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News texts are the product of journalistic practices and organizational routines, buttressed by socio-cultural norms of a particular society. The tragedy of flight MH370 is a way to understand how Malaysian media construct a crisis that last happened in 1977. To understand how Malaysian newspapers understood the event, a critical discourse analysis approach is applied to two newspapers. News organizations in Malaysia – as baffled by the event as the officials and starved of information – construct their own meaning of the air disaster. This study concludes that newspapers construction of the tragedy reveal the socio-cultural make-up of news production practices.

Air transport is of substantial importance to economies, societies and freedom as it connects businesses and individuals with the world. However, two recent Malaysia Airlines incidents have resulted in even more security measures at airports and have anecdotally changed the security and safety perceptions of the traveling (or no longer traveling) public. Our study investigates for the first time attitudes towards air travel, safety and security and determines empirically if travellers are willing to experience even more invasive security measures in light of these tragedies. Our results suggest that there is a latent demand for air services despite the recent of the Malaysian Airline tragedies. Out of our proposed measures the presence of visible uniformed police creates the greatest feeling of security and it is seen as important to better communicate what security operations do and why it is effective in threat minimisation. We find willingness to pay for avoiding additional incidents both in terms of money and time but respondents are also willing to pay more to speed up the security process. Our results also suggest there is no desire to accept security processes that invade privacy considerably more what is currently practiced. We conclude that with respect to air travel the magnitude of trade-of between personal freedoms for improved security is limited. Travellers appear willing to accept risks, or perceive them as isolated and limited to airlines with inferior safety records and/or destinations with inferior security records.

As people increasingly integrate social network sites (SNSs) into their daily lives, they also turn to these sites for timely information following crises. To date, few studies have examined the effects of different types of motivation on participatory behaviours within SNSs following crises. In this study, self-determination theory (SDT) is applied to examine how individuals are motivated to participate in SNSs following a crisis and how individuals’ participatory behaviours can better assist them understand a crisis. The Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (MH370) incident is selected as the context for this study, and data is collected following the incident. The results show that different types of motivation result in different participatory behaviours. Controlled motivation is positively related to browsing content, commenting and sharing content. Conversely, autonomous motivation is positively associated with browsing and sharing content. Besides, browsing content and commenting are positively related to people’s situational self-awareness. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed.