Defining Disaster Communication

Disaster communication is an interdisciplinary topic focused on explaining, predicting, and describing the use of verbal, nonverbal, and visual communication forms to prepare, respond, and recover from natural and unnatural disasters. Seeger et al. (2003) indicate that natural disasters often involve large scale disruptions in the environment. Despite the chaos they create for the daily lives of humans, natural disasters mostly occur as a result of normal phenomenon, such as hurricanes or tornadoes. Unnatural disasters, including terrorism, may also involve large scale disruptions in the environment, but the origin is not the result of normal phenomenon. Thus, it adds a dimension to communication that may turn fear into anger, and bring the realm of uncertainty and lack of control to the forefront of efforts to communicate.

What to do, when to do it, how to prepare, when to respond, how to prevent events in the first place — all of these messages and more are part of our everyday lives relating to disasters. They come from a seemingly endless array of sources that include health care organizations, elected officials, volunteer organizations, the media, friends, family, entertainers, and even those individuals who threaten to harm us. They are delivered via multiple modes that include face-to-face conversations, television, radio, newspapers, and internet. The contexts in which such messages occur vary as well, as work places prepare for both natural and unnatural disasters that involve communicating with us about disaster preparedness, public spaces are forced to adapt to risk through increased security measures at sites of sports and other entertainment venues, area hospitals make pronouncements about their roles in evacuation and other plans for dealing with potential disasters, together with schools, churches, and homes. The scope for addressing disasters is thus quite broad, so the skills needed to communicate to promote planning, timely and efficacious response, and recovery require some parameters.