Chapter 13

Lundrgren and McMakin’s thirteenth chapter focused on producing audience-appropriate information materials. Thanks to Mic’s excellent summary of the chapter, I’ve decided that rather than providing my own (repetitive) summary, I’d provide my plain observations of the unluckily numbered chapter.
Based on instinct, I see having some sort of power in a situation as being an essential condition. Whether it be by having a voice for being a constituent, a customer, an employee or an activist, in situations in which one does not have control over what one feels to be an important aspect of the world they live in, using their voice becomes a step in acquiring power so that the situation can be steered in the best direction—whatever that might be. The authors suggest that audiences are provided with actions that they “can take to mitigate or manage exposure to the risk…[because k]nowing what they can do empowers your audience. The less they feel like victims, the less hostility you will have to combat” (p. 198). When I read the first portion of the quoted section, I immediately thought that the advice was given for the benefit of the audience, for the sake of true empowerment and plain goodness toward an affected group of people. Instead, although it can also be framed as being a fortunate by-product, minimizing hostility becomes an enticement that the crisis communicator simply cannot let go of. It’s true, but almost comical, that combating hostility would be a recommendation for us crisis communicators. I understand that when trying to communicate effectively, the last thing someone needs is hostility from the audience. However, the way I see it, hostility is just part of the territory when one works with people.
The rest of the chapter was, as mentioned by others, uncomplicated. However, one thing that caught me off guard was finding a grammatical error. Now please correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that there’s an extra word in the following sentence: “Although its placement suggested that it was meant to be read quickly as workers drove home, workers had to slow down to see what it had to say, so that the safety sign actually caused accidents” (p. 207). I would normally not consider this to be a huge problem considering how many printed materials so often contain mistakes, yet I do not think that a book written by communicators specifically about communicating properly should have this happen more than once, if at all. However, I recall noticing that there was a misspelled word elsewhere in the book, so I quickly glanced through my notes, and there it was: “However, even in extreme public health emergencies like a bioterrorist attack, the public’s demand for information is likely to be higher than this apprach would satisfy” (p. 18). Once again, I’m not trying to be too critical, but even though I like the user-friendly air that the book has, multiple grammatical errors just seem like something that should not be present in a book like this one. Another section that caught my attention was in page 208, where the authors clarified their position regarding assigning reading levels to different levels of technical reports. This is something that I found to be unusual and I frankly wonder if it were not for our society’s pursuit of political correctness nor fear of the ever-present possibility of a lawsuit, would a statement such as this ever be included in a textbook: (We use reading levels here as a guide to content and style, not to imply that all interested readers read at the tenth-grade level or that all neophytes read at the sixth-grade level.)?