Theorizing Crisis Communication. Timothy L. Sellnow

new opportunities for communication, and these systems have also created new forms of warnings. Text-based alert systems, such as WEAs, emerged within defined communities and audiences as a way to quickly deliver specific information to limited audiences, including schools and businesses. Colleges and universities widely embraced these warning systems after several prominent incidents involving shootings on college campuses, including the April 16, 2007, Virginia Tech shootings and the shootings at Northern Illinois University on February 14, 2008. These systems allow for nearly real-time messages about specific threats to be delivered to handheld devices of users who have opted into the service (Wood et al., 2018). Systems also have been developed for metropolitan areas including New York City and Washington, DC. Many of these text alert systems place significant levels of control in the hands of receivers to tailor the warning messages to specific threats. As technology continues to improve, these systems will create more flexibility and more choices. Handheld device technology has also led to the development of the Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS). The CMAS was established by the Federal Communications Commission following the passing of the Warning, Alert, and Response Network (WARN) in 2006. WARN called for the use of multiple technologies including new media technologies to increase the effectiveness and reach of alerts and warning (NRC, 2011). The WARN system includes presidential alerts, imminent threat alerts, and child abduction alerts (AMBER alerts) (NRC, 2011). Another system, Personal Localized Alerting Network (PLAN), will allow users to localize their alerts to specific geographically targeted areas. In 2011, FEMA began authorizing use of WEAs distributed through cell phones and other mobile devices. WEAs are 90-character, geo-targeted emergency messages distributed through telecommunications networks (Bean et al., 2015).

      These and other systems reflect efforts to use the considerable advances in digital technology to target and tailor warning messages and by doing so improve the effectiveness of the message. They are not, however, without significant limitations. WEAs, CMAs, Tweets, and similar text alert systems are limited in the amount of information that can be carried. WEAs, for example, are limited to 90 characters. Sutton and colleagues (2015) have described these as terse messaging systems and noted that while they are limited in the amount of information that can be communicated, they are likely to be retransmitted, which may enhance the reach of warning messages.

We describe the role of new media technologies within crisis communication in Chapter 8. Although these technologies are relatively new tools for issuing warning messages, researchers have begun to develop and apply theory in their efforts to understand how these systems operate. This includes application of the concept of milling and Emergent Norm Theory (Wood et al., 2018), uses and gratification theory and message tailoring (Park & Avery, 2018), and the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication framework (Meadows et al., 2019). Milling has been documented as a common behavior when individuals face an unfamiliar and unstructured situation, such as a crisis, and is a way to construct a socially sanctioned meaning. Wood et al. (2018) argue that Emergent Norm Theory “would go on to predict, therefore, that a protective action warning response would follow from whatever new socially constructed definitions might result from milling” (p. 538). Uses and gratification theory has been employed to describe the ways individuals engage with new media sources during a crisis and allows for messages to be tailored to meet needs (Day et al., 2019). Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication, described in Chapter 6, is a very general framework that has been extended to social media including to the communication in false warning messages (Murthy et al., 2019). Given its advantages in timeliness, social media is likely to become an increasingly important method for disseminating warning messages, although legacy media will continue to continue to play an important role. The development of specialized theories of social media and warnings is still in its infancy.

      Conclusion

      The warning process is both a communication process and a decisional process. It involves disseminating information in a way that promotes specific choices and associated behaviors – for example, to dispose of a product, evacuate, shelter in place, boil water, and so on. These actions usually involve non-routine behaviors, such as leaving one’s home or community and incurring costs, such as disruptions to work or disposal of contaminated food. Theories of warning have sought to understand the communicative and decisional elements in part by understanding both the informational exchange elements and the persuasive elements. The social dimensions of warning, as well as preexisting beliefs and perceptions, have been incorporated into several models. Increasingly, efforts have been made to understand warnings as complex and dynamic processes involving feedback loops and classes of demographic, social, psychological, and communicative variables.

      While a number of communication variables have been described as central to the effectiveness of warning messages, the credibility and quality of the information included, as well as the general form and consistency of the message appear to be particularly important. Timing and width of diffusion are also fundamental to effectiveness. Thus, warning messages combine important elements of information exchange persuasion and decision making into an integrated system. Integration appears to be an important feature of these systems.

      These models are consistent in describing warning as a process and do so in a manner largely consistent with other broad notions of communication processes. While some are more linear or actional in their characterizations, all view the audiences as active receivers and interpreters of warning messages. Some models more fully integrate the idea that audiences may seek out additional information from alternative sources or seek to validate the warning and co-create an understanding of the risk. These constitute more interactional or transactional views of the warning as a dynamic and complex communication process.

As Rogers and Sorensen (1991) note, people respond to warnings based on their prior experiences, their associated beliefs, and the social and psychological context of the warning. Given the rapidly changing nature of risk beliefs and experiences, changing technologies, and the dynamics of larger social-psychological contexts, theories of warnings must be flexible. The emergence of social media is changing how warnings are disseminated and warning theories do not currently account for this dynamic, interactive, and highly networked form of communication.

      For example, these models all frame the warning process as one moving in a more or less linear way from an initial stimulus, usually from a single sender, to some protective behavior as response, with various intervening stages. Social media creates the opportunity for audiences and the public to become the creators of warning messages and simultaneously to send and receive warning messages. These messages may sidestep traditional response agencies and, in many cases, inform the agencies of the emerging threat. This dynamic and transactional form of warning is at least conceptually inconsistent with a notion of the warning as a linear, sender- and message-centered process.

      Several other approaches to warnings have been offered, including more generalized risk communication models such as EPPM (Witte, 1992), the health belief model (Rosenstock et al., 1988), and the theory of reasoned action (Dutta-Bergman, 2005). Risk communication as a more generalized effort to communicate risks and the more specialized form of warning communication overlap. In addition, the Internalization, Distribution, Explanation, Action (IDEA) model, discussed in Chapter 10, focuses on the instructional elements of warning messages (Sellnow et al., 2017). These elements are important parts of warning messages in that they facilitate action. Finally, the principles of self and collective efficacy (Benight, 2004; Benight et al., 2000) are important factors in the success of warning messages.

      Alerts and warnings are critical to the management of risks and, in many cases, are the only tools available to significantly limit and mitigate harm to the public. Warnings are specialized communication and decisional systems characterized by the primary variables of uncertainty, timing, and width of diffusion. While warnings models and theories have all sought to describe and model warnings as interactive processes and more than simple stimulus response frameworks, the evolving nature of media, technology, and the public – including its experience and understanding of risk – suggest more work is needed to capture the complex and dynamic nature of warning systems.