The End of the World as We Knew It

Abstract

The subfield of strategic communication is relatively new to the discipline, although scholars have been studying and practicing it for centuries. Simply defined, it has to do with thoughtfully planned communication processes—from verbal/nonverbal message choices to distribution channels—intended to achieve a goal applied to a real world issue or problem. Strategic communication was first conceived as an area of advertising/public relations but has now grown to include its application in a variety of communication contexts. In other words, we can study strategic health communication, strategic organizational communication, strategic instructional communication, and so forth. In this chapter, we will focus on how strategic instructional communication functions in risk situations and crisis events. We will focus on both effective examples (i.e., quick mitigation of infectious disease outbreaks in agricultural settings) and ineffective examples (i.e., health protection through mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States). Ultimately, the relevance of using communication theory and research strategically to improve society and save lives will be clarified cogently and transparently.