The Perspective of the Affected: What People Confronted With Disasters Expect From Government Officials and Public Leaders

Jong, Wouter; Dückers, Michel

doi:10.1002/rhc3.12150

Cited by 22 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Wu et al (2020) emphasize the need for public leaders to show empathy with workers and express gratitude for the extra burden being imposed on them. Such a message of acknowledgment can be extended to care for those directly affected (Peng et al, 2010), as they may face severe psychological stress from being infected (see also Jong and Dückers (2019) on what the affected expect from their public leaders in times of crisis).…”

Section: Domain Ii: Public Leadership In Times Of Crisismentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating Crisis Communication. A 30-item Checklist for Assessing Performance during COVID-19 and Other Pandemics

Jong

2020

Journal of Health Communication

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The primary objective of this paper is to propose a conceptual checklist to assess crisis communication efforts during pandemics and in their aftermath. No consolidated checklist exists for assessing the effectiveness of crisis communication at all levels during pandemics. A literature review was conducted, encompassing articles on crisis communication during SARS, swine flu, H1N1, ZIKA, Ebola, and/or COVID-19. Based on the review, a comprehensive checklist was developed to enable researchers and evaluators to assess and review all important aspects of crisis communication during pandemics. The final Assessment tool for Crisis Communication during Pandemics (ACCP) consists of 30 criteria. Further research is suggested to validate the checklist. The global COVID-19 pandemic is a crisis of unprecedented proportions. The crisis arrived in full view, yet it caught everyone off guard: politicians, hospital administrators, pundits, business owners, and the general population (Boin, Ekengren, & Rhinard, 2020). What distinguishes a pandemic from other crises are its characteristics as a "long wave event" (McInnes & Hornmoen, 2018). Where crises such as a major fire or airplane crash are over within a few hours or days, COVID-19 is, at the time of writing, an ongoing crisis that has generated widespread socioeconomic impact. Insight into how governments, citizens, businesses, and media have communicated during the pandemic may help to improve our learning from this crisis and support preparation for future pandemics. Countries on all continents have placed their citizens under various forms of lockdown during COVID-19, implementing measures from the obligation to wear face masks and maintain distance from others, to quarantines and school closures. Similar to earlier pandemics (Abraham, 2011), the initial need is for clear communication on what the public needs to do to reduce transmission as well as treatment advice. Everywhere, crisis communication is used as a public health intervention to inform and advise the public on necessary measures to minimize the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. But as COVID-19 progresses around the world, communication efforts are also needed in terms of citizens' resilience, (national) public leadership, and in communicating with stakeholders whose businesses are closed or suffering from lockdown situations. At the same time, we have observed public leaders around the world who did not agree with the measures proposed by experts. US President Trump and Brazilian president Bolsonaro are examples of public leaders who consistently underplayed the messaging of experts with regard to social distancing and the wearing of face masks,

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Section: Domain Ii: Public Leadership In Times Of Crisismentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating Crisis Communication. A 30-item Checklist for Assessing Performance during COVID-19 and Other Pandemics

Jong

2020

Journal of Health Communication

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“…Relatives of victims were also informed prior to public announcements and press statements. The central position of victims and relatives in investigations is a relatively new trend that stands in stark contrast with the information position of the affected in previous decades (Jong & Dückers, ).…”

Section: Lessons Learned From the Mh17 Disaster Investigationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lessons from the MH17 transboundary disaster investigation

