This summary will analyze the theories related to crisis communications in the emergency management field. I currently live in Prince William County, VA and will use this community to tie these theories to real world execution. I recently finished taking AMU’s EDMG 503, Emergency Planning and Management, course that required a visit to an Emergency Operation Center (EOC) of our choice. I chose to visit Prince William County’s EOC which is a great choice to show how well emergency management concepts are being implemented. Being close to Washington, D.C. has made Prince William County successful from a community and regional standpoint. Social media use continues to grow and will become the backbone of crisis communications due to their ability for fast and wide dissemination of information to the public. The textbook readings for this assignment come from Chapters One, Two, Five, and Eight from the Disaster Communications in a Changing Media World book written by George Haddow, and Kim Haddow. A successful communication plan takes time to build and will always be built on lessons learned by current and former emergency managers.
Risk communications can be a simple conversation between two people talking about something they see and have concerns about. Most of the time, risk communications will be thought of as communications during a major incident. The primary focus of risk communications, no matter the level of the incident, is to exchange pertinent information between parties that are interested in the incident. Understanding this definition of risk communications will help emergency managers build their communications plan. “The mission of an effective disaster communications strategy is to provide timely and accurate information to the public in all four phases of emergency management” (Haddow & Haddow, 2014, p. 4). During my interview of Brian Misner, Emergency Management Coordinator for Prince William County, I learned that the county has a language barrier problem. This problem is something that can make day-to-day actions difficult but becomes extremely difficult during an incident when information is being passed in one language. The county primarly speaks English but there are multiple other languages present. I have found this same barrier to be true during my own real world events that I have worked in the Coast Guard.
“The foundation of an effective disaster communications strategy is built on the following five critical assumptions: Customer Focus, Leadership Commitment, Inclusion of Communications in Planning and Operations, Situational Awareness, and Media Partnership” (Haddow & Haddow, 2014, p. 4). When it comes to communicating with the community of the above five assumptions, I personally believe that Customer Focus is the most important one. Customer Focus is the emergency manager’s ability to understand what information is needed properly build a communication plan and structure that can deliver the information in a timely fashion (Haddow & Haddow, 2014, p.5). I found out that over 30% of the community does not speak English. This has to be accounted for in developing communication mechanisms to ensure 100% of the community receives the message and is able to understand it.
There are several principles that can help guide emergency managers and other leaders on how to properly engage with the public. When I read the principles, I immediately realized these principles need to be followed in order to create a successful communication plan. George and Kim Haddow describe these principles as (Haddow & Haddow, 2014, p.71):
- Needs of your customers
- Commit to effective communications
- Make communications an integral part of all planning and operations
- Be transparent
- Information is accurate
- Release in a timely manner
- Make your team available and accessible
- Connect with your audience
- Use social media to build partnerships
If the emergency managers decide to ignore these principles, then they will quickly loose the trust of the public. Once the public loses trust it will not be regained during the incident. It will take along time to regain it and it will usually require new faces to be inserted into the program to show a fresh start. The principles are an amazing tool to develop the communications plan because its everything that we would want to happen for ourselves and our family if an incident occurred and not in the emergency management field.
Social media has become one of the greatest communication tools available to emergency managers. In today’s creation of a communication plan, social media has to be a focal point for the method of delivery. Social media can do language translation, which is a huge benefit to my county. Instead of now needing to develop the same information in multiple languages, emergency managers can create it in one language and allow the social media platform to translate for them. Emergency managers will lose the fight against social media if they try to cut it out and continue with traditional methods of communicating. Social media is a beast that must be constantly monitored and receive tender love and care. Social media will do two things for the emergency manager: turn the public against you or have the public feeling safe and informed. With a majority of the public able to access social media, anyone now can be a news reporter. This takes away from the emergency manager the ability to control the release of information. Not only do they have to release information but also that have to do damage control on the non-accurate posts. This makes the job that much harder. The days of the public waiting for a press release to provide an update are gone. Prince William County has created a website to show all of their available methods of communication with the public (www.pwcgove.org/Ready).
During my EOC site visit and interview, I learned about this website and its capabilities. I believe this is an awesome tool that has been created. The primary social media sites that are used by the county are Facebook and Twitter. Currently other social media platforms are not utilized for pushing information to the community by the county. I also believe the other platforms have not developed into that kind of communication platform but has the potential in the future. The county still does the traditional information postings on the TV through partnerships with the two primary cable providers (Comcast and Verizon). No partnership is currently in place with satellite TV providers but in my personal opinion, I don’t think it would be cost effective to create that partnership. Radio stations partnerships are still maintained but I believe are maintained for people who still use FM and AM channels. With satellite radio becoming more prevalent to music lovers, I believe the awareness of this capability has become lost on the residents that are not permanent residents (military and federal government employees). The best communication the county has is one that is a locally created one called the Prince William County Alert Network (PWCAN). This network is a transformation of the traditional wireless emergency alerts that cell phone providers provide. PWCAN is not something that is automatic for the residents of the county. A resident must register an account to receive alerts. This network is more robust in the sense that it can do calls, text, and emails. The user can create parameters for the types of incidents they wish to be informed on.
Prince William County, from my interview, has been doing a great job at working Geroge and Kim Haddow’s principles into their communication efforts. The needs of the customers will always be the most important principle. Without following that principle, it will be very hard to incorporate the rest of the principles into the communication efforts. The PWCAN development and deployment shows the county’s commitment to effective communications. The website that was created allows the county to be transparent by posting information as simple as road conditions, building statuses, and current weather projections. Recently I joined, the beginning of May, the PWCAN and I have personally seen accurate and timely information releases. The social media partnership is readily apparent in their creation of a Facebook and Twitter page.