Having been deployed as a crisis communicator to Baton Rouge, Louisiana immediately after the New Orleans levees failed last year, I am frequently asked to talk about the experience and my opinion of why so much went wrong so quickly in the aftermath. My quick response is "Too little too late."
Given the sheer magnitude of Hurricane Katrina, I’m not sure we will ever be able to identify all the factors that contributed to the communication nightmare that ensued. However, there are valuable lessons to be learned and applied in future crises, particularly for the growing discipline of risk communication.
Though many things did go right and heroic deeds were in great supply, for those of us charged with getting success stories to the media, it came down to the old adage that the actions of a few can spoil it for everyone.
The media had not only an abundance of dramatic and heart-wrenching imagery, but also enough conflict and controversy over the response to report or debate 24/7 for weeks to come. This helped accelerate the collapse of any overall coordinated response and fed the outrage of evacuees and the general public.
Too little too late
However, the "outrage" was too little too late.
Risk communication expert Peter Sandman, Ph.D., argues that risk = hazard + outrage (www.psandman.com/articles/underest.htm). Sandman and others use the labels "hazard" and "outrage" to refer, respectively, to the technical (the probability of undesirable outcomes) and non-technical (public opinion) aspects of risk.
Sandman has reported that telling angry or frightened people who are experiencing a small hazard to calm down has the reverse effect. What works is counterintuitive; spokespeople should apologize for mistakes, credit others for improving matters, and acknowledge the public's concern.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s National Risk Management Research Laboratory suggests that reducing outrage is a socially valuable thing to do only if the outrage is misplaced—that is, if the hazard, the technical risk, is genuinely small. Similarly, increasing people’s outrage, as activists do, is socially valuable only if the hazard is genuinely big.
In short, the public generally overestimates risk when a sense of outrage is high and the hazard is low. Conversely, the public can fall victim to fatal complacency if the hazard is great and the outrage is low. As a result, effective risk communication sometimes calls for facilitating a change in the level of outrage to attain the desired response to a hazard.
One of the initial communication failures in the wake of Hurricane Katrina was the failure to intensify residents’ level of outrage, or their perception of the risk involved; doing so could have resulted in an earlier and more effective evacuation. Lives may have been saved.
After Katrina made landfall and the levees failed, victims had every right to be outraged. Their outrage would have been better served before Katrina reached landfall.
Successful communication that results in the desired and necessary level of audience outrage takes careful consideration and planning. It’s not enough to know that outrage must be instilled in the target audience. Getting the desired response is a result of knowing how familiar the audience is with the impending type of hazard and understanding what it will take to affect their level of involvement.
Even so, experienced communicators realize that our target audience has a right to their emotions and that all we can do is provide the information that they need or want to make an informed decision. It may not be the action we want, but at the very least it will be an informed decision.
Long-time residents of a hurricane-prone area can grow complacent when year after year they dodge the "big one." It’s a matter of the commonplace versus the exotic: People tend to fear the commonplace less. Many Gulf Coast residents had a "diminished risk perception" regarding hurricanes—until Katrina struck.
Is this why Hurricane Rita evacuees responded quicker when asked to evacuate just days after Katrina? Yes. I believe the success of the Rita evacuation was based on something called "vicarious rehearsal" as much as effective risk communication.
Vicarious rehearsal is the ability to experience the disasters of others from a distance (through media coverage) and mentally rehearse what reaction you would take. Those evacuating for Rita responded based on observations made while watching the Katrina debacle unfold one week before.
Plan and practice
While conducting graduate research, Barbara Reynolds of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 90 percent of a crisis response is comprised of communicating. Yet, businesses and agencies allocate on average one percent of their overall budget to crisis and risk communication. If they do have a plan and exercise it, only nine percent of that drill tests communication.
Mapped messages
Every crisis plan must have a communication plan and every communication plan should have "mapped" messages. Message mapping is the process of creating multiple layers of information by gathering agency or company leadership, content experts and communication specialists to map out key messages that address a specific crisis or event. In these structured "what if" workshops, participants are guided through the process of identifying:
- The issue or crisis.
- Stakeholders (individuals or groups impacted by the crisis in some way) who become the target audience.
- The three primary questions most likely to be asked.
- The appropriate and accurate answers to each question.
- Three supporting statements for each answer.
- A plan for most effectively delivering the messages to the target audience.
Thanks to the work of Vincent T. Covello, Ph.D., and others, considerable progress has been made in the science of message mapping. The process helps to anticipate a potential crisis, assess the risk and develop a plan for communicating about that risk to the public.
While working during Hurricane Katrina, I realized that message mapping is invaluable, but not always possible while in the trenches. Sometimes you may find your prepared messages inappropriate because the situation is taking an unexpected turn. Or you may be unable to conduct real-time message mapping because the sheer pace of the disaster is too intense. In those instances, the key is becoming so conditioned to the mapping process that you or your team can use this great risk communication tool on the run.
As a crisis communication team leader for Louisiana State University and the field hospital in Baton Rouge, I found myself using many of the principles of message mapping during an evolving disaster.
Though there was not time to gather university leaders, content experts and professional communicators to hammer out message maps, I did work with teams of leaders and content experts to ensure that we identified the issue, target audiences, three most likely asked key questions and supporting statements for each message. The content expert ensured that the data was accurate, while the person in charge (university chancellor, incident commander or lead for a partner agency) provided insights into target audience profiles, any agency or entity concerns and final approval of the messages.
While this approach was not as complete as preparing the message maps in advance, and is not recommended in lieu of developing pre-approved messages, it was efficient and effective in most cases.
Of course, knowing your audience and how to effectively communicate the risk is all for naught without one key component: the commitment of an organization’s leadership.
As risk communication experts continue to develop and apply this new science, quite possibly one of the greatest challenges we face today is "selling" leadership on the importance of crisis and risk communication preparedness. Fortunately, my LSU team enjoyed the leadership of Chancellor Sean O’Keefe, who fully understood and supported the work that we accomplished during the disaster, providing whatever tools we needed throughout.
While the industry is successfully educating management on the critical need for active risk communication, too often we find leadership practicing their own version of vicarious rehearsal; they require a disaster before realizing that risk communication must be integrated into their overall plan.
Sadly, that will be too little too late.
Robert J. Alvey (ralvey@crisis-conflict.com) is cofounder of Crisis & Conflict Communications (3C) and a crisis/risk communication practitioner and trainer who has applied the principles of message mapping, crisis and risk communication to the U.S. anthrax attack, the SARS outbreak, West Nile virus, bioterrorism preparedness, and pandemic and avian influenza planning. 3C specializes in preparedness planning, training and response.
|
|
