Earthquakes and Grunig's Situational Theory of Publics
I think this might be the last post here, it actually made me a bit sad.. But here you go anyway:
According to Grunig's Situational theory, there is not a general unified public, but there are different publics with different levels of involvement and risk awareness, thus messages should be constructed according to the needs and perceptions of each public group if risk communicators want to be effective.
Research must be conducted to learn more about how communities learn about risk and what kind of approaches they have towards this risk. But for this to happen, people who are in powerful positions and who can implement such campaigns need to value research and need to buy in the public information campaign beforehand in order to support it. This might be harder for developing countries because research is not see as a priority since there are other important issues at hand which might require more immediate attention.
The authors cite Turner, Nigg and Paz and state that news reports of conflicting opinions create more ambiguity than informing the public. I agree with this statement. Especially in areas where people have little ways of predicting something, such as an earthquake, when they see that there are conflicting statement in the news, they become even more critical and less caring about the risk because they feel like nothing is for certain and there is nothing they can do.
Turkey has had many earthquakes and many more are expected, especially in certain regions which are more prone to this risk, and people are tired about hearing conflicting statements and not knowing what and whom to believe. As Major argues, the “prediction process is further complicated by the fact that earthquake prediction s also are issued by astrologers, psychics, and religious leaders as well as self-appointed earthquake “scientists” (p 490).
In the case of Turkey, this was even more complicated by some religious leaders who claimed that the earthquakes are a punishment for all the bad actions of the community members which did not fit with the rules of Islam. This made people, especially people from certain economic and social backgrounds, even less sure about what to do or whom to listen to because now there were some religious leaders who claimed that this was a punishment and the only solution was to become “better” Muslims – whatever that meant.
As the “personalized risk” these people had increased, they became less caring about the earthquake education efforts and they started believing that this was a punishment from God. As most of you can realize, this was not a very useful approach and it limited the communication between risk communicators and communities who regard earthquakes as God’s punishment. They even went as far as to believe that there was nothing to be done and this was their fate and they had to suffer the consequences.
I strongly agree with implementing Grunig’s situational theory of publics into crisis and risk communication efforts and trying to customize messages for each different group. One overall message will not work in these risk situations because people have many different approaches to the risk, why the risk exists, how it will affect them and what they can do to protect themselves. Risk education programs should include different messaging and different strategies created specifically for the different publics involved to be effective.
According to Grunig's Situational theory, there is not a general unified public, but there are different publics with different levels of involvement and risk awareness, thus messages should be constructed according to the needs and perceptions of each public group if risk communicators want to be effective.
Research must be conducted to learn more about how communities learn about risk and what kind of approaches they have towards this risk. But for this to happen, people who are in powerful positions and who can implement such campaigns need to value research and need to buy in the public information campaign beforehand in order to support it. This might be harder for developing countries because research is not see as a priority since there are other important issues at hand which might require more immediate attention.
The authors cite Turner, Nigg and Paz and state that news reports of conflicting opinions create more ambiguity than informing the public. I agree with this statement. Especially in areas where people have little ways of predicting something, such as an earthquake, when they see that there are conflicting statement in the news, they become even more critical and less caring about the risk because they feel like nothing is for certain and there is nothing they can do.
Turkey has had many earthquakes and many more are expected, especially in certain regions which are more prone to this risk, and people are tired about hearing conflicting statements and not knowing what and whom to believe. As Major argues, the “prediction process is further complicated by the fact that earthquake prediction s also are issued by astrologers, psychics, and religious leaders as well as self-appointed earthquake “scientists” (p 490).
In the case of Turkey, this was even more complicated by some religious leaders who claimed that the earthquakes are a punishment for all the bad actions of the community members which did not fit with the rules of Islam. This made people, especially people from certain economic and social backgrounds, even less sure about what to do or whom to listen to because now there were some religious leaders who claimed that this was a punishment and the only solution was to become “better” Muslims – whatever that meant.
As the “personalized risk” these people had increased, they became less caring about the earthquake education efforts and they started believing that this was a punishment from God. As most of you can realize, this was not a very useful approach and it limited the communication between risk communicators and communities who regard earthquakes as God’s punishment. They even went as far as to believe that there was nothing to be done and this was their fate and they had to suffer the consequences.
I strongly agree with implementing Grunig’s situational theory of publics into crisis and risk communication efforts and trying to customize messages for each different group. One overall message will not work in these risk situations because people have many different approaches to the risk, why the risk exists, how it will affect them and what they can do to protect themselves. Risk education programs should include different messaging and different strategies created specifically for the different publics involved to be effective.
posted by emelo at
4/12/2007 02:07:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home