Communicating Environmental Risk in Multiethnic Communities

Communicating Effectively in Multicultural Contexts #7

by Michael K. Lindell, Ronald W. Perry

9/11. Tornadoes. Emergency preparedness. Whether explaining parts per million to a community exposed to contaminated groundwater or launching a campaign to encourage home carbon monoxide testing, an effective message is paramount to the desired an increased understanding of health risk.   Communicating Environmental Risk in Multiethnic Communities is the first book to address the theory and practice of disseminating disaster warnings and hazard education messages to multiethnic communities. Authors Michael K. Lindell and Ronald W. Perry introduce theory-based reasoning as a basis for understanding warning dissemination and public education, devoting specific attention to the community context of emergency warning delivery and response. Through these principles of human behavior, readers can apply risk communication information to virtually any specific disaster agent with which they may be concerned.   This volume is recommended for practitioners in private emergency management and federal, state, and local governments, as well as students studying risk communication, health communication, emergency management, and environmental policy and management.   

272 pages, Hardcover

First published December 11, 2003

Reviews

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book contains a lot of useful information, particularly the framework of the Protective Action Decision Model, backed by a compendious summary of research on disaster management. It is a useful reference for researchers and might be a helpful handbook for practitioners.

As a reader, I found three main difficulties.

First, it is a book about another era. The authors can't really be faulted for not anticipating how the rise of social media and media echo chambers would transform risk communication and public response, as the chaos of the ongoing pandemic shows. While a lot of the principles they introduce are still valid, so much is different in ways that make the tasks of hazard managers a lot more complicated.

Second, the writing style is clear, but terribly bland. It is hard to keep reading. Some writers manage to be clear and also engaging; some do not.

Finally, the title does not match the contents. This book would be better titled, The Protective Action Decision Model for Understanding Risk Response and also Implications for Natural Hazard Risk Management Strategies. There is not much about multiethnic communities, much less social science understandings of race, ethnicity, and the ways racial inequity ramifies through disaster risk. Subsections on different behavior and attitude patterns across racial and ethnic groups seemed like afterthoughts. To some extent, this may reflect the limits of research in this vein at the time. Regardless, the false advertising left me disappointed.