Author: Kim S Haddow and George D Haddow
ISBN No: 9780124078680
Review date: 17/12/2025
No of pages: 282
Publisher: Butterworth Heinemann - Elsevier
Publisher URL:
http://store.elsevier.com/authorDetails.jsp?authorId=ELS_1012191
Year of publication: 01/04/2014
Brief:
Disaster Communications in a Changing Media World, second edition by Kim S Haddow and George D Haddow
price
£27.74
Second edition by Kim S Haddow and George D Haddow
How to manage after a disaster when communications – knowing what’s going on and telling your public – is the subject for a US book that makes plain how fast technology is changing disaster recovery.
The internet and social media have had a profound effect on disaster communications, and the news in general. In a crisis, we turn to social media and spread our own news. Despite these new tools, the mission in a disaster is the same: getting the right things done quickly, by passing accurate information.
The book takes four of the highest profile and most recent crises: the Boston Marathon bombing of 2013, Hurricane Sandy, the Japanese tsunami in 2011 and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, though it does touch on other events such as 7-7 in London and the Mumbai terrorism of 2008. The authors make plain that effective communications don’t just happen: you have to train staff, know who’s in charge, and who you’re aiming at (the local or national media, customers, neighbours, or your non-security staff?) besides be savvy using the social media tools. The book is helpful on what to say in the crisis – do not talk about what you do not know, don’t make promises you cannot keep, use plain language. If you need to know more – and this book coves plenty of ground – you have copious links to more details, on how to be interviewed on TV if you are the ‘messenger’, how to correct misinformation, and how to run an exercise. The message overall; in an emergency, even something such as extreme weather, you cannot avoid communicating with the media and public.
