W. W., & Xu, H. X. (2021). Digital technology-based telemedicine for the COVID-19 pandemic. Frontiers in medicine, 8, 646506. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2021.646506

World Health Organization. (2021). Guidance on community mental health services: promoting person-centred and rights-based approaches. https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/341648/9789240025707-eng.pdf