ICA Papers

ICA papers presented in Dresden, Germany, June 19-23, 2006

Littlefield, R.S., Cowden, K., Farah, F. M., Hueston, W. (2006). Message testing risk and crisis communication with diverse publics: Identifying appropriate strategies for minimizing exposure to disease and public health hazards.

This paper explores the question: Are the 10 best practices of risk and crisis communication perceived by multicultural publics as an effective strategy for developing crisis messages? A focus group approach with Somali, Hmong, and Native American publics generated overarching themes pertaining to risk and crisis communication. The findings suggest nine best practices were reflected in themes drawn from the focus groups. Five of the practices pertained to elites preparing for potential risk and crisis situations and five applied more specifically to the publics who perceived the messages. The results suggest that risk and crisis messages must be tailored to the publics who receive them.

Sellnow,T. L., Sellnow,D. D., Ulmer, R.R., Garden-Robinson, J., Sandvik, T. L. (2006). Creating, interpreting, and negotiating risk and crisis messages: Strategies for increasing awareness and comprehension of communication designed to ensure public health.

This essay describes two exploratory studies, one sponsored by the NCFPD and one cooperative venture, that are designed to assess the degree to which risk and crisis messages can best be communicated to multiple audiences. The theoretical lens uniting these studies is adapted from the perspective of experiential learning theory, as described by Kolb (1971, 1984). More specifically, we ground our needs assessment and message testing in Kolb’s conceptualization of learning styles and the learning cycle model.

Venette, S. & Bhattacharya, S. (2006). Strategies for risk identification, management, and communication with various publics: Identifying the communication needs of the U.S. macroculture.

This study explores the communication needs of the U.S. macroculture during a crisis. Crisis and risk communication messages were designed based on the ten best practices and tested using focus groups and survey methods. The analysis revealed that most people perceive crisis as a negative event having a sizable effect; and risk as the potential for crisis. People initially react to crisis by identifying and implementing mitigation strategies. The second most common response was emotional followed by information seeking. All of the ten best practices are supported by this study. However, accepting the role of ambiguity in a crisis situation produced conflicting results.