Public Disaster Communication and Child and Family Disaster Mental Health: a Review of Theoretical Frameworks and Empirical Evidence.

Disaster communication is important in improving community preparedness because it can help convey information and instructions for the community to face and respond to disasters effectively. This study aims to analyse the role of communication in disaster management in Indonesia based on a review of various related literature sources. The research uses literature study approach, analysing the publication of communication science journals discussing communication and natural disasters in Indonesia. The data sources include various relevant scientific publications, since the year 2000. The results showed that: 1) The types of natural disasters that are the main concern in the publication of communication journals in Indonesia are disasters on a national and regional scale such as floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions. 2) Various communication topics include disaster communication for community mitigation and preparedness, public communication and social media in disasters, crisis communication and disaster communication management, communication and community participation in disasters, as well as disaster communication and vulnerability issues of vulnerable groups. 3) Efforts to bridge the gap between research and disaster management practice are challenges that must be faced so that communication science can make a greater contribution to improving the effectiveness of disaster management and mitigation in Indonesia.

Flooding across rural Appalachia has historically negatively impacted communities, and flood frequency is only expected to increase in the region as global temperatures rise. This indicates a need for effective disaster and crisis communication in flood-prone communities within the region. The discourse of renewal and readiness for renewal theories provide potential avenues for improving crisis and disaster communication. Readiness for renewal in particular focuses on closing the gap between the pre and post-crisis phases. However, readiness for renewal has yet to be applied to disaster communication and has not been studied qualitatively. Additionally, ethical guidelines for communication within renewal have not been comprehensively studied. The purpose of this research was to explore and expand on disaster communication theory while informing practice by applying the lens of renewal discourse and readiness for renewal to natural disasters across two rural West Virginia communities from the perspective of care-based disaster communication. To do so, in-depth interviews with floodplain managers, county emergency managers, city emergency managers, local government officials, volunteer organization directors, and other community leaders were conducted and analyzed. Results from this research add to the theoretical development connecting readiness for renewal, ethics of care, risk and disaster communication, and public interest communication within related scholarship, and provide insight and recommendations that can be applied to the practical world.

ABSTRACTAustralia has experienced many disasters, and since colonization, a plethora of inquiries have been held into those events. Those inquiries have issued numerous recommendations about how disasters might be better dealt with, responded to, and managed. This article is a scoping review of recommendations from 2003 to early 2023 that emerged from disaster inquiries in Australia, focusing on those relating to public communication about disasters. The data were sourced from a publicly available online, searchable database that captured recommendations from 186 inquiries into disasters that were held in Australia between 2003 and the early part of 2023. Using a thematic analysis, we examine the types of themes that emerge from communication‐related recommendations. We use expectation gap theory because communication has been and continues to emerge as a major issue and often a problem in all phases of disasters in Australia, with emergency organizations often failing to meet community expectations about communication. Effective public communication in the various phases of disasters is a key aspect in the management of and response to all phases of disasters. Our findings have policy and practice implications for those managing public communication in disasters and for those researching communication and communication failures and gaps in disasters.

Background Effective communication is essential for emergency preparedness, public health, and wildfire recovery. However, existing emergency communication is often tailored for individuals proficient in English, leading to the marginalization of middle-aged and older Latino migrant and seasonal farmworkers (MSFWs) who lack English proficiency. This study explored the perceptions, communication, and coping strategies of MSFWs in Southern Oregon during the 2020 wildfire disaster, addressing a significant gap in disaster communication research. Methods We conducted seven in-depth interviews with key informants and one MSFW focus group (N = 11). Key informants included local health and service providers, teachers, and activists. Thematic analyses were used to analyze the data. Results The sample's perceptions of the disaster revealed fear, sadness, uncertainty, loss, and stress before, during, and after the fires. Most strikingly, the research highlighted the stark absence of coordinated public disaster communication tailored to this population. Communication relied on informal channels such as word of mouth, visible signs, and cell phone usage. Post-disaster narrations emphasized community resilience in recovery efforts and more public service involvement in the health and wellness of the respondents. Conclusion These results communicate the dire lack of structured disaster communication for the respondents and their immediate community. Timely group-appropriate communication is a basic need for equitable preparedness for inevitable natural disasters for the respondents. Disaster communication interventions should leverage community-based organizations to enhance mass communication through community-identified media such as cell phones and community conversations. Such communication must use the population's native language or Spanish at a minimum.

