and scale down operations. Misinformation is rising and trust in traditional broadcast and print media is declining as alternative sources of information become readily available. Basic assumptions about truth in journalism are being increasingly challenged by accusations of fake news, hyperbole, and the existence of alternative facts. Confirmation bias – whereby people search for “facts” that confirm what they already believe and discount information that is inconsistent with their beliefs – has become epidemic. Citizen journalism and peer‐to‐peer communication often replace information from professional journalists and other central or “authoritative” sources.
1.4.4 Changes in Laws, Regulations, and Societal Expectations
Right‐to‐know and right‐to‐participate laws and regulations have increased. Many public and private sector organizations have made risk and crisis communication and consultation an obligatory task of risk and crisis management. Citizens increasingly expect risk and crisis managers to recognize that (a) people and communities have a right to take part in decisions that affect their lives, their property, and the things they value; and (b) the goal of best communication practice is not to diffuse concerns or avoid action but to engage people in a dialog that produces informed individuals and organizations that are involved, thoughtful, solution‐oriented, and collaborative.
1.4.5 Changes in Concerns about Health, Safety, and the Environment
Public concerns about exposures to potentially toxic substances, physical agents, and hazardous events have significantly increased in recent decades. These interests have led to increasing demands for risk information in crisis and noncrisis situations. Interest and concerns about risks have also resulted in the expansion of risk‐related issues by traditional broadcast and print outlets and on social media channels.
Inequalities in health, safety, and exposures to hazards between different populations are increasingly being brought to light. The increased understanding of the harm caused by governments and organizations to marginalized, vulnerable, and minority populations has further eroded trust, increased suspicion of “authorities,” and raised demand for more nuanced information and more complete data.
1.4.6 Changes in Levels of Trust
The erosion of trust in traditional experts and authorities is driving the need for more effective risk, high concern, and crisis communication. Over the past 50 years, there has been a precipitous drop in trust in institutions overall and with risk management institutions specifically.
Perceptions that undermine trust include observations that technical experts and authorities are:
paternalistic and insensitive or dismissive of concerns and fears about risks as irrational;
unwilling to listen, express empathy, or acknowledge the emotions people feel when facing risks;
unwilling to be fully transparent;
unwilling to share complete and timely information about what they know about a risk;
unaware they are using bureaucratic or technical language and jargon that people in the public do not understand;
more interested in protecting their positions of power than in protecting people from harm or adverse impacts;
often inconsistent in their statements about risks;
inconsistent in their recommendations regarding preventive and protective actions; and
often unwilling to allow meaningful stakeholder participation and engagement in the decision‐making process.
In this distrusting environment, advantages accrue to those with effective risk and crisis communication skills.
1.4.7 Changes in the Global Political Environment
In the current global political environment, debates about how to manage and control risks often become hostile. Arguments and polarization often replace compromise and joint problem‐solving. Disagreements among stakeholders arise from many interconnected sources, crossing political and geographical boundaries. Small disruptions often rapidly escalate, due in part to the complexity and coupling of large, complex systems. The principles and practices of risk, high concern, and crisis communication presented here are essential to make effective policies and sound decisions.
1.4.8 The COVID‐19 Pandemic and the Changed Communication Landscape
In December 2019, a new viral disease was reported in Wuhan, a city of 11 million people in Hubei Province, China. Initially, Chinese health officials reported no human‐to‐human cases of transmission. However, that assessment quickly changed. Human‐to‐human cases multiplied. Wuhan went into a near complete lockdown, but not before cases began to show up around the world. By March of 2020, the virus had spread to virtually every nation on the planet and entire nations urgently implemented stay‐at‐home orders. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic. In a little over one year, COVID‐19 went on to kill more than 2.5 million people, including more than 500,000 in the United States. Hope did not appear on the horizon until the arrival of vaccines in January and February 2021.
The COVID‐19 pandemic reshaped the communications landscape in profound ways. Because of the harm being caused by pandemic, the need for effective risk and crisis communication was never greater. Navigating the pandemic called for sophisticated communication skills, not just for public health officials but throughout government – in fact, through all organizations, as change and uncertainty causing high concern became the norm. Even those well‐skilled in crisis communication faced unprecedented challenges. The crisis was global, and few governments were prepared for the communication challenges. Responses and messages were uncoordinated, and too often politicized. Even messages based in science were often confusing and frequently changing, as experts quickly learned more about the disease and its means of spread. And the audience for the messages – essentially everyone on earth – had difficulty hearing and understanding even clear messages, as they were experiencing high levels of stress, uncertainty, and anxiety about their health and every aspect of their lives.
COVID‐19 was the first pandemic in history where social media was used on a massive scale to communicate information aimed at keeping people safe, informed, productive, and connected. Unfortunately, social media also created a communication infodemic – defined as an overabundance of information, both online and offline, that is overwhelming in its volume, largely unstoppable in the speed and breadth of its spread, and which includes as much, or more, unreliable, misleading, and inaccurate content as it does facts and useful advice. The COVID‐19 infodemic undermined the global response to COVID‐19 and cost lives. The communication infodemic jeopardized measures to control the pandemic by enabling and amplifying misinformation, i.e. incorrect information, and disinformation, i.e. information deliberately intended to deceive.
In April 2020, the UN Secretary‐General launched the United Nations Communications Response initiative to combat the spread of mis‐ and disinformation. At the World Health Assembly in May 2020, the World Health Organization Member States passed a resolution that recognized that effective risk and crisis communication was a critical part of controlling the COVID‐19 pandemic. We continue to learn from the communication failures and successes of the COVID‐19 crisis, and COVID‐19‐related findings, examples, and case studies are contained throughout this book. The experience of the global pandemic profoundly illustrates
