Week 8 Readings

You do not need to blog this week on the Coombs readings. You DO need to read the two articles assigned by Team 3, and can blog on them if you wish. These can be found in the Team 3 folder of WebCT along with the bibliography for the week. Part 1 of the Research Project is due on Tuesday. Happy writing...Dr. R.

Digital Technology has given David of an ax to grind Goliath

The chapter 18 provides fundamental guidelines when conducting computer-assisted communication of risk. While Lundgren and McMakin (2004) show you how much you can get or how effectively you can communicate from utilizing those computer-assisted applications, I cannot help but get intimidated by the vulnerable side of digital communication. Technology certainly boosts the effectiveness of care and consensus communication by promptly and accurately informing an audience and inclusively gathering feedbacks. However, the list of threats that digital technology brings, especially in crisis communication, is quite long since an organization is not the only one who can manipulate the technology any more.

1. Information overload

First of all, obviously there are choking amount of information, (or let's call 'messages' since some of them are neither informative nor accurate after all) out there and it gets more and more difficult to make your communication message salient enough to get picked up by a target audience. Take blog postings only, for example. A document published by Shift Communication PR firm suggested that presumably more than 2.5 million daily blog postings are being uploaded. Furthermore, not only there is a great chance that your voice will be unheard buried by millions of others, but also is a huge challenge of proving credibility and accuracy of your communication message.

2. No more "what happens here, stays here"

The technology applications, such as online discussion forums, live online training, and distance education, removed the geographical limitations of communication. While the textbook mentions the bright side of such liberation, the intimidating fact is that the risk situation will not end in local settings any more. An article 'Surviving a blog storm' in Business Platinum Ventures Magazine carried a comment from Todd Defren, a principal with Shift Communications that "issues that heretofore had been buried by virtue of the fact that they were regional, now have a national or international scope." A threatening aspect is that any kind of story, whether it is accurate or blown out of proportion, or complete false, gets instantly delivered to internet users in any part of the world. The amplification of risk/crisis issues empowered by technology make public relations professionals' job a lot difficult and complicated.

3. Self-replicating and everlasting nature of cybersphere

Furthermore, snow-ball phenomena on World Wide Web can give you a severe headache. While online forum is a great platform for consensus communication, at the point of breaking rumor such platform becomes headquarter of making mountain out of a molehill. And often times, it is hard to find the origin of rumors or nonsense information on cybersphere. In addition to self-replicating nature, a story that is placed online has no expiration date. Once a story is up online, it is always stays in its stage of searchable. For example, I've recently seen a dull blogger bringing up the Satanism rumor of Procter & Gamble logo as if it's breaking news when such accusation of a satanic symbol was made way back in 1980s.

4. Cyberactivism

With the help of advanced informations and communication technologies, any determined individuals or groups can easily communicate with large audiences about a specific issue and can build troops to make collective actions. Some of the technology-savvy activists, called "hacktivists" make further and rather radical steps to deliver their message. For example, hacktivists break into organizations' Web sites and implant their message on front page. Technical failure of a Web site is not the problem that only IT engineer should worry about any more.

In conclusion, when conducting computer-assisted communication, one should be very aware of both bright and dark side of the deals that the technology can bring.

In terms of surviving from some of the threats I mentioned above, Jonathan Bernstein, president of Bernstein Crisis Management in California presents practical guidelines in his article, "Surviving a blog storm" on Business Platinum Ventures magazine. Although, he throws a couple of 'and-then-what' type of nonsense antidotes, such as "If someone has posted information that is not accurate, contact the site owner company that provide space to multiple bloggers and ask them to take it off" or "If you generate a flurry of positive news release, they will show up on the first release, they will show up on the first page of a Google search engine," the article in overall sense specific points that you should keep in mind to minimize damage from online communication attacks. Three cyberspace crisis case studies provided at the end of the article is quite interesting as well.

Peanut butter and hurricanes

Chapter 20 did a great job of laying out the difference between a crisis and an emergency. While a crisis can be predicted an emergency cannot. However, each requires knowledge and understanding of appropriate communication measures.