Mechanisms of mental illness anti-stigma messaging matter: Leveraging mental health communication inequities among Latinx populations to understand what works and what we can do better

Effective communication and inter-actor collaboration are essential components of disaster management, crucial for mitigating disaster impacts and accelerating recovery processes. Public communication plays a vital role in disseminating timely, accurate, and comprehensible information to the public, while collaborative strategies ensure coordinated actions among government agencies, non-governmental organizations, the private sector, and local communities. Previous studies have identified several challenges in disaster communication, including misinformation, delays, and the spread of hoaxes through social media, which often exacerbate emergency situations. Additionally, coordination issues among disaster management actors hinder the timeliness and effectiveness of response efforts. This study aims to analyze the role of public communication and collaborative strategies in disaster management, with a specific focus on Indonesia, a country highly vulnerable to natural disasters. This study adopts a systematic literature review (SLR) combined with qualitative thematic analysis to examine how communication and cross-sector collaboration contribute to disaster preparedness and response. The analysis identifies recurring themes across scholarly literature, highlighting that government institutions account for the largest share of disaster communication efforts (61%), while civil society, the private sector, and NGOs play supportive yet underutilized roles. Key challenges include limited disaster literacy, the spread of misinformation, and the constraints of Indonesia’s decentralized governance. Drawing on comparative insights, this study emphasizes that community resilience should be prioritized as the most urgent measure, followed by the medium-term development of digital communication platforms, and the long-term adaptation of culturally grounded strategies. The findings contribute to disaster communication theory by positioning Indonesia’s unique governance and socio-cultural context at the center of collaborative approaches, offering a framework for strengthening preparedness, transparency, and community trust.

This article explores public disaster communication in the context of five separate disasters in Indonesia, including acts of terrorism in Bali and Jakarta and the 2004 tsunami. The concept of high reliability organizations (HRO), which explains how highly complex organizations function in unpredictable and dangerous circumstances, is applied here to explore how one public relations firm under contract to several Indonesian government departments handled these complex disaster communication challenges in partnership with its clients. Propositions about the role of HRO characteristics in permitting or preventing effective disaster communication are advanced.

The purpose of the article is to study public communications in digital platforms of public administration in Russia. In recent years, there has been an intensive introduction of digital platforms into the practice of public administration, and communications within the platforms have become part of the national system of public communications. The object of research in this article will be public communications in two digital platforms in Russia: St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region. In the period from December 1, 2019 to November 1, 2020, we collected 10993 messages from the Our St. Petersburg platform and 3758 messages from the People's Expertise platform. The main research methods were the Text Mining method and qualitative analysis of messages. The results of the study of the platforms «Our St. Petersburg» and «People's Expertise» show that the practice of communication in them is very different from the ideals of public democratic communication. The most characteristic differences are the problematic nature of communications: citizens turn to authorities to solve problems most often in the field of housing and communal services. Public communications in the studied urban communication platforms are very different from communications in social networks in their limitations; platform affordances inhibit the spread of discussions. The most important epistemic authority in public communications is bureaucratic rules and appeals to legal procedures. When analyzing the procedure of political reasoning on digital platforms, some methods of manipulative presentation of information are revealed.

Firms’ public communication on social media during disasters can benefit both disaster response efficiency and the perception of the corporate image. Despite its importance, limited guidelines are available to inform firms’ disaster communication strategies. The current study examines firms’ communication on social media in various disasters and how it impacts public engagement. We employ a novel natural language processing (NLP) approach, Semantic Projection with Active Retrieval (SPAR), to analyze Facebook posts made by Russell 3000 firms between 2009 and 2022 concerning various disasters. We show that firm communication can be measured based on two dimensions derived from the Competing Values Framework (CVF): internal versus external and stable versus flexible. We find that social media messages that emphasize operational continuity (internal/stable-oriented) are more popular during biological disasters. By contrast, messages that stress innovations and adaptations to disasters (external/flexible-oriented) elicit more engagement in weather-related disasters. The study offers a framework to characterize and guide firms’ design of disaster communication on social media in different disaster contexts. Our SPAR method is also available to firms to analyze their social media data and uncover the underlying patterns in communication across different contexts.

