(Cross-posted to PR Profs and PR Open Mic)
The swine flu outbreak is an opportunity to discuss basic principles of risk communication. Risk communication includes encouraging people to take preventive measures in the face of risk (anything from evacuating before a flood to taking daily vitamins) and helping people cope with risks, such as terrorism. Below are guidelines for risk communication.
1. Think through your word choice. Does the situation warrant the label of “pandemic,” or would “outbreak” be appropriate? You don’t want to scare people unnecessarily or have the opposite problem of leaving people unprepared.
2. Look for aspects of the risk to highlight, depending on whether you want to heighten or ease the sense of risk.
If you want to increase public concern about global warming, your message strategy would differ from what you would do if you were developing message points about the swine flu outbreak. Based on Peter Sandman’s research, people feel more comfortable with risks that have the following features:
- People choose their chances of exposure to the risk (e.g., whether to travel to Mexico).
- The risk is naturally created, rather than resulting from human actions.
- The risk is easy to detect, such as an illness that has identifiable symptoms.
- The problem can be eliminated.
3. Acknowledge uncertainty when speculating. For credibility, risk communicators needs to be accurate in their communication, which usually involves using tentative statements. Also, for situations like the swine flu outbreak, Peter Sandman shared the following sound bite with reporters: “Everyone needs to learn how to say, ‘This could be bad, and it’s a good reason to take precautions and prepare’ and ‘This could fizzle out.’ They need to simultaneously say both statements.”
4. Give people something to do to lower their risk. However minimal it might be, give people something to do to reduce their risk (see here and here for examples). When the Washington, D.C., snipers were in my area in 2002, I followed police recommendations featured in The Washington Post to walk briskly in a zig zag pattern. Even though I felt silly walking zig zag, I felt like I had some measure of control in reducing my risk. Also note that people tend to feel more comfortable with risk when they choose to expose themselves to it. Even providing the threat level for air travel gives people some amount of choice in deciding whether the risk is worth the trip. For more information about the importance of this guideline, see Kim Witte’s extended parallel process model.
5. Give frequent updates and repeat core messages through various forms of media. An example of this is CDC’s Twitter account (hat tip to the In Case of Emergency blog). Here is a quote from a communication expert I interviewed for my dissertation: “Nowadays, you have to over-communicate… The information doesn’t filter. We have nine or 10 ways of communicating.”
6. Consider cultural barriers. At the University of Oregon Conference on HIV/AIDS in Africa, Pauline Peters, a lecturer at Harvard University, discussed cultural considerations for HIV/AIDS prevention campaigns in Malawi. Simply telling people to wear condoms to protect themselves would not work well in this environment. Many people there viewed condoms as poisonous and associated condoms with illicit sex. A best practice in developing messages is to partner with representatives of the community to determine message design and delivery.
Interested in teaching a risk communication class?
Feel free to use my course schedule for graduate students as a resource, which includes a list of journal articles and other resources. We are reading two books for the class, which I strongly recommend:
- “Effective Risk Communication: A Message-Centered Approach,” by Timothy L. Sellnow, Robert R. Ulmer, Matthew W. Seeger, and Robert S. Little
- “Trust Us, We’re Experts! How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles With Your Future,” by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber.
I reviewed many risk communication books before selecting these two, and I also paid attention to book cost when making these selections. These books as a combination work well; their different approaches can result in rich class discussion.
Update
I received an insightful comment from Peter Sandman to the PR Profs copy of this blog post. If the swine flu becomes a pandemic, the discussion points here will be important: http://www.psandman.com/ (see the top story).
Tiffany,
I find your six tips for a successful message design very helpful. I think considering cultural differences is very important, because like you said, while our culture really values the use of condoms, African culture may rebuke them. In cases like that, what would be the best way to turn around such thinking? How do you convince a culture that what they believe is wrong is actually good?
Sanja
That is the million dollar question, Sanja. The first step is to identify your audience and not generalize cultural beliefs across regions. Cultural beliefs in one country can vastly differ.
The next step is to find cultural leaders that represent your target audiences and somehow get buy-in from them (which is not necessarily possible). Condoms in the United States were popularized through cultural channels such as MTV.
Cultural leaders can help identify the best channels of communication for the target audience and can shape messages in ways that are culturally appropriate (ideally). For the WHO smallpox vaccination campaign, workers positioned the smallpox vaccination as a way to worship a god in some instances. Sadly, the WHO also forcefully vaccinated people when communication attempts did not work.
There is a fascinating article about the WHO smallpox vaccination campaign by Pat Curtin that you can find through the library. Search by journal title on the library site. Enter “Journal of Public Relations Research.” Follow the links to the site. Then pull up year 2006 issue 1 and you’ll find Pat’s article. You’ll want to start on the fourth page if you want to jump to the story. I was glued to this article like I was to every Harry Potter book! It’s can’t-put-down reading.
I think that #4 is especially important in the case of the swine flu. I haven’t been following the epidemic as much as I should bee (I’m behind on current events), but I remember that for a while, the message was don’t go to the hospital to get checked out for swine flu unless you had related symptoms. The other thing I remember was that there were few preventative recommendations that were given (except that we should wear those silly surgical masks, and who in this country is going to do that!).
One message that I do think that was effectively communicated was that more people die from the regular flu than are expected to die from swine flu, and that if the virus was detected early enough, death can be prevented.
The person you interviewed who said “Nowadays, you have to over-communicate… The information doesn’t filter. We have nine or 10 ways of communicating” is right on the money, especially with the panic that was spread across the twitterverse. There were many different messages about the virus being spread around, and a lot of misinformation along with that. I think during times like that, it’s ok for health officials to bombard people with accurate information. For a while, the misinformation being disseminated via twitter had me checking the same NYT article several times just to make sure I actually had the right information.
That is a great point. Providing context (e.g., more people will die from regular flu than are expected to die from swine flu) can help people grasp how serious something is. Thanks for your thoughtful contribution, Bryan.
I am taking a course on communication studies and I felt I should understand the nitty-gritty of message design. Your tips on risk communication is worthwhile. I must also add that communities do not encourage the use of condoms do subscribe to the concept of self regulation, ie that pre-marital sex is bad; so also is having sex with more thank one partner. In some societies also the opinion leaders may be religious leaders who do not want to be seen to be encouraging sex between unmarried couples. In this instance, how does the message designer proceed?
Thank you.
Onyike, I don’t think there is an easy solution here. The best approach is going to involve co-planning with community leaders.