7.1. Communication strategies for interacting with the public
The response of the general public that is potentially affected by a crisis, or could be helpful in resolving a crisis, has an impact on the outcome of the crisis response work. Therefore, organizations need to develop and implement communication strategies for Interacting with the public that can help facilitate beneficial responses to crises and crisis response efforts. Communication and interaction with the public during a crisis will be facilitated if daily communication strategies and regular interaction with the public is already well established. The recommendations presented here are aimed at both public and private entities at all levels that are involved in crisis management, in particular crisis managers and roles within the organizations related to design, development and evaluation of communication plans and strategies. Even though not all personnel involved during a crisis or incident needs to communicate directly with the public, being aware of communication strategies aimed at the public and the need of communication competencies can be of use.
Contents
- 1 Implementation
- 2 Understanding the context
- 3 Relevant material
- 4 Navigate in the DRMG
Implementation
Introduction
There are several considerations to explore and investigate in order to achieve the full potential of effective communication with the public that are applicable to all phases of crisis management and everyday operations.
These considerations have been formulated in terms of triggering questions that can be used within the organization, in the context of workshops, focus groups involving communication strategists and other domains experts, to check the effectiveness of the communication strategy that the organization is adopting. The triggering questions are different depending whether we are Before, During or After a crisis or emergency situation.
Before a crisis
The triggering questions BEFORE are meant to stimulate organizations to assess their communication strategies in order to increase their preparedness and capability to respond in the face of a crisis or emergency situation.
When planning for crisis response, it should be taken into account that the public can be helpful both in the prevention phase and during the actual occurrence of the crisis. Therefore, it is important to give proper value to this opportunity through adequate messages. To be able to benefit from resources and assistance provided by the public there is a need for proper organization, planning, education, and training.
Triggering questions
- Do we have a communication strategy or crisis communication plan that gives guidance on who and how to communicate?
- Are relevant roles aware of their responsibilities with regard to communication?
- Is our communication plan sufficiently coordinated with other relevant authorities/organizations?
- Do we have mechanisms to prevent misalignment or conflicts regarding communication among both different organizations and/or different parties of the same organization (e.g. through an appointed common spokesperson)?
Capability to guide effective crisis response by the public
- Does the communication plan include adequate information on how to guide crisis response by the public?
- Are we making sure the information shared with the public does not cause unnecessary alarm or distress?
- Does the communication plan include information to the public on how to avoid using resources that may be needed by others during a crisis?
- Do we provide information on crisis management also during normal/ordinary situations?
- Have we prepared standard public messages or information blocks for use during crises?
- How do we communicate the individual responsibility to increase public preparedness, avoiding an overreliance on authorities?
Communication Channels
- Through what kind of channels are we able to communicate?
- Do we use communication channels that people already use every day?
- Are the communication channels sufficiently up-to-date?
- Does the selection of our communication channels take into account the needs or routines of the public in target?
- Is there a risk of our communication channels being overloaded?
Adequacy of Competencies
- Are we proficient at using the available communication channels?
- Are relevant roles trained, educated, and exercised using this strategy/plan?
- Are we using the appropriate terminology for communication with the public (consider, for instance, different demographics)?
- Do we have access to the appropriate competences (subject matter experts, domain experts etc.) while developing communication strategies/plans?
- Does the communication officer/s have the appropriate (technical) domain knowledge in order to understand, and respond to, information requests from the public (and thus have the ability to work independently)?
Clarity and Accessibility
- Are people aware of where they can access the information?
- Have we considered in which languages the information needs to be communicated?
- What processes or routines do we have to fact-check/quality-assure before we communicate it?
- Do we clearly communicate responsibilities of individuals, as well as of the agencies involved in crisis management?
Acceptability and Trustworthiness
- Does our communication strategy adequately encourage trust and acceptance by the public?
- Is our information presented in a way or place that makes it trustworthy?
- Is our communication avoiding any expression of blame culture, which could be seen as unhelpful or counterproductive scapegoating?
- Are we adequately communicating the benefits of being prepared in case of crisis and not just prescribing how to be prepared?
Prevention of Misinformation
- Do we have procedures to monitor and react to misinformation spread by non-official communication channels?
- Do we have a strategy to counter misinformation and rumors?
- Do we have adequate technical information security in order to prevent misuse or manipulation of our social media/web channels (i.e. prevent hacking and spoofing in order to distort or change official information)?
