Accident Report Interpretation

Abstract

The language and approach we use to describe the past can have a strong influence on the audience’s interpretation of our story. In our experiment, we explore, using 3 different conditions, how the framing, language and style of an accident report can affect the audience’s proposed solutions to manage the problems found. We find that the approach used to create an accident report can have a powerful influence on the audience’s decision making. Whether we are describing an accident in a linear manner, using a systems approach, or we are accepting of multiple stories which are not linear or coherent, the methods we use to capture and communicate the story have a profound impact on the actions decided upon by the reader.