Emergency Text Messaging Systems and Higher Education Campuses: Expanding Crisis Communication Theories and Best Practices

Recent public safety threats affecting college and university campuses during episodes of natural disasters and mass violence have exposed numerous challenges and opportunities in crisis and risk communication. The evacuation of college campuses during natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and episodes of mass violence such as the shootings at the University of Alabama-Huntsville in 2010, among others, have revealed how even the most well-developed campus communication plans leave room for improvement during actual crisis events (Catullo, Walker, & Floyd, 2009). Through in-depth interviews (N=10) of crisis communication managers at U. S. colleges and universities, as well as document reviews of media coverage (N=36) of the events surrounding previous natural and manmade campus emergencies, the purpose of this paper is to examine how colleges and universities have integrated a relatively new communication technology, emergency text messaging, into their planned crisis communication response to disseminate emergency information to stakeholders, such as students, faculty, staff, and parents, during crises affecting their campuses. Through grounded theory, data systematically obtained and analyzed offer: (1) a running theoretical discussion using conceptual categories and their properties related to crisis communication adaptations of existing theories and models, including chaos theory, power, theory, and complexity theory, and (2) additional best practices for integrating emergency text messaging with other communication channels that can be applied in a university setting to increase the likelihood of a successful emergency response

Wealthiest Is Not Always Healthiest: What Explains Differences in Child Mortality in West Africa?

Ghana has the lowest under-five mortality rate in West Africa. Understanding why Ghana’s child mortality rate is lower than in neighboring countries may offer useful insights for other developing countries that are trying to improve child health. This paper explores whether Ghana’s lower mortality rate is mostly a result of greater household wealth, better implementation of national health policies, or more favorable geography. The paper uses micro level data for children under five to examine relative child mortality risk between Ghana and each of its three immediate neighbors -- Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, and Togo. A Cox proportional hazards model is used to test which of the three ‘contenders’ – health policy, wealth, or geography – best explains Ghana’s mortality advantage. The results of the analysis indicate that wealth variables are not able to explain any of the child mortality variation between Ghana and its neighbors. Geography and health policy variables each explain about 40% of the mortality gap between Ghana and Burkina Faso. Health policy differences alone are able to explain about 70% of the child mortality gap between Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. These results suggest that even poor countries that have been ‘cursed’ by bad geography can potentially improve development outcomes and save children’s lives

Emergency Text Messaging Systems and Higher Education Campuses: Expanding Crisis Communication and Chaos Theory

Recent public safety threats affecting college and university campuses during episodes of natural disasters and mass violence have exposed numerous challenges and opportunities in risk and crisis communication. This study addresses how colleges and universities have incorporated emergency text messaging systems into their crisis communication plans; how these institutions have tested such emergency notification systems; and what, if any, prevalent gaps exist between audience expectations and actual practices. Using grounded theory, the data collected in this study through in-depth phone interviews (N=10) of university public relations practitioners, as well as a document analysis of media coverage of campus crises (N=36), offered a humanistic and constructivist perspective about circumstances related to emergency text message alert systems that few researchers have explored. The analysis of the data also revealed and confirmed that chaos theory can play a role as a significant theory and potentially guiding paradigm of crisis communications research

Wealthiest Is Not Always Healthiest: What Explains Differences in Child Mortality in West Africa?

Ghana has the lowest under-five mortality rate in West Africa. Understanding why Ghana’s child mortality rate is lower than in neighboring countries may offer useful insights for other developing countries that are trying to improve child health. This paper explores whether Ghana’s lower mortality rate is mostly a result of greater household wealth, better implementation of national health policies, or more favorable geography. The paper uses micro level data for children under five to examine relative child mortality risk between Ghana and each of its three immediate neighbors -- Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, and Togo. A Cox proportional hazards model is used to test which of the three ‘contenders’ – health policy, wealth, or geography – best explains Ghana’s mortality advantage. The results of the analysis indicate that wealth variables are not able to explain any of the child mortality variation between Ghana and its neighbors. Geography and health policy variables each explain about 40% of the mortality gap between Ghana and Burkina Faso. Health policy differences alone are able to explain about 70% of the child mortality gap between Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. These results suggest that even poor countries that have been ‘cursed’ by bad geography can potentially improve development outcomes and save children’s lives

Shifting cultivation and forest pressure in Cameroon

Shifting cultivation is often blamed as a principal cause of deforestation in tropical Africa. It is claimed that the practice is unsustainable because shortened fallow lengths result in soils too degraded to support forest vegetation. The decline in fallow lengths is often attributed to increases in population density and greater market participation. The conventional wisdom makes several claims that are as yet unsubstantiated. This paper investigates whether there is evidence to support two of these claims in southern Cameroon. First, using both cross-sectional and panel data, I find that there is indeed a robust negative association between fallow lengths and population density in the study area and weaker evidence for a negative relationship between fallow lengths and market participation. Second, a stochastic frontier production function approach is used to investigate the marginal contribution of fallow to output. Results indicate that fallow lengths are not low enough to be affecting yields and therefore do not appear to be resulting in declines in soil fertility. Thus overall, while some of the assumptions of the conventional wisdom appear to be true, there is little evidence to support its dramatic conclusion that shifting cultivators are causing deforestation in the forested region of Cameroon

Wild food plants and trends in their use: from knowledge and perceptions to drivers of change in West Sumatra, Indonesia

Wild food plants (WFPs) are often highly nutritious but under-consumed at the same time. This study aimed to document the diversity of WFPs, and assess perceptions, attitudes, and drivers of change in their consumption among Minangkabau and Mandailing women farmers in West Sumatra. We applied a mixed-method approach consisting of interviews with 200 women and focus group discussions with 68 participants. The study documented 106 WFPs (85 species), and Minangkabau were found to steward richer traditional knowledge than Mandailing. Although both communities perceived WFPs positively, consumption has declined over the last generation. The main reasons perceived by respondents were due to the decreased availability of WFPs and changes in lifestyle. The contemporary barriers to consuming WFPs were low availability, time constraints, and a limited knowledge of their nutritional value. The key motivations for their use were that they are free and “unpolluted” natural foods. The main drivers of change were socio-economic factors and changes in agriculture and markets. However, the persistence of a strong culture appears to slow dietary changes. The communities, government and NGOs should work together to optimize the use of this food biodiversity in a sustainable way. This integrated approach could improve nutrition while conserving biological and cultural diversity

Defining Solutions, Finding Problems: Deforestation, Gender, and REDD+ in Burkina Faso

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) is a policy instrument meant to mitigate climate change while also achieving poverty reduction in tropical countries. It has garnered critics for homogenising environmental and development governance and for ignoring how similar efforts have tended to exacerbate gender inequalities. Nonetheless, regarding such schemes as inevitable, some feminists argue for requirements that include womens empowerment and participation. In this paper we move beyond discussions about safeguards and examine whether the very framing of REDD programs can provide openings for a transformation as argued for by its proponents. Following the REDD policy process in Burkina Faso, we come to two important insights: REDD is a solution in need of a problem. Assumptions about gender are at the heart of creating actionable knowledge that enabled REDD to be presented as a policy solution to the problems of deforestation, poverty and gender inequality. Second, despite its safeguards, REDD appears to be perpetuating gendered divisions of labour, as formal environmental decision-making moves upwards; and responsibility and the burden of actual environmental labour shifts further down in particularly gendered ways. We explore how this is enabled by the development of policies whose stated aims are to tackle inequalities