Читать книгу Theorizing Crisis Communication - Timothy L. Sellnow - Страница 21

A warning, then, is a functional message or system of messages informing an audience, most often a large public audience, of some likely threat or danger (Vihalemm et al., 2012). “Warnings” are conceptually distinct from “alerts.” An alert is issued when there is an issue of general concern or when something has happened, or may happen, that could jeopardize public security, health, and well-being. A warning typically follows an alert when the threat has been confirmed, includes more specific information about the nature of the threats, and may include advice about how to respond (NRC, 2011). Warnings that contain five dimensions are generally more effective. These include the nature of the hazard, the location, specific guidance, timing, and the source of the warning (Bean et al., 2015). Warning messages also seek to convey to an audience an understanding of specific threats and the level of the threat, including the severity of the potential harm and the probability of its occurring.

Warnings often extend to offering recommendations from subject matter experts or emergency managers about actions that can be taken or avoided to reduce or mitigate the threats. This second dimension of warning is essentially persuasive, seeking to induce some action such as evacuation or shelter in place. Warnings also have an instructional dimension, indicating what people should do in response (Sellnow et al.,2017a). Lindell and Perry (2004) describe the various warning activities, questions, and outcomes associated with the stages of a crisis, presented in Table 3.1. Thus, warnings have both informative and persuasive dimensions, and principles of effectiveness in both forms of communication are important. Warnings are a form of specialized risk communication, as discussed in Chapter 8, designed to help receivers limit or mitigate harm.

Warnings are high-consequence messages with the potential to save lives and reduce harm (Seeger & Sellnow, 2016). If incorrect, late, or communicated ineffectively, however, warnings can cause needless disruption to communities and businesses as well as reduce effectiveness of later warnings. Warnings that recommend evacuations, for example, are some of the most challenging decisions made during disasters (Fairchild et al., 2006). Mandating populations to relocate creates the risk of additional harm, including traffic accidents and adverse health events. Conversely, evacuations can reduce death tolls, especially where there is sufficient lead time and when a specific area is affected, such as with hurricanes. Public warning systems have been an essential part of risk management from the middle ages when warning bells were used to signal threats. Warning signals such as fog horns and lighthouses for shipping, bells, whistles, and flashing lights for train crossings, and sirens for fires were used widely by the early 1900s. Federal legislation, as well as emerging tort law and rising public expectations, provided incentives for more effective warning systems (Egilman, 2006).

The decision to issue a warning often involves a variety of experts and officials, including emergency management professionals, subject matter experts, political actors, and elected officials (Sorensen, 2000). Subject matter experts, such as medical professionals, epidemiologists, engineers, meteorologists, and seismologists, provide technical information. Elected and appointed government and emergency management officials typically have final authority in issuing public warnings. In making decisions about issuing warnings, emergency managers and public officials appraise the threat based on available information, assess the consequences of issuing a warning versus not, and ask, which outcome will produce the least harm (Mileti & Sorenson, 1990)? The likelihood of harm, the scope of harm, the consequences of an inaccurate warning, as well as the consequences of failure to warn are all important considerations in the decision to warn. Assessment of impending risks almost always involves uncertainty, requiring an evaluation of the credibility of different sources of information about risks. Balancing risks and benefits also requires weighing competing values and assessing the context of the risk. “Obviously, public death and injury can result if withheld warnings are followed by disaster” (Mileti & Sorensen, 1990, pp. 2–9). In some cases, delaying the decision to issue a warning allows more information to be collected and evaluated and others consulted. Decisions may also be delegated to others. Delaying in the case of a time-sensitive risk can reduce the effectiveness of the warning. In some cases, standard decisional guides are used to issue warnings. The National Hurricane Center, for example, has a set of criteria for issuing tropical storm warning and watches, and hurricane warnings and watches are based largely on wind speed. In most cases, the decision to issue a warning is a judgment made in a high-risk situation with imperfect knowledge.

Although warnings are essential to limiting harm in many disaster contexts, they also cause social and economic disruption, public concern, and physical and psychological harm. Warnings that prove incorrect can reduce credibility, limit the effectiveness of subsequent warnings, and cause embarrassment (Mileti & Sorensen, 1990). This may discourage officials from issuing warnings. In addition, some officials may be reluctant to issue warnings because they believe the public will panic. The public panic disaster myth is well documented and is sometimes used to justify withholding warnings. Warnings rarely, if ever, cause panic, and, in fact, the more significant challenge is simply getting the public’s attention about an emerging risk. In addition, officials may feel that offering too much information is itself risky or that the public simply ignores warnings (Sorensen, 2000).