Effects of 360° video on attitudes toward disaster communication: Mediating and moderating roles of spatial presence and prior disaster media involvement

Deaf-led organizations and disaster communication in Việt Nam: Interdisciplinary insights for disability inclusive disaster risk reduction planning

New media and social media have changed the frame of communication that appears quickly, is interactive, and has no geographical boundaries. The media plays an essential role in disseminating accurate and responsible information in a disaster situation. The strategy of using communication media will reduce the impacts arising from disasters in the mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery phases. Through a literature review, the author presents disaster communication, strategies, and using media in disasters. The research use case studies are the natural disaster of Mount Merapi and the Covid-19 pandemic to represent non-natural disasters. The results of the analysis show that sensitivity to the situation is an adequate response in a disaster. Furthermore, new media and social media tend to be sufficient as the primary source of information for the public, coordination, and fundraising. The effectiveness of media use in the Merapi disaster is the beginning of new media and social media in disaster communication in Indonesia. This media is also used in disaster management during the COVID-19 pandemic. The use of media in both case studies is considered adequate to reduce the negative impacts arising from the disaster. It is hoped this idea will contribute to disaster communication studies.

The management of information among various stakeholders in natural and human induced disasters is fundamental to the mitigation and effective disaster-relieve operations. Disasters always happen abruptly, and often with different levels of severity, posing a major challenge for effective information exchanges and coordination. Extended droughts, trans-boundary haze, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tsunamis, landslides, volcanic activities and severe weathers have created havoc and displaced populations in many parts of this continent. These events have given rise to the realization that a more concerted disaster management strategy is needed to manage disasters more effectively. The paper attempts to uncover the emerging patterns in disaster communication. By drawing from experiences in disasters, especially in Asia, the paper firstly conceptualizes disaster, vulnerabilities and disaster communication, in the broader literature on disaster. Secondly, it examines how the emerging features, such as disaster communication and coordination mechanism, the role of social media and technology, reliability of communication systems, social capital and cultural knowledge can assist first responders, care givers and disaster related agencies in helping disaster victims more effectively.

This article discusses the importance of effective communication tools in public health, highlighting innovations like Quick Response (QR) codes and QR wallet reference cards (QR cards) for enhancing outreach and education. QR codes are scannable barcodes that link to digital content. QR cards are compact cards, similar to business cards, with codes that lead to relevant health information. To our knowledge, there is little published literature on using QR codes and cards for public health programs and health communication outside of health care clinics and education settings. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, Division of Public Health, Community and Clinical Connections for Prevention and Health Branch has successfully implemented QR codes in various public health programs, particularly in diabetes management and nutrition, physical activity, and obesity initiatives. Key lessons learned include using reputable QR code generators, ensuring visibility and scanability of the codes, testing links before use, providing clear calls to action, and considering dynamic versus static codes based on needs. QR codes can be leveraged in public health practice for program promotion, evaluation sharing, and community resource accessibility. However, limitations such as smartphone dependency among some populations should be acknowledged. In conclusion, while QR codes are a simple tool, they hold significant potential for improving public health communication. Research on QR code use in public health settings could help inform best practices for public health programs and health promotion across different contexts.

In the context of disaster research, trust is ubiquitous. Despite its reach across multiple research domains, the devil is in the lack of a comprehensive understanding of how trust is defined, measured, and applied in the context of government risk and disaster communication. This article presents a systematic literature review of trust research undertaken in the context of government as opposed to corporate, risk, and disaster communication. Findings show that trust is rarely defined, but those articles that do define it draw on multiple definitions, which has implications for the operationalization of trust in communication research and practice. Another source of variance is around the theoretical or conceptual frameworks for trust. Research mostly treats trust at the periphery, assuming its existence rather than exploring how it operates in government risk and disaster communication settings. In terms of its application, the majority of empirical work around trust is focused on the response phase of disasters. Following from this review, this study offers a research road map for trust and argues for a centralized view of trust in government risk and disaster communication.