Examining the Impact of Disaster Experience with Winter Storm Uri and Climate Change Risk Perceptions on Support for Mitigation Policy

In February 2021, Winter Storm Uri swept across the central and eastern United States bringing extreme cold, widespread power outages, and rolling blackouts throughout Texas. This storm prompted climate change to emerge as a major topic of controversy and conversation with scientists and the public alike, and many began to think about the impacts of climate change. Risk communication experts have suggested prior disaster experience is a key mechanism of understanding how risk perceptions are shaped, and ultimately, on how individuals arrive at a judgment, evaluation, or attitude toward information and situations. Drawing from risk communication scholars, we examined the role of prior disaster experience, risk perceptions of climate change, and individual characteristics on its relationship with support for climate change mitigation policy. To do so, we sourced a Qualtrics public opinion panel of residents who lived in Texas during Winter Storm Uri (n = 486) to answer a series of questions related to prior disaster experience, their climate change risk perceptions, and their support of climate change mitigation policy. We conducted two hierarchical regression models to examine how prior disaster experience and climate change risk perceptions predicted support for policy. We found the inclusion of prior disaster experience provided a significant change in the respondents support for climate change mitigation policy. Although academic conversations in agricultural communications have started to explore the varying opinions of climate change, there is much more research needed in this area to fully explore the dynamic and complex phenomena of climate change

You Have to Send the Right Message: Examining the Influence of Protective Action Guidance on Message Perception Outcomes across Prior Hazard Warning Experience to Three Hazards

A long-term goal for warning message designers is to determine the most effective type of message that can instruct individuals to act quickly and prevent loss of life and/or injury when faced with an imminent threat. One likely way to increase an individual’s behavioral intent to act when they are faced with risk information is to provide protective action information or guidance. This study investigated participant perceptions (understanding, believing, personalizing, deciding, milling, self-efficacy, and response-efficacy) in response to the National Weather Service’s experimental product Twitter messages for three hazard types (tornado, snow squall, dust storm), with each message varying by inclusion and presentation of protective action information placed in the tweet text and the visual graphic. We also examine the role of prior hazard warning experience on message perception outcomes. To examine the effects, the experiment used a between-subjects design where participants were randomly assigned to one hazard type and received one of four warning messages. Participants then took a post-test measuring message perceptions, efficacy levels, prior hazard warning experience, and demographics. The results showed that for each hazard and prior hazard experience level, messages with protective action guidance in both the text and graphic increase their understanding, belief, ability to decide, self-, and response-efficacy. These results reinforce the idea that well-designed messages, that include protective action guidance, work well regardless of hazard type or hazard warning experience

Show Me and What Will I Remember? Exploring Recall in Response to NWS Tornado Warning Graphics

It is critical that organizations deliver timely, effective communication about potential risks and life-saving information. The National Weather Service (NWS) developed a suite of messages known as “experimental graphic products” to be automatically distributed through their local official Twitter accounts at the onset of fast-moving, severe weather events such as tornadoes. However, recent research has suggested messages need to be carefully constructed for audiences to place attention to the content, remember the content, and later act in response to the content. The purpose of this study is to explore what people recall of the NWS Twitter message. We used an online survey instrument, distributed via Qualtrics, to investigate participant responses to three open-ended questions about the message. We performed a quantitative analysis to summarize the frequency of message features recorded by participants, and a qualitative analysis to identify themes that provide a deeper description of what was recalled. We found that participants encoded the hazard type, the time the message was sent and would expire, and the types of impacts that might occur. Graphic design cues elicited attention as they “stood out” to the participants. When asked about importance and what they would tell others, respondents described protective action, indicating participants may have activated prior knowledge of the threat, as it was not included in the message. Risk, disaster, and science communicators can draw guidance about communicating during a disaster. It provides a lens for researching message construction, and the importance of communicating protective action guidance during severe weather events

An Experimental Study Investigating the Type of Data Visualizations Used in Infographics on Participant Recall and Information Recognition

The concept of agricultural sustainability, specifically sustainable beef production, is not well established, and much misinformation frames this conversation. One way agricultural communicators can educate the public on this controversial topic is through infographics. Scholars have suggested recall, or the mental process of retrieving information from the past, as a technique to understand what someone has comprehended when exposed to new information. The Limited Capacity Model of Motivated Mediated Message Processing (LC4MP) provides insight into human information processing and recall, and it guided this study’s development. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect various types of data visualizations used in infographics about agricultural topics have on college students’ knowledge and ability to recall attributes from the data visualizations. An experimental study was conducted where participants viewed one of three infographics with embedded data visualizations and answered questions to understand their recall of information, design elements, and information recognition. The results show pictographs were significantly more effective in participant information recognition and the free and cued recall of design; however, it was not significant for free and cued recall of information. These findings add to the agricultural communication literature as they show how the type of data visualization can impact how viewers encode, store, and retrieve information. The researchers suggest agricultural communicators implement pictographs more frequently in infographic communications strategy. Additionally, agricultural communicators must begin to train students on the use of data visualization techniques in classroom settings