National Preparedness Month
National Preparedness Month (NPM) is recognized each September to promote family and community disaster planning now and throughout the year. As our nation continues to respond to COVID-19, there is no better time to be involved this September. The 2020 NPM theme is: “Disasters Don’t Wait. Make Your Plan Today.“ For more information: www.ready.gov Week 1: […]
They Know How to Prevent Megafires. Why Won’t Anybody Listen?
By Elizabeth Weil, writing for ProPublica… What a week. Rough for all Californians. Exhausting for the firefighters on the front lines. Heart-shattering for those who lost homes and loved ones. But a special “Truman Show” kind of hell for the cadre of men and women who’ve not just watched California burn, fire ax in hand, […]
How Police Departments are Applying the Principles of Crisis Communications in the Age of Citizen Journalism
By Nora Jacobs, Hennes Communications As protests rage across the country in the wake of police shootings, police departments are learning that shaping the public’s perception of any given event requires an increasingly sophisticated communications response. Gone are the days when a department’s public information officer would brief the media and then retreat from view […]
Social Media Platforms Fight Back Against Manipulative Foreign Actors
From the American University School of International Service Disinformation Research Team writing in Homeland Security Today: Although Americans expect to encounter disinformation via social media platforms in the run-up to the 2020 elections, many continue to consume news online primarily via social media. Foreign actors have used social media to increase discord in the United […]
Are You Prepared for Bad Press About One of Your Suppliers?
From Bridget Satinover Nichols, Hannah Stolze and Jon Kirchoff writing in the Harvard Business Review: It’s always been true that when companies behave badly, consumers react by spreading the word and sometimes boycotting. But our recent research found that negative news is also bad for business in a new way: Consumers react even when the bad news extends beyond […]
Don’t Let a Crisis Become Your Legacy
From Zach Olsen, writing in Inside Higher Ed: Public perception has become reality — reputations are made and destroyed overnight thanks to the power of social and online media and an emboldened public who has seen Twitter bring down corporate titans and foment socio-political unrest around the world. Schools can no longer be certain they’ll […]
Learning to Dance With the Virus
Once again, we turn to Peter Sandman, one of the country’s foremost experts on the subject of risk communications. In a recent interview, Dr. Sandman focused on how he thinks the U.S. public health profession mishandled and miscommunicated COVID-19 over the last few months, suggesting that health officials underreacted and left us unprepared. Then they […]
How Talking About the Coronavirus as an Enemy Combatant Can Backfire
Tabitha Moses, a doctoral candidate at Wayne State University, offers an interesting approach to communicating about COVID-19, with lessons for business leaders, too. We see this war reflected in the language that gets used by politicians, policymakers, journalists and healthcare workers. As the “invisible enemy” rolled in, entire economies halted as populations “sheltered in place.” […]
Creating a Post-Pandemic Crisis Team
By Nora Jacobs, Hennes Communications Pre-COVID, few of our clients had ever experienced a crisis event with the potential to threaten the very existence of their organization. Now, almost everyone we talk to has had first-hand experience managing disruptions in supplies, sales, finance, staffing, production, logistics, communications, marketing and technology. Some organizations have emerged stronger […]
Crisis Comms: Saying Nothing is the Worst Strategy
From Greg Friese, writing for PoliceOne.com… t has been more than a week since mass protests and riots erupted in dozens of cities in the U.S. in response to the death of George Floyd. In the days that followed, public safety leaders expressed their grief for Floyd, condemnation of the four former officers, and discussed their […]