Ability to listen and collect feedback
- Are we able to engage with the public in order to understand and recognize the diversity of local communities, the local needs, and the available or lacking resources? How?
- Are we able to integrate information from the public or other sources into our communication? How?
- How do we seek feedback from the public?
- What capability do we have to respond to information requests or other interactions with the public?
- How do we communicate the need for people to be self-reliant to a certain degree?
Capability to trigger public engagement
- Does our communication strategy/plan facilitate public participation? How?
- How do we ask for help/resources that corresponds to actual needs?
- Are we prepared to communicate in a timely manner (i.e. do we have prepared messages, websites or other forms of communication)?
During a crisis
The triggering questions DURING can be used to assess and adjust the communication strategies employed by the crisis management team or communications strategist in order to continually tune communications to the most appropriate form and content during crisis management.
Issues such as management of acceptance and trust, collection and sharing of relevant and accurate information, as well as the prevention of misinformation, should be constantly monitored as the crisis develops.
Triggering questions
- Do we need to coordinate our current communication with other authorities/organizations?
- Do we need an appointed common spokesperson to manage the communication towards the public and the media (to avoid misalignment or conflicts among both different organizations and/or different parties of the same organization)?
Capability to guide effective crisis response by the public
- Are we communicating the information required to avoid being affected by the consequences of a crisis?
- Is our communication informing the public on how to avoid using resources that may be needed by others or interfere with our response?
Communication Channels
- What communication channels are we using (i.e. websites, media, social media)?
- Are we using relevant communication channels that people already use every day?
- Are the communication channels sufficiently up-to-date?
- Is there a risk our communication channels are overloaded?
Adequacy of Competencies
- Are we proficient at using the available communication channels?
- Are we using the appropriate terminology for communication with the public (consider, for instance, different demographics)?
- Do we have access to the appropriate competencies (for instance, a communications officer on duty)?
Clarity and Accessibility
- Is the public in target able to understand the information (e.g. use of complex probabilistic models, language barriers etc.)?
- Is our information sufficiently accessible to the public?
- Is our communication adequate to meet the actual needs of the public/media?
Acceptability and Trustworthiness
- Are we communicating in a way to lessen the psychological impacts of people involved and to avoid them feeling a sense of isolation?
- Does the public perceive our communication as trustworthy?
- Do we need to disclose more information and be more transparent to increase acceptance and trust by the public?
- Are we communicating the benefits of following our communication or adhering to our advice?
Prevention of Misinformation
- How do we check if misinformation is spread by non-official communication channels?
- Do we know if the public is ill-informed or diverted by rumours and misinformation?
- How can we counter and mitigate the effects of misinformation (and rumours)?
- How can we redirect the public to official channels for trusted information?
- How are we responding to information needs of the public, to avoid making them look for answers elsewhere?
- How are we checking the accuracy of our information?
Ability to listen and collect feedback
- How are we using the public as a partner in the crisis?
- Are we giving the public sufficient opportunities to help in gathering and spreading relevant information?
Capability to trigger public engagement
- Does our plan include guidance for the public on how to contribute with resources/capabilities to the management of the crisis?
- How are we recognizing and reinforcing supportive behaviours by the public?
- Does our communication encourage the public to provide support to us?
After a crisis
Conducting post-event learning in relation to the way the communication was managed during the crisis, can improve the readiness for future crisis events. This may be done as part of analysis, after-action review in the context of workshops and focus groups, using the triggering question AFTER.
Triggering questions
- Was our communication plan sufficiently coordinated with other relevant authorities/organizations?
- Can we derive lessons-learned, which are worth documenting and feeding into future plans?
- How can these lessons learned be captured into communication strategies/policies (see also 6.1 Systematic management of policies)?
Capability to guide effective crisis response by the public
- Was the information on guiding crisis response by the public included in our plan adequate?
Communication Channels
- Were the communication channels used during the crisis sufficiently up-to-date?
- Was the selection of our communication channels adequate to the public in target?
- Did we experience an overload of our communication channels during the crisis?
Clarity and Accessibility
- Did people experience difficulties in accessing our information source during the crisis?
- Was the necessary information communicated in a language, or in different languages, understandable by the public in target?
- Were the responsibilities of individuals, as well as of the agencies involved in crisis management properly communicated?
Adequacy of Competences
- Do we need to acquire new available communication channels?
- Are relevant roles trained, educated, and exercised using this strategy/plan?