Would this past week’s salmonella outbreak in certain batches of Peter Pan peanut butter fall into the category of crisis or emergency? I would say it is definitely the latter. “Sudden?” Check. “Unforeseen?” Check. To demonstrate how quickly communicators can work these days, I arrived home the day of the announcement last week to a counter stacked with four jars of Peter Pan. I hadn’t yet heard the word because I’d been working, but my two roommates, who are wired constantly, had not only heard and read about the recall but already went through the pantry!

As the text states, people’s reactions to emergencies can be “intense and complex.” However, these days, with publics more used to and aware of communication channels in the face of terrorist attacks and other threats, the channels are more accessible and easy to find. In this case, the threat was specific; the salmonella outbreak was limited to batches beginning with the numbers #2111, making the elimination of potentially dangerous peanut butter (in our household, anyway!) a cinch. The reading in the text reminded me of what my roommates did, “You must do X, you should do Y and you can do Z.” They chose to toss the peanut butter, but reports also told them they could visit Web sites for more information and send the jar cap to the manufacturer for a refund, among other options. Options are good!

The importance of role defining in the face of crises and emergencies also was covered in Chapter 20. “What often hinders communication in emergencies is not the lack of infrastructure of skills but the lack of consensus on roles and responsibilities.” At this reading, I had a flashback to my weeks spent in the City of Orlando Emergency Operations Center during Hurricanes Charley, Frances and Jeanne in the fall of 2004. It was kind of like camp, with no sleep, bad food and thrice-daily press conferences! But it was so well organized employee-wise that I couldn’t complain.

Every ESF was staffed with the appropriate people and we were informed as to who took over which shift and when, who gave information about what and what outside information was coming from other agencies, when and how often. Everyone had been fully trained; fortuitously, they had been flown to Maryland to do FEMA training just months prior.

Immediately, we activated the emergency phone tree to call the City’s nearly 1,000 non-essential personnel and tell them not to come into work. During our aforementioned press conferences, we had the Mayor at the helm, but close behind him was our EOC manager, fire chief, police chief, public works director, streets and drainage director and even our community services director (where we were temporarily housing displaced residents). They were all ready and willing to pipe up and offer appropriate information should they be asked. Our hotline was staffed with 12 people 24/7 and those of us in ESF 8 literally ran from room to room with little sheets of paper if there was breaking news that needed to be communicated to citizens – everything from where residents with diabetes could get treatment to where people could take their pets for emergency care. We set up the reverse 911 phone system to send 30-second sound bites from the Mayor to people’s phones, telling them where to go for ice, which major streets were closed, what numbers to call for more information; weeks later, after everything had died down, I got stopped by people who said, “You know, I got the Mayor’s phone message. That was pretty cool.”

While there was much physical damage to our city, there were fortunately no deaths and both city staff and residents were mostly calm and organized. I like to chalk that up to the composure and communications tactics of our EOC manager who was ready and willing with information at every turn, even if his words to the press or the public were, “We’re still working on that, but we’ll get back to you.” And we did.

Working with the Media

Lundgren and McMakin’s 16th chapter addresses the public relations field’s seemingly never-ending undertaking of working with the media. The first reaction I have toward a section of the chapter is under the “Media Contrasted with other Stakeholders” section. I was interested by the example of a 1997 U.S. Supreme Court ruling “that a Washington State newspaper could rightly take a reporter off news assignments because her outside-of-work activities—including activism on various social causes—could be perceived a biasing the new stories she wrote, thus risking the newspaper’s reputation of objectivity (Nelson v. McClatchy Newspapers, Inc., et al. 1997)” (p.275). To be honest, on my book’s margin I commented, “No sh**, Sherlock!” However, while preparing to write this blog entry I reflected on the concept.

Being an activist myself, I know that because I have strong convictions about the way that other sentient creatures should be treated, I would have a very hard time presenting a dispassionate opinion on something that I’ve already made my mind up about. That’s not to say that I don’t believe that every single news story should feature every side of the issue—because I wholeheartedly do. Now, that also does not mean that if it were my job to give equal representation to both sides of an issue, I would not be able to do so. Yet, as discussed in last semester’s mass communications and society course taught by Dr. Walsh-Childers (imagine my surprise to see her referenced on p. 292), a journalist is, after all, a human being (in most instances). Sure, journalists are ethically required to present a situation objectively. But does that mean that while investigating a story they don’t form their own opinions regarding the situation? Even further, does that mean that their own convictions regarding issues such as murder or child abuse cannot be omitted from a story on either of those topics?