Kuipers

Verolme

Muller

2020

Contingencies & Crisis Mgmt

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a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 that had departed a few hours before from Amsterdam airport in the Netherlands was shot down near Donetsk in Ukraine with 298 people on board. None of them survived the crash. The Dutch government soon called for an independent investigation into the causes of the crash. The conditions for such an investigation were highly complex. The circumstances of the crash indicated criminal intent, and rumours were that the plane was shot from the sky. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) stipulates in its Annex 13 that an accident investigation needs to include the country where the crash took place (State of Occurrence), the State of Registry of the aircraft, the State of the Operator of the aircraft (the airline) and the State of the manufacturer of the aircraft. The Netherlands represented none of these states, but the majority of victims were Dutch citizens. The authorities of Ukraine, where the plane crashed, soon asked the Dutch Safety Board to take the lead in the investigation since the Dutch had established capacity to conduct such an investigation, and the Ukraine government was involved in a violent conflict with Russian separatists. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. Abstract Transboundary crises, incidents and disasters, such as chemical spills, airplane crashes and critical infrastructure breakdowns, involving multiple levels and domains of governance pose a particular set of challenges. These challenges also pertain to the investigation and learning phase of a crisis. We study a typical transboundary case: the crash of a Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17), with 298 people on board from a variety of nationalities but the majority from the Netherlands, that crashed in Ukraine in a conflict zone near the Russian border. The MH17 case contains valuable lessons on transboundary disaster investigations. The Dutch Safety Board (DSB) took the lead of the international independent investigation into the causes of the crash.With an international group of stakeholders, the DSB investigated a crash that resulted from a bilateral conflict, requiring the support from Ukraine's powerful neighbour Russia that meanwhile stood accused of withholding evidence and supporting Ukrainian separatists. Retrieving evidence and researching the causality of the crash was no easy task. If countries wish to follow their ambition to learn from accidents in order to "prevent the past repeated," they may more often need to investigate such transboundary cases. This case study probes into how challenges that are typical to transboundary crises affected the accident investigation into the MH17 disaster.We search for lessons on transboundary accident investigation that transcend the boundaries of this single case. Such lessons may prove invaluable for l...

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“…During the early phase of research for this project we heard from NGO staff and field volcanologists how challenging it is to convey details and implications of a volcanic disaster to non-experts, especially during critical episodes (Jong, 2018;110 McBride, 2019). Presenting a holistic view of an emergency evacuation is challenging because multiple processes are connected and happen in parallel, and because some of the technical and scientific concepts are complex.…”

Section: Target Audiences 85mentioning

confidence: 99%

Earth Girl Volcano: Characterizing and Conveying Volcanic Hazard Complexity in an Interactive Casual Game of Disaster Preparedness and Response

Kerlow¹,

Pedreros²,

Albert

2020

Preprint

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Abstract. This paper focuses on the process of developing the Earth Girl Volcano game, and presents some of our best professional practices and lessons-learned during the inter-disciplinary development and production of interactive games of disaster preparedness and response. The survival of many communities during volcanic emergencies is tied to their volcanic preparedness knowledge. Unfortunately there is a gap between scientific terminology and the non-technical language used by the general population. For this reason it is necessary to develop and implement engaging outreach strategies that familiarize communities at risk with volcanic hazards, that show how a volcanic event unfolds and what to do in case of an emergency. Interactive games provide a perfect alternative to engage communities and to impact their resilience. The Earth Girl Volcano game is about making strategic decisions that minimize risk in communities exposed to volcanic hazards. Conveying the complexities of natural disaster preparedness to a general audience is a communication challenge in itself, because of the multi-layered, interrelated and technical nature of the information. We use interactive dramatizations of hazard scenarios for players to identify with the characters in the game and to empathize with communities impacted by volcanic hazards. We present our approach for characterizing the hazard scenarios in precise but nimble ways, and for designing engaging gameplay within the context of a casual strategy game. We seek to engage mainstream audiences and familiarize them with volcanic evacuations and disaster risk management by providing a high degree of playability, using storytelling to create empathy, making creative use of staging and visuals, and using plain language. The combination of all these techniques yields a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, a perfect storm that is able to create an emotional connection between players and the hazard scenarios in the game.

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The Perspective of the Affected: What People Confronted With Disasters Expect From Government Officials and Public Leaders

Cited by 22 publications

References 25 publications

Evaluating Crisis Communication. A 30-item Checklist for Assessing Performance during COVID-19 and Other Pandemics

Evaluating Crisis Communication. A 30-item Checklist for Assessing Performance during COVID-19 and Other Pandemics

Lessons from the MH17 transboundary disaster investigation

Earth Girl Volcano: Characterizing and Conveying Volcanic Hazard Complexity in an Interactive Casual Game of Disaster Preparedness and Response

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