Emergency and Risk Communication: Ten Things You Should NEVER Say on Television

Whether for preparedness, safety and wellness, or response, engaging the public is a necessity and a challenge. Effective risk communication must include identifying audiences and understanding how they perceive the messages we broadcast. Clear communication requires a well-defined objectives and a clear message, but other essential considerations will determine effective message delivery, including:

• Imminence vs. inevitability: this relates to connotation, not accuracy: it’s technically correct to say that almost any type of disaster will occur at some point, but low-probability, high-impact incidents may not occur within a meaningful time-span for the audience, and repeated alarms may become part of the background;
• Professional knowledge vs. common knowledge: “common sense” is subjective; we should respect our audiences’ intelligence but shouldn’t expect them to start with our knowledge base and assumptions or reach the same conclusions that we do;
• Panic myth vs. how people actually respond: mass panic in crisis is extraordinarily uncommon; most people respond altruistically, but may not know the best course of action. Regardless of intentions, however, they don’t like being lied to; trust them with the truth, admit uncertainty, focus on what we want them to do and how best to lead them to it.
• Jargon vs. plain language: jargon is useful as technical shorthand, as fellow practitioners understand the terminology; we create a barrier between “us” and “them,” mostly because well-meaning practitioners forget that people outside the discipline don’t understand. Rather than simply defining terminology, develop messages that contain key content in understandable and unintimidating terms.