No abstract

The past two Atlantic hurricane seasons have been among the most active in history. In the hurricane-prone southeast, broadcast meteorologists and emergency managers want their communities to both understand and trust the severe weather alerts they send out. This study examined how college students, a vulnerable population, view those messages. Results show students believed they understood, and actually did understand, messages with both human and graphics more than human only or graphics only. The human-graphics combination was also the most trusted of the three options. These findings suggest that not only is the human element important in emergency messages but students are also seeking out local television and meteorologists for their weather information more than the internet.

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Little scholarly attention has been given to the ethics of public commenting as part of the online federal rule‐making process. This essay argues the process of public commenting on federal regulations in the digital era threatens both the integrity of those regulations and the integrity of the individuals they are meant to protect. The ongoing risk is anonymous public commenting is open to manipulation. This risk is particularly salient for eRulemaking with implications for human subjects as was shown in the completed revision process to the Common Rule. Guarding against physical and informational harms requires at least some verification of the identities of public commenters. The burdens of verification access are outweighed by the benefits to authentic participation in e‐Rulemaking.

No abstract