The next section, titled “Productive Interaction, Not Polarization,” illustrated the power of the media in financially affecting entire industries with the examples of the Washington apple industry losing $130 million and manufacturers of silicon implants facing bankruptcy as a result of media coverage of the two issues. I agree that the media are powerful means to expose a problem, but I wonder, if it were not for the media coverage of the issues, how would the potentially affected parties have known about the risk? I don’t really have an answer.

In the “Certain Kinds of Risks Get More Coverage” section, the authors rightfully stated that “[r]isks are not covered in the mass media commensurate with their probability of occurrence. For example, airline crashes with fatalities are covered far more extensively than heart disease, though diseases take 16 times as many lives as accidents” (p. 277). When I initially read that section, I felt that although the concept is simply a reality that needs to be accepted, the authors almost considered it a downfall of the media’s many audience segments. Ideally, the risk that we are trying to communicate would be always welcome in our intended audience’s ears. However, I cannot say that I don’t understand the attraction to drama. I’m guessing that it is simply human nature to be more attracted to the more frightening of the two scenarios. For instance, as a member of America’s middle class, I can say that I believe that it is an individual’s responsibility to keep up with information related to whatever disease he or she has a predisposition or has been diagnosed with. That way, if the individual chose to not seek treatment, they were somewhat in control of their situations—and that’s not too scary. On the other hand, most people are not airplane pilots. So, if a plane were to crash, the victims were truly powerless in these unexpected and horrifically tragic situations—and these victims could have been members of the audience. Well, enough of the scary stuff.
In the section titled “Take Action When Inaccurate or Misleading Material is Published or Aired,” the authors suggested that communicators “alert reporters about factually inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading reporting after it has appeared,” but they warn that this option should be used “judiciously” (p. 286). The warnings in that section relate to not expecting the journalist (human being) to be eager to get criticism on his or her work. My interpretation: Make sure to suck up when you need to and suck it up a lot of the time. This reminds me that, when it comes to journalists and public relations specialists, although it is their job to write balanced stories, we are at their mercy.

Thoughts about CHP 18

Technology-assisted communication

When I was applying for graduate school last year, the most frequent words I heard from my father was “back when I was getting ready for my MBA program…” He was impressed and envious of the savvy, modern application process. The Internet has made life so much easier, and international applications for graduate school were no exceptions. I was able to communicate via e-mail and check my application status on-line whenever I wanted to. I received e-mails when certain materials were missing, reminders when deadlines were coming up, and questions were answered via e-mail within 24-48 hours. My father, who got his MBA in 1992, had to send an air mail to request for applications, fill them out by hand, air mail them again, and wait endlessly without any clue whether the shipping was delayed or the application notes ended up in someone else’s mailbox. He simply cherishes the modern technology. It took him at least four weeks to hear a response from them, and some times the mails arrived later than the deadlines. What a crisis! I can’t imagine applying for graduate school under such circumstances; hallelujah to the Internet!

Chapter 18 discusses the use of technology to communicate risk. As Jennifer points out, many of the advice provided are rather common sense. However, sometimes the easiest things are more difficult to put in words, and it’s good to have a clean sheet of information you can look up every once in a while. Our book chapter seems to focus mostly on computer based technologies such as computer-based training, CDs, telebriefings, Web seminars and on-line discussion groups (p. 339- p.362). This is mainly because of the dominance of Internet use among people. I would like to emphasis other media; cell phones in particular, to communicate risk and crisis.

Risk communication through cell phones is highly effective to reach segmented audience. All technological devices face the dilemma whether people have the ability to access the technology, and cell phones are no exceptions. However, if the access is promised, cell phones are the most personalized, mobilized, and current technology to communicate risk. There is a term used in Korea to pinpoint the younger generations who are obsessed with their cell phones: Umji-jok. Umji, which means “thumb” in English, and “jok” which means “gang,” represent those who send hundreds of text messages with their two thumbs, access the Internet through their cell phone network, and take photos with their cell phone cameras. Cell phones are more than a communication tool for these people. It is a device that represents what kind of person they are, a dear friend to keep them entertained, and an important link to their social life. Marketers saw this trend, and they dug in deep. New cell phones were introduced approximately every month offering impressive functions. You could take pictures, watch television, calculate the calories of your meal, and store your papers in the 8 GB memory. What happens when this is used to communicate risk?

