Workshop: Disaster Communication Redesigned

The rapidly changing nature of disasters and the staggering pace of communication technology innovation have an inevitable influence on how practitioners communicate across the life cycle of disasters and how the public seeks information and makes decisions on whether or not to adhere to these risk communication messages. Social science research on warnings and risk and crisis communication has established models for how the public receives warnings, interprets information, and makes decisions about protective action response (Lindell and Perry, 2012; Mileti and Sorensen, 1990) drawing from theory and empirical research findings. And although much of this past research remains relevant, it exists largely in disciplinary silos in schools of sociology, communications, and psychology. As disaster communications adapt and progress through the creation and implementation of new technologies, disciplinary-focused scholars must become more aware of existing theories and consider how they can better inform one another’s research and address compelling research questions. Without such cross-disciplinary awareness, it is likely that the fields conducting communication oriented research across the disaster lifecycle will continue to conduct studies that are strongly empiricist, descriptive, and devoid of new theoretical output; and produce piecemeal studies that generate incremental knowledge or replicate results produced time and again.