College of Sciences Distinguished Speaker Series
Tim Sellnow, Ph.D. & Deanna Sellnow, Ph.D.
Professors of Strategic Communication
Nicholson School of Communication
University of Central Florida
Communicating During a Crisis: Making Connections that Matter with Diverse Publics
By their nature, crises are shocking, threatening, and require an immediate response. These characteristics make crisis communication difficult on many levels. For example, crises create a high demand for information in a context with equally high uncertainty. Similarly, the short response time available leaves little opportunity for deliberating and drafting or reading long messages. Additionally, audiences for crisis messages are diverse, including but not limited to those who are directly impacted, first responders, and concerned observers.
This presentation reviews the communication constraints of crises and provides recommendations for developing concise and impactful messages that can overcome these constraints. A highly practical, easily remembered, and easily applied the model for crisis communication on all levels is presented and explained.
For more information and to RSVP, www.sciences.ucf.edu/dss
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