We’ve learned from the earlier chapters that in order to communicate risk effectively, you need to know your audience, communicate with facts, emphasize key messages and provide visual aids to enhance the understanding of the risk. It is better to personalize the risk so people can see this as a real-life situation that is directly related to them rather than a headline they read in the news. Cell phones tie in with all these traits. They are, as mentioned above, personalized technology. One cell in for one person only and each person has an “individual number.” What better way is there to reach your target audience? People carry cell phones around everywhere. I’ve even seen a friend who would carry her phone to the bath tub! It’s one of the easiest ways to reach your audience. Visuals? You’ve got it. While some old cell phones may not have the camera function, most of the phones today come with a very decent camera and equally qualified graphics to support the pixels. You can send pictures, images, and even videos with your cell phone. Want to communicate key messages? How about using the text message figures? Have the news headlines automatically forwarded to your cell phone every day ay anytime you wish. Set up a ring tone with the message you want to communicate, and people will listen to them while they wait to be connected. It’s amazing what a little squared object can do.

See how these cool little tools function as the “grass root” technology to whip out the major ENG cameras and satellite technology. We’ve all heard about the London terror last July, but guess who posted the first pictures and videos? It wasn’t the camera crew of BBC, but a citizen whop happened to have his camera phone with him, as always. The article from

Ronnie's thoughts on evaluation

Every risk communication effort should be evaluated. Naturally. The chapter opened with that premise and that’s a no-brainer. If you don’t evaluate what you did this time, how will you know how to improve upon it or whether you need to make changes, the next time around?

That being said, it takes time and effort to make a proper evaluation. And sometimes you may not have the resources in terms of time and/or money to make a full-scale effort. Can you shoot from the hip and make a reasonable assessment of what you did right and what you did wrong. I would say yes.

I think most of us engaged in the business of communication can make a fairly good assessment about when something works – or when it does not. I’ll start with the premise that most of us are reasonably intelligent and reasonably fair in judging ourselves and in judging the efforts of others.

It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that FEMA did a really poor job of interacting with people in New Orleans and attending to risk communication there and with the rest of the nation in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Or that Jet Blue will take a hit now -- after years of favorable public and consumer relations – after hundreds its passengers were left for up to 11 hours in parked jets at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport when the planes couldn’t take off because of bad weather. I can only imagine the kind of evaluation and measurement that will be going on at Jet Blue now. (As an FYI, there is currently a movement to establish a federal airline passengers’ bill or rights).

In both cases, tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars can be spent in assessing and evaluation the actions and inactions of the risk communication. But the final conclusions will probably not be much different from that which the communicator can assess right from the start – FEMA and Jet Blue respectively mishandled and mismanaged communications. (There’s actually a more common vernacular I might have used here to describe FEMA and Jet Blue’s efforts, but in the interests of verbal delicacy, I’ll refrain)!

This “eyeball” assessment is not unlike a journalist’s crowd count. Obviously, when a reporter covers a particular event and provides a crowd tally, the journalist does not count every person there. They will eyeball the crowd to determine whether there are dozens, hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands people present. (Of course, the journalist will also ask for a number from the event organizer – but eyeballs can still work and are a good counter to inflated attendance claims.)

Organizations like FEMA and Jet Blue, however, can afford to conduct full evaluations. Smaller community-based organizations often cannot do so common sense is relied upon even more. For example, here in town, St. Francis House may not have the resources to assess its success in communicating the risk to the homeless in Gainesville and the risk to the rest of the community if the homeless are not taken into account. But they can make a fairly accurate and quick assessment (I think) of how successful they are by looking at the news coverage they get; the attention paid to homelessness by the city and county governments and seeing what kind of response they get to requests for volunteers and donations from members of the community.