An additional consideration concerns the ethics of warning and involves questions of autonomy and beneficence (Egilman, 2006). Autonomy is part of a larger set of principles about the right of individuals to have access to information about issues that may affect them. Autonomy is closely associated with the communication ethic of significant choice and the principle of right to know. Withholding information reduces a person’s autonomy and their ability to make choices for themselves about the level of risk they accept. The right of access to information about risks is well established as both an ethical and legal obligation (Ulmer & Sellnow, 1997). Withholding such information may have legal implications in the event harm does occur. A second ethical principle, beneficence, is the ethical obligation to show charity, mercy, and kindness toward others by taking actions that benefit others. Beneficence is a “moral obligation to act for the others’ benefit, helping them to further their important and legitimate interests, often by preventing or removing possible harms” (Beauchamp, 2018). This imperative exists for all those in professional roles but may be especially significant in cases of emergencies where people face harm.

A final set of considerations for emergency managers are the legal consequences of failure to issue a warning when there is sufficient information to do so. In cases where harm does occur, individuals responsible for issuing warnings may face legal consequences. In the case of the 2014 Flint Water crisis, for example, officials chose not to issue warnings about an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease, even though they had sufficient information to do so. The outbreak resulted in several deaths. As a consequence, managers, including top public health officials, have faced a series of legal charges up to and including manslaughter (Gable & Buehler, 2017). In a similar case, officials downplayed the risk of the 2009 earthquake in L’Aquila, Italy. Earthquakes are very difficult to predict and officials elected not to issue a warning in response to several minor seismic events. The subsequent earthquake killed more than 300 people and the officials were charged with manslaughter. While a post-crisis environment is often litigious, cases of criminal liability for emergency managers are quite rare.

Decisions about warnings occur within a complex, high-risk context where information is inadequate and different values, needs, and perspectives must be considered. Sorensen (2000) points out that “warning systems are complex, because they link many specialties and organizations – science (government and private), engineering, technology, government, news media, and the public” (p. 119). Decisions to warn require information from these various experts be reconciled and some level of consensus reached. Sometimes these decisions are wrong. The public may be warned of a crisis that never manifests or the public may not be warned and, subsequently, a crisis occurs, harming both people and property.

Effective warning systems, as we have noted, are critical to protecting the health and well-being of the public, and diverse systems have been developed for a wide range of public threats. Sirens have been used primarily for weather, industrial, and transportation risks and flash floods where an immediate audience must be notified of a risk. The Emergency Broadcasting System (and the subsequent Emergency Alert System) was developed in 1963 as a television- and radio-based system. The system was established to provide the president of the United States with “an expeditious method of communicating with the American public in the event of war, threat of war, or grave national crisis” (EBS, 1978). These systems notwithstanding, the media have generally been assumed to play a central role in disseminating warnings. Local weather reporters, for example, are credible sources for warning about impending weather risks.

Because risks and threats are usually based on probabilities, warnings always include some level of uncertainty. Uncertainty, in fact, is generally recognized as “the central variable” in all efforts to communicate risk (Palenchar & Heath, 2002, p. 131). One of the primary tensions in any warning system involves balancing the level of uncertainty and the need to induce some action. Thus, many warning systems are graded to communicate greater or smaller probability estimates of the likelihood of harm occurring as well as estimates of the severity of the potential harm: “This is a very big and dangerous storm that threatens life and property and there is a strong probability it will impact this area,” for instance.

One example of a gradated system was the color-coded DHS Advisory System (see Figure 3.1). The system ranged in terms of risk uncertainty across severe, high, elevated, guarded, and low. The system was implemented in March 2002, designed to provide the public with information about the level of national threats. Color-coding was selected as a way to provide a quick visual reference. Color-coding is commonly used in a number of systems as a shorthand reference for levels of risk (e.g., “code red” or a “red alert”). The DHS system was widely criticized, however, for providing little guidance to the public on what actions to take and for failing to provide any meaningful distinctions between the various levels of risk. The system was replaced in 2011 by the National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS), targeted to specific audiences with a two-tier warning system. The two alerts are:

Figure 3.1 Color-Coded Homeland Security Advisory System. Severe = red; High = gold; Elevated = yellow; Guarded = blue; Low = green.

1 Imminent Threat Alert, which warns of a credible, specific, and impending terrorist threat against the United States;

2 Elevated Threat Alert, which warns of a credible terrorist threat against the United States.

The new NTAS also includes a “Sunset Provision”: The “threat alert is issued for a specific time period and then automatically expires” (US Department of Homeland Security, 2011). Specific alerts may be extended if there is additional information or if the circumstances of the threat change.

The new NTAS seeks to address the fundamental problem of uncertainty inherent to any warning system. By simplifying the system to two levels, the question of what level of certainty signals what level of alert becomes less significant. More gradated decisions about certainty and risk are simply not made. In addition, the new NTAS also provides specific information with each alert, including the geographic region, transportation system, or critical infrastructure threatened; actions taken by authorities; and actions individuals and communities can take to help prevent, mitigate, or respond to the threat (US Department of Homeland Security, 2011).