Acceptability and Trustworthiness
- Did the public perceive our communication during the crisis as trustworthy?
Prevention of Misinformation
- Were we successful in counteracting misinformation and rumours?
Ability to listen and collect feedback
- Did we adequately engage with the public during the crisis to understand and recognize different needs, due to local specificities and diversity of the involved communities?
- Were we able to integrate information from the public with other sources of information in an effective manner?
- Were we able to respond to information requests by the public in a timely manner?
Capability to trigger public engagement
- Did the rescuers involve the public in an appropriate way?
- Was the involvement and interaction with the public useful?
- How did the public experience the crisis and their involvement in the response/relief efforts?


Understanding the context
Detailed objectives
A major part of crisis management is managing people – the people involved in the response and the public, both the people directly affected and the people that are at risk of being affected. The response of the public is a contributor and in some situations a decisive factor to the outcome of a crisis. In a sense, the public may become part of the response. Therefore, organizations need to develop communication strategies that facilitate interactions with the targeted public and increase the probability of public responses that are beneficial for the management of a crisis.
A relevant distinction between different groups of the public is here between those who are currently affected by or helping to resolve (e.g. on-site) a crisis and those who are at risk of becoming affected by a crisis or could potentially help (e.g. a current or anticipated crisis). The aim of this capability card is to support development of communication strategies directed towards the public, including those potentially affected by, or could be helpful, in a crisis.
The three main goals of the communication strategies are to guide the public that are potentially affected by the crisis or that could be helpful in crisis, to:
- Avoid being affected by the consequences of a crisis.
- Avoid using resources more needed by others, or to otherwise interfere with the response.
- Contribute resources/capabilities to the response.
The rationale for these goals are the limited resources available to organizations, which mean a need for collaboration and cooperation. The high-level means of achieving these goals are:
Achieve wide information dissemination and negate disinformation
The public needs correct and relevant information to enable informed personal choices. The public needs to have the opportunity to verify information.
Encourage specific behaviour by the public
The organization should see a benefit in encouraging/directing the public to act in a way that is not interfering with relief efforts or worsening the crisis.
Receive off-site resources from the public
The public can offer private resources to help the disaster management, e.g. shelter refugees in their home.
This card is highly relevant for Public_involvement_in_resilience_management. While, not all personnel involved in crisis management communicate directly with the public, communication is an important aspect of crisis response operations, and a vital part of Establishing common ground between collaborating organizations as well as Establishing networks, and Understanding roles and responsibilities.
Targeted actors
The actors that are concerned by this capability card are public and private entities with tasks and roles related to dealing with emergencies and disruptions. The capability card relates to 1) crisis managers that see the need to interact with the general public to avoid, affect, or stimulate their involvement in the crisis, and 2) those who design, review, validate and sign off communication strategies/policies in these organizations, such as managers in general, or specific information, communication, or media officers/strategists.
Indirectly affected actors: formal and informal leaders, and individual citizens of the general public potentially affected by, or helpful in, crises (including those not yet directly affected by or engaged in the response).
The scope of the capability card is response operations during all types of emergencies and disruptions.
Expected benefits
A suitable communication strategy has the expected benefits of:
- Reducing the number of people that are affected by consequences of a crisis.
- Reducing the strain on resources needed on-site during a crisis.
- Increasing the attainable and manageable resources and capabilities, which can aid the relief effort.
Overall, the expected benefit is thus a more resource-efficient and flexible response and management of a crisis.
Relation to adaptive capacity
Facilitate resource mobilization, sharing, and balancing.
Relation to risk management
The interactions between the public and organizations are to a large extent neglected.
Illustration
Following the 2005 hurricane Katrina, the White House commissioned a review of the Federal response during the event. "Public communications" is one of the critical challenges identified by the report on lessons learned from this review. While the dissemination of weather and hurricane tracking information preceding its landfall is one of the success stories of the management of the event, the report mentions two essential areas in which communication to the public was not sufficiently effective:
- The lack of a mechanism for officials to communicate disaster information and instructions at the Federal, State, and local levels. The review notes that setting up the structure, processes and resources for public communication, lacking at the beginning of the event, took several weeks.
- As a result, uncoordinated, and sometimes contradictory, information provided by officials caused confusion. In addition, uncorroborated information provided continuously by the media interfered with emergency response efforts. According to the report, inadequate and ineffective communication fed the public's perception of government sources lacking credibility.