In undertaking an evaluation of a risk communication effort, common sense can count for a lot, especially when time and money are issues. Evaluation is not dissimilar to measurement, but I for think care has to be taken not to spend so much time on evaluating and measure success (or failure) that it prevents getting the job done that one is trying to measure or evaluate. In other words, let’s not get caught up so excessively in proving our worth that we find ourselves with nothing worth evaluating or measuring.

As far as legal matters are concerned – as raised in the chapter reading -- superficially you can show you adhered to the letter of the law when risk communication involves a legal technicality. But if you are working for an organization whose life is conducted in the public eye – whether as a government agency, an advocacy group or a non-profit, it stands to reason that your organization would be operating legally. If not, you have a much bigger risk assessment to make than simple communication!

The set of factors developed by Kasperson and Palmlund are useful and should be taken into account. It is important to make a correct choice in determining who will conduct the evaluation. Does the evaluator understand the issues and the topics at hand? The example given about the project manager who had his risk communication messages evaluated by technical experts made sense as did his efforts to provide them with guidelines and a frame of reference about what he was trying to do. But again, their guidelines presuppose that funds are available for this kind of effort.

Evaluation can show management that your risk communication effort was successful.
But it seems to a little too easy to simply use as a standard of success whether objectives were met. The question might be whether the objectives that were laid out were the correct ones and whether they are truly measurable in a way that is meaningful to you and your organization.

Chapter 16 - Working with the media

Media relations is an essential role public relations practitioners must play, and this chapter offers some excellent suggestions on how to make your relationship with the media a mutually beneficial one.

The authors assert that the media’s role in risk/crisis communication falls into one of three categories: reporting existing information, influencing the way an issue is portrayed, independently bringing an issue to the public’s attention or restricting its coverage (i.e. investigative reporting), or proposing solutions to a risk-related decision, which includes taking a stand on an issue, often through editorials (p.272). An example is this recent editorial in the Washington Post concerning a Metrobus that had struck and killed two pedestrians, and the Post calls out Metro for not having stricter safety and training protocols. This case exemplifies the quote on page 273 – “individual editors or producers occasionally feel that a particular issue is significant enough that their organization must get more involved, sometimes to the point of going on record with a stated position.” For more editorials, check out The Editorialist, a blog with excerpts from opinion pages around the country.

According to L&M on page 274, “reporters and journalists, in contract, generally aim for objectivity and balance in their stories.” To this, I say HA! While the majority of journalists are fair, there are the bad apples that bring personal bias into their reporting. A great example of this is a press conference my company participated in recently – we, along with other members of the organ and tissue donation community, are working on legislation that would create an online version of the FL organ and tissue donor registry, managed by Florida Coalition on Donation and the DMV. This is truly positive legislation, and at the press conference we had the bill’s House and Senate sponsors speak (including Senator Steve Oelrich, whose son was an organ and tissue donor after dying suddenly in his teens), along with transplant surgeons who testified about the shortage of organs and the number of people who die waiting for transplant. One reporter’s story focused not on the positive impact of the legislation, but how the companies involved would make millions of dollars, which is 1. factually inaccurate and 2. not even remotely related to the point of the legislation. This particular reporter obviously has a bias against some portion of the industry, which led to his gross misrepresentation of the facts.

This story illustrates the importance of cultivating a relationship with your local media. Understanding their goals and objectives will help you work better with them to create a story that satisfies both your needs (most of the time, anyway). The example of the researcher on page 276 highlights the need for communication. A good working relationship with the media will make the chance higher that you’ll receive a fair story, as you’ll have established yourself as a credible and reliable source. It’s also a good idea to be proactive with story ideas – if you’ve got a good relationship with a particular reporter, give them a call and say “hey, I’ve got this great story – let’s meet and talk about it.” This helps the reporter by eliminating some of their legwork and gives you a chance to get your information heard correctly.

It goes without saying that in crisis situations, organizations must “pre-establish media protocols, including the use of trained spokespeople” (p.280). While the authors advocate having the organization’s top leaders ready to speak to the media, other sources I’ve read suggest that it’s best to have one main spokesperson, either a public relations representative or the organization’s president/CEO (if applicable – some CEO’s aren’t very good with the media). Having only one person allows for a consistent message – however, if your organization chooses to have several representatives speaking to the media, it is essential they they’re relaying the same information. All this should be clearly outlines in your company’s crisis plan, along with cell and home phone numbers for all the key members of the organization.

