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CRC07
Risk Communication, Crisis Prevention, and Disaster
PP 499
The Impact of Communicative Practices on Social Resilience
M. Ghersetti
1
, B. Johansson
2
, T. Odén
1
1
University of Gothenburg, Journalism- media and communication, Gothenburg, Sweden
Over the last decade, growing awareness of imminent crisis and disasters has driven political leadership to increase its attention on community and social
resilience. In parallel, social scientists have embraced the concept originally rooted in the disciplines of physics and mathematics, and later adapted to
disciplines of psychology, ecology, geography and urban planning. Leaning on Adger (2000), Lorenz (2013:10) define social resilience as the ability of social
systems to cope with external stress or change and persist as a system. Resilience thus is a concept describing a society’s capacity to absorb and adapt to
disruptions, disturbances and changes. Disasters, crisis and catastrophes may be perceived as such events, which pose collective stress on societies, have
acute onsets, are time delimited, and may be attributed to natural, technological, or human causes (McFarlane & Norris 2006). Norris et al (2008:140) argue
that good communication is essential for a community’s resilience capacity. By communication they refer to the creation of common meaning and the op‑
portunities for community members to articulate needs, views and attitudes. This study focuses the impact of communicative practices on social resilience
during on-going crisis.We distinguish between two types of communicative practices; media use, by which we refer to regular use of news media and social
media, and acts of personal communication, by which we refer to interpersonal communication and personal activities on social media. Our main research
question is whether communication practices affect the perceptions of social cohesion in the local community. The analysis builds on material from a case
study of the largest Swedish wildfire in modern times, which ravaged an area of approximately 140 square kilometers over a period of two weeks in July
and August 2014. One person died and several were injured, and more than 20 buildings burnt down, among them several residential ones. A thousand
persons were forced to evacuate their homes, and a large number of cattle, horses and other animals had to be removed from the affected area. The results
were gathered in web surveys conducted by LORE (Laboratory of Opinion Research) at the University of Gothenburg, using the Citizen Panel. Questionnaires
were sent to the same population in the affected area on two occasions, the first one already five days after the outbreak of the fire, and the second one
six months later. In total 447 persons have answered both surveys (response rate 52 %). The panel data allows for analysis of changes over time both on
individual and aggregate levels. Adger, N.W. 2000. Indicators of social and economic vulnerability to climate change inVietnam. CSERGEWorking Paper GEC
98–02. Lorenz, D. F. 2013. The diversity of resilience: contributions from a social science perspective. Natural Hazards, 67(7), 7–24. McFarlane, A. C. & Norris,
F. 2006. Definitions and concepts in disaster research. In Fran Norris, S Galea, M Friedman & PWatson (Eds.) Methods for disaster mental health research, pp
3–19. New York: Guildford Press. Norris et al. 2008. Community resilience as a Metaphor, Theory, Set of Capacities, and Strategy.
PP 500
The L'Aquila Trial and the Risk Communication Debate: A Missed Opportunity
A. Cerase
1
1
Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Centro Nazionale Terremoti, Rome, Italy
On November 20
th
, 2015 the Italian Supreme Court has
definitively cleared the
seven experts and scientist, convened for a meeting in L’Aquila by
the head of Civil Protection to evaluate an ongoing seismic swarm. Six days later a 6.3Mw earthquake occurred, killing 309 and wounding over 1500. They
were convicted for having caused, by their negligent conduct, the death of 29 persons and the injury of several others. Risk communication has been rec‑
ognized as a core issue of the whole legal case (Alemanno & Cedervall Lauta, 2014; Frattaroli, 2014; Amato, Cerase and Galadini, 2015), doomed to change
risk communication landscape itself (Chong, 2013). Unfortunately, although such a relevant case was accompanied by an international, vast coverage by
mainstream and scientific media, such topic encountered less attention than expected by risk communication scholar, spreading only a little academic
debate. In particular, it emerged a noticeable gap between the proposed narratives, the reality emerging from the trial and the actual possibilities to deploy
a better risk communication approach to be applied in concrete situations. Moreover, some authors seem to suggest the wrong idea that risk communication
may have provided a foolproof magic recipe to be effortlessly applied by anyone to achieve desired results (Renn & Levine, 1991; Renn, 1991; Chess, 1996;
Wardman, 2008), while it is still missing a discussion about risk communication models and theoretical approaches to address properly what kind of results
could actually be expected in such a complex scenario, taking into account the role of rumours, false alarms, inconsistent media reporting about seismic
risk, poor response by local government and the distressing effects on people of four months of an ongoing seismic swarm.This paper aims to provide a me‑
ta-analytical review of the current literature about risk and crisis communication as it has been discussed with reference to the L’Aquila trial. Such analysis
considers the substantial contents in a set of 23 academic papers, selected according to the two-fold criteria of (a) relevancy (the L’Aquila trial was the main
topic or at least one of the main topics in comparative papers) and (b) importance for scientific debate, as papers are cited at least once or are published in
peer reviewed journals or books. The overall picture emerging from such literature highlights a lack of contextual knowledge and awareness about some
relevant facts and legal aspects of the case, as they were downplayed or neglected by the media. It also suggests the risk of turning an organizational and
regulatory failure into a moral blame-game against the scientists and experts themselves, and it is still missing an analysis on organizational and legal con‑
straints preventing scientists from expressing their opinions, as it is actually provided in the Italian Civil Protection System. Moreover, such analysis shown
a general lack of references to recognizable risk communication theories and models to be applied in similar situations in a next future, and a discussion on
the means and resources which are necessary to improve risk and crisis communication, with particular reference to Geo-Hazard context.