Communication-related vulnerability to disasters: A heuristic framework
Hansson, Sten; Orru, Kati; Siibak, Andra; Bäck, Asta; Krüger, Marco; Gabel, Friedrich; Morsut, Claudia
Peer reviewed, Journal article
Published version
Date
2020-11Metadata
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Original version
Hansson, S., Orru, K., Siibak, A. et al. (2020) Communication-related vulnerability to disasters: A heuristic framework. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 51. 10.1016/j.ijdrr.2020.101931Abstract
The concept of social vulnerability has been increasingly applied in disaster literature, but its communicative drivers have remained understudied. In this article, we put forward a heuristic framework for explaining how communication-related factors may adversely affect people's capacity to prepare for and respond to disasters. This will help researchers, policy makers, and practitioners in the field of disasters and crises to systematically identify individual, social-structural, and situational factors of vulnerability that shape how people access, understand, and act upon information about hazards. We integrate ideas from recent literature on information disorders – various forms and effects of false or harmful information that are characteristic to modern communication ecosystems – to improve our understanding of how the new media environments may transform the ways people learn about hazards and cope with disasters.