Some cases describe experiences from government - civil society partnership. (Chen, Chen, Vertinsky, Yumagulova, & Park, 2013).
Implementation considerations
Challenges
Organizations need to see the potential contribution of the general public. Further important enablers are creating functioning networks of volunteers and leaders during non-crisis periods, development of two sided communication, and taking into account the cultural characteristic of the public. When developing communication strategies and plans it is important to consider cultural and technical backgrounds of those involved and to include experts with different and relevant backgrounds in the process.
Communicating information to the public during a crisis is always a balancing act between being transparent and establishing a relationship of trust but at the same time knowing what information to disclose, when, and how, in order to not disrupt the crisis management efforts.
Implementation cost
No information


Relevant material
Relevant Practices, Methods and Tools
Practices
Examples of practices regarding guidance of effective crisis response by the public:
- In Australia several emergency management authorities have implemented education programs delivered through the school system. The aim is to increase the community resilience by making the communities “ready, willing and able to do what is necessary” to prepare for or respond in the event of a crisis (Dufty, 2009).
- Texas 2-1-1 is a state program that presents accurate and attainable information from official health and human services to the public. The program applies several communications methods, telephone, web, and physical centres, to create a disaster communication hub between individuals with unmet needs and community services. The information hub is available not only during crises and disasters but at all times and also covers a broad range of every-day issues regarding health care and human services. This means that the place to find information and support in the case of a crisis is the same as in normal cases.
Examples of responses initiated and managed by the public to respond to crisis:
- After Hurricane Katrina there was public engagement to supply shelter/refuge to affected people who lost their homes, e.g. “open your home”-campaigns. Non-profit organizations set up webpages communicating information and guidance to the public on how to support the crisis response.
- Universities accepted students from affected areas and initiated campaigns to supply housing.
- While airline cooperations can help in evacuations bona fide, also individuals donated their frequent flyer-miles to evacuate affected people away from the crisis area.
Methods
There are different ways of communicating with the public, either face-to-face or through different communication channels. The main types of communication during crisis management are more or less one-way communication such as one-to-one and one-to-many, where for instance the crisis response management communicates a message to the one or more people in the general public. There are also methods and tools for the crisis management to gather and receive information from/about the public, for instance localizing people through mobile networks and geographical tagging if different types.
The EU-project Driver’s short paper presented at ISCRAM 2016: “Interaction with Citizens Experiments: From Context-aware Alerting to Crowdtasking” (Havlik, Pielorz, & Widera, 2016) presents the results of an evaluation of four selected crisis management tools: DEWS (Distant Early Warning System sending out alerts based on user profiles and their geographic position), Safe Trip (aimed at tourists, giving safety information etc.), GDACSmobile (facilitates self-organisation of volunteers) and AIT CrowdTasker (supporting communication between crisis response personnel and pre-registered volunteers). The method used to evaluate the tools included a series of experiments with volunteers and professionals within the Driver project.
Tools
Communication channels:
Information regarding crisis management can be communicated by a broad range of channels such as: officials on site or local leaders, word of mouth, letters, notices, one-way radio, two-way radio, telephone, TV, notice boards, internet, and social media.
Examples of one-way communication tools:
- Texas 2-1-1 (http://www.211texas.org) represents a governmentally controlled and information supplied information sink reach through internet, telephone or information centres. The aim is to inform the public.
- In a coastal area (Sunshine Coast, Australia), that is a popular tourist destination, public warning systems for warning of natural and manmade disasters, was according to a workshop with experts, considered as a factor contributing to resilience (Singh-Peterson, Salmon, Baldwin, & Goode, 2015).
- DEWS (Distant Early Warning System) (Esbri, Esteban, Hammitzsch, Lendholt, & Mutafungwa, 2010) is a system developed for tsunami warnings is used to distribute alerts based on user profiles and their geographical positions.
Examples of two-way communication tools:
- Recovers.org is a company-run internet-based framework that can be applied to a specific crisis at the time of need. The framework supports a way to request assistance, donate supply/money and sign up as a volunteer. It can also work as a platform to spread information from “organizers”.
- Safe Trip (http://www.hkv.nl/en/products/apps/231-apps.html) is a mobile application that based on location gives travellers and tourists within Europe relevant safety information. The application can also be used by citizens to inform national authorities of their location, needs and conditions.
