Understanding communication-related vulnerability in crises

The concept of social vulnerability has been increasingly applied in crisis literature, but its communicative drivers have remained understudied. In this paper, we put forward a heuristic framework for explaining how communication-related factors may adversely affect people’s capacity to prepare for and respond to crises triggered by natural hazards, pandemics, technological accidents, or human malevolence. This will help researchers, policy makers, and crisis management professionals 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 global information disorders – various forms and effects of false information that are characteristic to modern communication ecosystems – to improve our understanding of how the new media environments may transform the ways people perceive hazards and cope with disasters. Our study is part of the large-scale Horizon 2020 research project BuildERS (buildersproject.eu) that seeks to improve people’s resilience to various crises by strengthening the social capital, risk awareness and preparedness of the most vulnerable segments of societies. The study covers recent cross-country survey data and insights about the communicative behaviour (e.g., information seeking habits, trust in media sources, proneness to be affected by false information) among European populations, a multidisciplinary literature review, and case studies on notable crises, such as the 2011 terrorist attack in Norway and the 2013 floods in Central Europe. In conclusion, we provide concrete policy recommendations on how to minimise communication-related vulnerabilities in future crisis contexts.