Social Considerations for Successful Notifications & Alerts

The following is another in our series of excerpts from the Galain Solutions, Inc. white paper, "Notification, Alerts, and Warnings: The Next Generation". (Copy available by sending request to info@galainsolutions.com)

It’s tempting to view notifications/alerts/warnings primarily from a technology perspective, thinking the technology chosen will be the most significant key to success. No doubt technology is important, but other considerations carry as much weight…perhaps even more. One that’s often overlooked is Social Considerations – most importantly, how will people react when they receive critical messages? Will the message encourage them to do what’s necessary, perhaps to protect their lives? (Suggested reading: Communication of Emergency Public Warnings: A Social Science Perspective and State-of-the –Art Assessment; Dennis S. Mileti, John H. Sorenson; August, 1990. Yes, it's a bit old, but still quite pertinent.)

Dr. Dennis Milleti has been studying and advising on social considerations of notifications/alerts/warnings for years. The Professor Emeritus at Colorado University told the group working on a statewide notification program for California that while technology is needed to service the end, social problems cannot be solved by technology. The problem, he says, is that the whole purpose of notifications/alerts/warnings is to get people to change behavior…and people do not do so easily. For one thing, an individual’s response to a warning is largely based on credibility of the source. Different people find different sources credible…and credibility ratings change from day-to-day, according to Dr. Milleti. He says another challenge is that a warning weaves people together who don’t normally communicate. Because of this, it’s easy to break a link in communications…thus, making the warning ineffective, he says.

Dr. Milleti’s vision for optimum public warnings includes, what he calls, “a virtual warning center”…in effect, one person executing a notification/alert/warning from a single point, but through many “warning partners”. This is necessary, he says, because of a wide array of communications methods people use and trust. For example, he says, social networks are increasingly becoming the first way people learn about something. Thus, social networks would be one of the “warning partners”.

Dr. John Sorenson of Oak Ridge National Laboratories (ORNL) says, “From a social perspective, it makes a lot of sense that you want to use multiple channels.” However, he cautions against relying heavily on Internet Protocol (IP) notifications. He says during the San Diego wildfires of 2007, fewer than five-percent of residents used the web to obtain information on the wildfires.
Dr. Sorenson is the principle in charge of a FEMA-sponsored study on the impact of telephone notifications during the wildfires. He says his team has surveyed 1,200 households in the evacuation zones to determine how they reacted to the telephone calls. (For a copy of Dr. Sorenson's report, visit http://galainsolutions.com/resources.html)

The Next Generation notification/alerts/warnings programs will need to do a better job regarding social considerations.