The third narrative space: The human interest story and the crisis of the human form

Abstract

Between the different models of broadcasting and publishing is an interstitial space of countering dominant paradigms. Their existence is both a symbolic and material affirmation of human struggles and narratives. Through a strand of medical humanitarianism, we examine the so-called ‘migrant crisis in Europe’. While media reported the ‘migrant’ through their transgressions of state boundaries and as unnecessary entities in ‘civilised Europe,’ there has been a quest to reconstitute the human from the third sector. While the conjoining of capital (i.e. the commercialisation of news) and the commodification of the human is a sustained endeavour in private and public models of publishing, the ‘third narrative space’ seeks to thwart and resist these imperatives by re-humanising refugee struggles as ‘human struggles’. This reconstitution of the human works to gain both public attention and funding, and in the process invites both moral and altruistic challenges for these organisations