Similar issues surround the warning systems developed for weather events where uncertainty also plays an important role. Tornado warnings and watches, flood warnings and advisories, hurricane warnings and watches, and tsunami warnings and watches all seek to address the uncertainty inherent in any risk. These systems broadly track the logic of the alert as an initial general notification indicating that a hazardous condition is possible and the warning as a more specific follow-on, usually indicating the hazard has been confirmed. They also create some level of knowledge of the relative risk and prompt some form of remedial response such as “take shelter or evacuate.”

The National Hurricane Center, for example, has promulgated the terms “hurricane warning” and “hurricane watch” to denote the relative level of certainty associated with the risk:

Hurricane Warning: An announcement that hurricane conditions (sustained winds of 74 mph or higher) are expected somewhere within the specified coastal area. Because hurricane preparedness activities become difficult once winds reach tropical storm force, the hurricane warning is issued 36 hours in advance of the anticipated onset of tropical-storm-force winds.

Hurricane Watch: An announcement that hurricane conditions (sustained winds of 74 mph or higher) are possible within the specified coastal area. Because hurricane preparedness activities become difficult once winds reach tropical storm force, the hurricane watch is issued 48 hours in advance of the anticipated onset of tropical-storm-force winds (NHC, 2011).

These terms are examples of efforts to use specific referents to denote a larger body of technical risk information. The similarity of the terms “warning” and “watch,” however, can create confusion for the general public, particularly regarding recommended responses. Warning systems are most effective when they are simple and easy to interpret and where the public has become familiar with the recommended responses (Sorensen, 2000). This familiarity allows the public to connect public warnings with their own personal preparedness plans.

An additional level of uncertainty in hurricane warnings concerns the geographic location of the storm track. The physical location of a storm is a significant factor in the level of risk a community or individual might face. Tracking and predicting storm paths is challenging and communicating the inherent level of uncertainty is difficult. Thus, the National Hurricane Center has developed visual maps that include relative probabilities of a storm’s path (see Figure 3.2). Known as the forecast cone or the “cone of uncertainty,” this system seeks to represent visually for the general public the probability estimates made by subject matter experts. The system represents complex information about probability in a simple visual reference.

Figure 3.2 National Hurricane Center Cone of Uncertainty for 2007 Tropical Storm Dean.

While these models seek to translate risk estimates and projections by subject matter experts into warnings and alerts that can inform the public and persuade them to take appropriate protective action, theory and associated research have focused on the ways in which the public processes this information. It is important to recognize that principles of risk and risk perception as described in Chapter 8 play an important role in how warning messages are received and interpreted. Public perceptions of risk are influenced by a number of factors, including previous experience of the risk, age, institutional factors, media reporting, the technical nature of the risk, and cultural factors (Covello, 2009; Mileti & Sorenson, 1990; Tansey & Rayner, 2009). In addition, risks may be amplified by social factors. According to Kasperson et al. (1988), “Social amplification of risk denotes the phenomenon by which information processes, institutional structures, social-group behavior, and individual responses shape the social experience of risk” (p. 181). Thus, some risks may be elevated in their significance while others are downplayed.

In addition to relative levels of uncertainty and social amplification of risk, two other variables are fundamental to warnings: time and width of diffusion. Risks are time-bound phenomena and the ability to issue a warning quickly is associated with the ability of the public to take the desired protective action in time to avoid the risk. Some threats, such as tsunamis and tornadoes, may emerge very quickly, and warning systems must be structured for very rapid response. In general, the timelier a warning message, the greater the capacity of the public to take protective action.

Related to questions of timing are variables determining how broadly the message is diffused. Factors such as intensity, availability of channels, the channel(s) employed, and time of day all influence the width of diffusion. Warning messages will typically follow the typical S-shaped curve of information diffusion, where the distribution will generally start slowly, build, and then taper off (Rogers & Sorensen, 1991). Messages of warning are also subject to repetition through word of mouth and increasingly through social media such as retweets on Twitter. While systems employing multiple channels have the broadest and most rapid diffusion, some proportion of the public, including the homeless, will not receive a warning message in a timely manner. Theory then generally frames warnings as a specialized communication process and links this process to larger decisional systems and processes. As a form of communication, basic concepts of reception, understandability, consistency, and credibility are important, as is the diminished capacity, or mental noise, that may accompany a risk situation (Covello, 2009). In addition, because warnings are generally inconsistent with the status quo, they often are met with skepticism. Drabek (1999) notes that most often the first response to a disaster warning is denial. Most theories see warning as more than a simple stimulus response process. Rather, the process is typically characterized as involving individuals, messages, behaviors, attributes, perceptions, and social structures.