- AIT CrowdTasker (http://crowdtasker.ait.ac.at) is a mobile application for targeted one-to-many communication for crisis coordination with volunteers. With the tool crisis management professionals can interact with preregistered volunteers by sharing information and assigning tasks to unaffiliated volunteers, as well as collect structured responses from the public.
- Social media platforms allow both authorities and the public to share information and comments. See the following article for detailed guidance on “incorporating social media in risk and crisis communication” (Veil, Buehner, & Palenchar 2011):
- GDACSmobile facilitates self-organisation of volunteers and aims to improve situation awareness of citizens by sharing an easy-to-understand overview of the situation. See Link et al. 2015 for further details.
- I-REACT is a European-wide platform under development (release Oct, 2018) that aim to integrate emergency management data, including social media. The development is funded by the European Commission (see http://www.i-react.eu).
References
- Artman, H., Brynielsson, J., Johansson, B. J. E., & Trnka, J. (2011). Dialogical Emergency Management and Strategic Awareness in Emergency Communication. In Proceedings of the 8th International ISCRAM Conference 2011.
- Chen, J., Chen, T. H. Y., Vertinsky, I., Yumagulova, L., & Park, C. (2013). Public–private partnerships for the development of disaster resilient communities. Journal of contingencies and crisis management, 21(3), 130-143.
- Dufty, N. (2009). Natural hazards education in Australian schools: How can we make it more effective? The Australian Journal of Emergency Management, 24(2), 13-16.
- Esbri, M. A., Esteban, J. F., Hammitzsch, M., Lendholt, M. and Mutafungwa, E. (2010). DEWS: Distant Early Warning System-Innovative system for the early warning of tsunamis and other hazards, Jornadas Ibéricas de Infraestructuras de Datos Espaciales (JIIDE), Lisbon, Portugal.
- Havlik, D., Pielorz, J., & Widera, A. (2016). "Interaction with citizens" experiments: From context-aware alerting to crowdtasking. In Proceedings of the International ISCRAM Conference 2016.
- Kenney, C. M., & Phibbs, S. (2015). A Māori love story: Community-led disaster management in response to the Ōtautahi (Christchurch) earthquakes as a framework for action. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 14, 46-55.
- Link, D., Widera, A., Hellingrath, B., de Groeve, T., Eidimtaite, G. & Kumar, L. M. (2015). GDACSmobile - An IT Tool Supporting Assessments for Humanitarian Logistics. The International Emergency Management Society (TIEMS) 2015 Annual Conference, Rom, Italy.
- Madni, A. M., & Jackson, S. (2009). Towards a conceptual framework for resilience engineering. IEEE Systems Journal, 3(2), 181-191.
- Singh-Peterson, L., Salmon, P., Baldwin, C., & Goode, N. (2015). Deconstructing the concept of shared responsibility for disaster resilience: a Sunshine Coast case study, Australia. Natural Hazards, 79(2), 755-774.
- Veil, S. R., Buehner, T., & Palenchar, M. J. (2011). A work‐in‐process literature review: Incorporating social media in risk and crisis communication. Journal of contingencies and crisis management, 19(2), 110-122.
Terminology
- Organization
"Person or group of people that has its own functions with responsibilities, authorities and relationships to achieve its objectives Note The concept of organization includes, but not limited to, sole trader, company, corporation, firm, enterprise, authority, partnership, charity or institution, or part or combination thereof, whether incorporated or not, public or private" (Source: ISO22300) - Crisis
"Situation with high level of uncertainty that disrupts the core activities and/or credibility of an organization and required urgent action" (Source: ISO22300) - Competence
"Demonstrated ability to apply knowledge and skill to achieve intended results" (Source: ISO22300) - Governance
Governance describes structures and processes for collective decision-making involving governmental and non-governmental actors (Source: Nye and Donahue (2000)). - Needs
A condition or capability needed by a user to solve a problem or achieve an objective (Source: Hallberg, Jungert, & Pilemalm, 2014)
- Parent theme: Involving the public in Resilience Management
- Resilience abilities
- Contributes to: Monitor, Respond and Adapt
- Supported by: Learn and Evolve
- Categories: Collaboration, Communication, Resources, Planning, Procedures
- Functions of crisis management: BEFORE, Preparation, Plan for crisis, DURING, Damage control and containment, Short-term recovery, Execute and revise plan, AFTER, Learning, Revise crisis management processes, Assess performance