FYI, for those of you interested in the Lisa Nowak ongoing saga, Florida Today ran a story last week analyzing NASA's crisis response in the situation. It's a very interesting read, so check it out!

Chapter 16

Wanna go steady?
Good relationships with the media are so important if you ever plan to utilize this channel of communication with your audience. However, building and maintaining these relationships seems difficult and certainly takes a certain amount of finesse. The authors point out that the media is typically reactive and event focused in its approach to the news. If that is the case most of the time, then how does a risk communicator establish relationships with the media in the first place? Do these relationships bias the media reporting? How? I can see benefits on both sides for the proper courting and maintenance of this marriage of risk communicators and the media. The media person has a point person for good information and the risk communicator has the advantage of potentially positioning their organization well in the coverage. However, unless the media person is your college roommate or new buddy, I argue that they’re only going to contact you or listen to you when there’s an event or crisis.

Prepping others in the organization for media coverage
One thing the authors did not cover was preparing others in your organization for communicating with or dealing with the media. Although the public information officer or spokesperson is typically charged with handling the media, sometimes reporters want a quote from someone else in the organization. Apart from telling the scientist, manager, or whoever exactly what to say, training them for what to expect is so important. I believe I remember Dr. Robinson mentioning last week that reporters may ask questions to get you off your key messages, but just the experience alone can be enough to get you off topic if you’re not prepared. A reporter probably knows he or she will not pull a fast one on you, but may be able to with an untrained person inside your organization. Prepping them for an interview or holding a training session on this would help keep everyone on the same page with the situation and prepare them for the savviest of reporters.

Problems with media coverage
Last semester we bashed the media a lot in a science and health communication class for the very reasons the authors bring up in this chapter: 1) watering down the information, 2) over-simplifying, and 3) over-sensationalizing. We also brought up other problems, such as lack of sources and choice of sources. Often times, with science and uncertainty, reporters present two sides in attempts to appear objective. However, there may be more than two sides, there may not even be “sides,” but the way the story comes out it looks like a juicy controversy. The authors suggest that risk communicators be accepting of these ways in which the media functions, but I disagree. I would like to see change in the media’s coverage of uncertainties, science, and health. I agree that, currently, we need to be aware of this way that the media works, but do we accept it, do we like it? I vote “nay.”

Chapter 16 working with the media

In Lundgren and McMakin’s (2004), the range of media participation was explained as follows; (1) reporting existing information, (2) influencing the way an issue is portrayed, (3) independently brining an issue to the public’s attention or restricting its coverage, and (4) proposing solutions to a risk-related decision, including taking a stand on an issue. Because of the media’s powerful effect on the formation of public’s opinions and attitudes, media’s roles are very important for the organization or the company. However, the media’s power increases during a time of crisis. In times of conflict, the media’s responsibility for independent and pluralistic reporting becomes more important than normal circumstances. Accordingly, particularly during a crisis, crisis managers and public relations practitioners significantly increase their role of news framing because public opinions tend to change their opinion very easily from negative to positive or from positive to negative depending on news framing.

In media relations, crisis managers should understand and respect the importance of deadline for journalists. Managers should prepare messages and materials carefully, and put messages in terms the reporter’s audience can understand. Timing and accuracy are important in releasing information to the public through the media. Crisis managers should not say “no comment,” because it will cause many audiences to interpret an assumption of guilt on the part of the organization. Those above guidelines are basic media relations guidelines for public relations practitioners. Public relations practitioners try to build a good relationship with journalists. In real world, keeping a good relationship with journalists sometimes means the able public relations practitioners. However, I strongly hope that public relations practitioners focus more a managerial role than a technician role, which is usually media relations. A managerial function has more diverse and significant power than a technician function. This is in the same context that Lundgren and McMakin (2004) mentioned, “Though media involvement can be a very powerful voice in the ultimate outcome of risk issues, media organizations’ responsibility in a decision-making process usually does not extend past proposing solutions (p. 274).” Crisis managers should keep in mind that media’s role is limited to deliver the message and affect the public’s and society’s opinions. Media cannot solve the problem. Too much dependency on media or the positive media coverage, itself, does not mean a successful crisis management.