"You can't 'study social media, you must first live it!" -- Karen
The Wayne State Doctoral Seminar on Crisis and Risk Communications has been such a wonderful educational experience for me – it has been an absolute pleasure meeting the faculty in charge in organizing this wonderful event at Wayne State University (Dr. Matt Seeger, Dr. Fred Vultee, and Dr. Julie Novak) as well as meeting some amazing doctoral students from around the country. Here are a few lessons and best practices that I have learned during my time here so far at the doctoral seminar:
People are expecting crises to be solved through technology: Technology is indeed fabulous, but it sometimes does not solve all of the problems. It is important to make sure that you have best practices and strategies set in place so you can address the various issues that are involved in the crisis. For example, we discussed in our seminar what is going on with BP – the community is expecting immediate action and feel that technology is the answer to all of the problems. This is true, but it is also good to point out that this crisis happened due to the fact that BP was not proactive in addressing these issues beforehand, and that they have and are currently not being transparent in their actions.
Ask the “why” questions when it comes to social media: We have discussed the influence of social media in handling various crisis and risk communication situations, and it appears that the way that people are measuring this is mostly through quantitative methods (ex. downloads, website hits, etc). However, we have to ask the question – why are people actively engaged online? Why are their voicing their opinion on the public forum, and what type of information are they seeking? Or, is social media creating a new phenomenon of crisis saturation – meaning that they are exposed to too much information? These are just some of the points that we have been talking about so far in our doctoral seminar.
Looking at how risk situations are presented in popular culture: Each of us had to do a presentation on one type of crisis situation, look at what has been done in the literature in this area, and talk about how this crisis has been presented in popular culture. I was assigned to do chemical plant accidents, which is indeed a timely and important crisis to address, especially today. Each presentation so far has been insightful, creative, and well-researched – and it is interesting to see how each student has analyzed and discussed future theoretical implications applications in the real world.
Overall, it has been a very wonderful experience for me. The faculty and staff at Wayne State have really done a great job in organizing this event and really enhancing our experience by having this seminar. We have also had the chance to experience the offerings of Detroit as well – we had dinner last night at Slow’s (a great bbq restaurant in Detroit) which was absolutely amazing! I had the pleasure of having dinner and great conversation with my fellow doctoral students and Dr. Matt Seeger (Dept Chair at Wayne State University). I had a wonderful time! To keep up with the latest going on during the seminar, you can search for the hashtag #crisisprep and see what we are all commenting on. Stephanie Kent (@stephjoke) has done an amazing job with updating and sharing what is going on at the seminar – thank you Stephanie! Keep up the great work! 🙂
Hope you all are having a wonderful day!
Best Wishes,
Karen
0 Comments