The Intersectionality of Disasters’ Effects on Trust in Public Officials

Objective. This article examines various determinants of communication behaviors related to natural hazards and how those determinants vary for those at home or those away from home. We use the context of a series of storms that provoked communication to determine differences across media platforms, location during the event, sending versus receiving communication, and certain demographic characteristics. Methods. We use a survey of Oklahoma residents fielded in the Spring of 2016 following a series of storms to examine self-reported communication behaviors. Results. Our findings suggest that individuals are more likely to communicate when away from home, across all media for both sending and receiving behaviors. We find that warning reception methods differ importantly across location; those at home rely on authority-to-citizen communication, while others rely on citizen-to-citizen communication. Demographics and socioeconomic status also influence communication patterns. Conclusion. Concerned individuals and emergency managers should use a diverse set of media to communicate, especially under increased risk or hazard, to reach relevant populations across demographics and place-based locations. These strategies must be sensitive to time of day and the availability of media platforms to affected residents.Advances in technology have opened new avenues for communication for both individuals and institutions. In this vein, governments have encouraged direct communication with citizens to transmit information or receive feedback from the public. Interactive communication, such as authority to citizen or citizen to authority (A2C and C2A), has seen tremendous development in government communication activities. These same technologies also promote citizen-to-citizen communication (C2C) of risk information. Understanding how citizens respond to hazards and associated information is especially important for shortwarned events, such as tornadoes, floods, fires, or human-caused events such as terrorism or industrial accidents. These events are likely to provoke increased communication of both types, creating an environment especially open to examination of these behaviors.Information and communication have important implications for the successful governance of a democratic society. Communication is a key, but complex, ingredient to good governance (World Bank, 2009) especially in the context of blame attribution or credit giving (Canales, Pope, and Maestas, 2019) and trust in government (Darr and Moak, Social Science Quarterly 2019). Increasingly, technology and emerging media platforms play an important role in the democratic processes of communication and governance (Calista and Melitski, 2007). Disasters, in particular natural hazards, provide an interesting realm to examine the implications of communication for governance as most natural hazard information originates with the government. Additionally, much disaster communication occurs online, further solidifying the use of disasters as a tool for understanding the g...

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 89%

“Is There Anybody Out There?”: Communication of Natural Hazard Warnings at Home and Away

Wehde

Pudlo

Robinson

2019

“…A dummy variable captures whether a respondent is African American, which is important to consider given the racialized response to Hurricane Katrina (Doherty, ). Education and family income were also included as standard predictors of socioeconomic status, as well as a gender variable, since these are known moderators of government trust (Reinhardt, ). Party was accounted for with a dummy variable indicating whether the respondent identified as a Democrat.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who'll Stop the Rain? Repeated Disasters and Attitudes Toward Government

Darr

Cate

Moak

2019

Objectives. We examine how prior experience with government agencies shapes citizens' assessments of government performance. In Louisiana, two extreme weather events, 11 years apart, required intervention from the state and federal government: Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the 2016 floods. Were Louisianans' attitudes toward government response shaped by their prior experiences during a natural disaster? Methods. We use an original survey of Louisianans to assess the role of Katrina experience in performance assessments of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Louisiana state government in 2016. Results. We find a significant negative relationship: flood aid applicants in 2016 rated state government much lower, but only if they also applied for Katrina aid. Conclusions. Those with personal experience with FEMA hold lower expectations of state government performance, which deteriorated under the Jindal Administration, and look to the federal government for support. Prior experience with government agencies establishes expectations of responsibility that endure years later.

“…Contributing scholars use disasters as a lens through which to examine policy windows (Plein, ; Pope and Leland, ), legislative behavior (Yeo and Knox, ), and the relationship between citizens and government. Studies in this issue examine public praise and blame for government performance (Darr, Cate, and Moak, ; Canales, Pope, and Maestas, ), trust in government and public officials (Reinhardt, ), information as a public good (Wehde, Pudlo, and Robinson, ), and factors mediating partisan polarization (Ross, Rouse, and Mobley, ). Collectively, this issue demonstrates the utility of examining disasters to deepen and broaden our understanding of social and political behaviors and democratic governance.…”

Section: Disasters Are Social and Therefore Politicalmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this issue, Reinhardt () finds that disaster experience (or lack thereof) conditions political trust in different ways for different subgroups of the population. She finds that for those with first‐hand experience, education attenuates differences in political trust between race and ethnic groups, while for those with only second‐hand information about a disaster, education exacerbates them.…”

Section: Disasters Reflect and Affect Democratic Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Reinhardt () examines the intersection of race/ethnicity, class, and gender for groups with varying disaster experience, and finds that the disaster experience shapes how this constellation of identities determines political trust. Though previous work on political trust yields no consensus on a gender‐based effect, the author shows a clear effect of gender according to race, finding that black women have the lowest political trust, followed by black men, white men, and white women.…”

Section: Disasters Reveal Shared Experience and Collective Identitymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Expanding Social Science Through Disaster Studies

Reinhardt

Ross

2019

Self Cite

Objectives. This article provides an overview of how the interdisciplinary field of disaster studies contributes to the social sciences. Methods. The following themes are explored in relation to the articles contained in the special issue: disasters are social and political phenomena that generate policy change, disasters reflect and affect democratic governance, and disasters reveal shared experience and collective identity. Results. Disaster studies bridge the social sciences theoretically and methodologically. Given the scope of disaster impacts-across social, political, economic, ecological, and infrastructure spheres-and the policy response they garner involving public, private, and civic actors, they offer a lens by which to see society and politics in a way that no other critical events can. Conclusion. Disaster studies offer important applications of social science theories and concepts that expand the field, broaden our reach as social scientists, and deepen our understanding of fundamental social processes and behaviors in meaningful ways.According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA, 2018), disasters in the United States with price tags over $1 billion have risen from two per year in 1980 to more than 10 per year in 2017. For the more than 200 events NOAA has tracked and documented, the United States has sustained over $1.5 trillion in damages and costs. Increases in the frequency of extreme-weather events have combined with 24-hour media cycles to bring disasters to the forefront of domestic and global policy agendas. Amidst this attention, social scientists explore disaster-prompted research puzzles by engaging in the interdisciplinary field of disaster studies.Natural and engineering sciences have a part to play in disaster studies, though a disaster is more than physical characteristics of a natural or technical hazard event. A disaster is spurred by a critical hazard event, but it is characterized by the social disruption it causes (Quarantelli, Lagadec, and Boin, 2007; Reinhardt 2015b). Disasters are socially constructed, occurring only when hazards intersect with social vulnerabilities, political institutions, and individual perceptions (Paton, 2006). Social sciences, fundamentally concerned with understanding motives and reasons for action (Winch, 2015), are therefore ideal for studying the social, economic, and political causes and consequences of disasters.With this special issue, we make the case that disaster studies is an interdisciplinary field not only relevant to, but important for the development of, the social sciences. The articles herein demonstrate how the study of disasters helps us apply core social science theories to expand our understanding of fundamental human behaviors, highlighting disasters as human-centric phenomena that permeate cross-disciplinary boundaries. Both separately and collectively, we present a picture of disasters as social and political phenomena