Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication as an Integrative Model

This paper is written by a practitioner working in the office of communication of CDC, aiming to address a CERC model that combined communication elements in crisis, risk and emergency situation. Just like we have discussed in the class, the paper can be viewed as a recap of what we have learned through the risk and crisis communication process.

The author started to summarize the differences between risk and crisis communication.

Risk communication is closely associated with threat sensing and assessment. In practice, risk communication most often involves the production of public messages regarding health risks and environmental hazards. Risk communication is most closely grounded in research on fear appeals as a persuasive device. These messages seek to induce behavioral change by presenting a threat and describing a behavior or behavioral change that may alleviate the threat. Risk messages should be clear and simple, appeal to reason and emotion, and offer solutions to problems (Friemuth et al., 2000).

The common attribute that risk communication and crisis communication each rely on is credibility as a fundamental persuasive dimension, although they manifest in different ways.

The working model of CERC can be divided into five stages – precrisis, initial event, maintenance, resolution and evaluation, which are consistent to the situation of how a crisis evolved in a systematic approach. The blended form of crisis and risk communication, then, incorporates principles of effective risk communication and crisis communication throughout the evolution of a risk factor into a crisis event and on through the clean-up and recovery phase.

Reactions on Nigeria case

Now, if you took the gas in your car and traced it to its source, there’s an increasing chance that you would end up not in the Middle East, but in West Africa. Nigeria has become a country of increasing importance to America’s oil-driven economy.

After reading Salopek’s vivid report, I couldn’t help thinking what public relations could play a better role in this case. We are keeping saying that the fundamental goal (or contribution) of public relations effort is to make corporation more social responsible. However, in this case, I can’t see any practice in terms of social responsibility.

“The U.S. oil giant (Exxon Mobil) has a complex relationship with its destitute neighbors. On one hand, it helped renovate village’s schoolhouse. Bu it also spilled at least 40,000 barrels of crude into the sea in 1998, a fiasco that fisherman say permanently destroyed the village’s traditional livelihood.” The presented story made me feel that the corporate social responsibility is just one way to show compensation to local communities. Many would argue this effort just is a practice of tokenism. (I would think the same way, too.)

Also, what are the strategies that Exxon Mobil Company takes to deal with increasing pressure from activist? It is not a news that a dozen environmental and liberal-advocacy groups have launched a protest campaign against ExxonMobil Corp. (News)