This project has really made me reflect on the impact that the media has on influencing people’s perceptions of a disaster. After all, when I first started researching, I was attracted to these same stories because they were sensational, because they were unique, because they were heartening. These stories do make you feel good about the disaster, because they encourage people to ignore the pain for a moment and concentrate on a single hopeful story. However, I realized that maybe ‘feeling good’ is not a good motivation for the media’s representation of these stories. When we forget about the destruction of the tsunami, we forget about the people who are suffering, those people who do not have any miraculous stories of lost children returning to them. This kind of media coverage can be dangerous, as it urges people to ignore the reality of the situation. The reality is that hundreds of thousands are dead, and these people are not going to miraculously come back from the dead. Though loved ones may hope, and keep on hoping, spurred by stories of rare miracles, the dead are not going to return. While this is a sobering point of view, I think it is important to accept the reality of the situation, rather than to live your life full of false hopes. In this way, the media is at fault, because it encourages unrealistic expectations for its audience.

Inspired by this realization, I decided to draw a portrait of one of the surviving children, named Abilassh Jeyarajah. This baby attracted the attention of the international media, as he was lost during the tsunami and brought to a local hospital, where he was labeled ‘Baby 81.’ Although news reports differ, he was claimed by multiple parents, so his true parents had to have DNA tests done to confirm their identities. After he was returned to his parents, he became an international symbol of hope after the tsunami. He was even flown to the United States to appear on ABC’s Good Morning America show. However, I wanted to commemorate the baby through a portrait which didn’t include any of these details. The portrait is of a baby, grasped tightly in his mother’s arms. His eyes are full of hope and contentment, which I think tells his story well enough, without raising any false hopes for the viewers.

This webpage was inspired by my previous research on the media’s representation of the tsunami and of its miraculous stories of survival. I wanted to create a page that would examine and critically discuss the way in which the media reports on these stories, in order to better commemorate the victims of the disaster.  Thank you for reading, and I hope that through reading this webpage, you have gained a better understanding of how the media reported on the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and its survivors.