Across the three phases of disaster communication, several barriers to effective communication exist.
Lack of a Common Knowledge Base
How much each audience knows shapes the ability to respond to messages. Too little knowledge contributes to the inability to act on recommendations. Assuming that an audiences has more knowledge than they actually do about a situation may lead to a lack of trust based in the belief that information is being kept from an audience.
Failure to Listen
Disasters may cause all audiences to resist listening, to hear what they want to hear, and to act accordingly. This is not limited to the media or the public. Professionals and first responders also form learned responses to certain stimuli and act accordingly. The characteristics of a specific situation may require adaptation based on understanding information that has been communicated.
Distractions
During efforts to build disaster readiness, distractions relating to all of the more immediate issues facing the public, businesses, health care delivery systems, and governments function to limit the cognitive and behavioral resources devoted to messages about disaster preparedness. Effective disaster readiness communication involves a component of planning to overcome these distractions by providing compelling reasons for audiences to be interested based on their roles, rules, and intermember relations.
Lack of Concentration
During communication based on preparedness, this can relate to the seeming distance in time related to the topic. During disaster response periods, communication may be competing with direct examples of loss, including family and friends, home, work site, and even entire communities. While communication to promote concentration about preparedness may require a facilitator to promote action, communication to promote concentration during response may require brief, explicit, action-oriented content. During recovery, the opportunity to be more reflective and expand upon experiences may be one that promotes concentration. These interactions may suffer from efforts to limit the time spent talking. Survivors may regard attempts to limit their input as attempts to ‘silence' them. Yet, policymakers may view the extensive time spent ‘telling their stories' as a waste of their time. Once more, a clash between roles, rules, and relations may pose a barrier to desired outcomes.