The evolution of the operational earthquake forecasting community of practice: the L’Aquila communication crisis as a triggering event for organizational renewal

The scientific community of earthquake experts has long grappled with how to communicate earthquake probabilities successfully to non-scientific publics. Perhaps most central to their concern is the widely held belief that scientists can actually predict earthquakes when, in fact, they cannot. The potential consequences of this miscommunication problem were appallingly realized as a result of the 6 April 2009 earthquake in L’Aquila, Italy. Failed risk communication among scientists, a public official, and L’Aquila residents prior to the earthquake resulted in 309 deaths, 1500 injuries, and 65,000 people displaced from their homes, as well as the sentencing of six scientists and one public official to six years in prison for manslaughter. This paper examines how and why the L’Aquila Earthquake communication crisis ultimately redefined the international scientific earthquake community of practice and its discourse beyond that of community resilience to organizational learning and renewal.     

The Research of James C. McCroskey: A Personal and Professional Remembrance

James C. McCroskey passed away on December 27, 2012. He contributed immensely to the study of human communication. He led the field in in-field publications and citations. Perhaps his most lasting contribution is naming and measuring communication constructs. James C. McCroskey contributed substantially to Communication Research Reports as a past editor, editorial board member, and contributing author. This essay is a personal and professional remembrance of James C. McCroskey.     

Strong Diagnostic Questioning Effects on Deception Detection Accuracy With U.S. Customs Agents

Recent communication research shows several paths to improving accuracy in deception detection. According to truth-default theory, one promising approach is diagnostic questioning. A sample of elite U.S. Customs agents participated in a deception detection task. Agents viewed senders who were interrogated with one of three different sets of questions that differed in diagnostic utility. The different questioning sets produced a 36-point swing in accuracy from 42% to 78% accuracy. These findings demonstrate that how someone is questioned can make a substantial difference in deception detection accuracy and that improved accuracy is possible with diagnostic questioning.     

The IDEA Model as a Best Practice for Effective Instructional Risk and Crisis Communication

This study presents the IDEA (internalization, distribution, explanation, action) model as an easy-to-use and situationally generalizable framework for quickly developing effective messages instructing people on how to protect themselves before and during high-risk events, crises, disasters, and other emergencies. The model consists of four elements: helping message recipients internalize the potential impact of the risk or crisis event, identifying appropriate channels and strategies for distributing the risk or crisis event messages, offering a brief and intelligible explanation of the nature of the risk or crisis, and providing specific self-protective action steps for people to take. The model may be used to design messages in any risk, crisis, or emergency context. Through a posttest-only quasi-experimental cross-sectional research experiment, this study measured the perceived message effectiveness, cognitive understanding, and behavioral intentions of those viewing a television news story about a crisis situation employing the IDEA model compared to those viewing a similar story replicating typical crisis event news stories delivered to general publics. This comparative examination revealed that the message designed according to the IDEA model was significantly more effective than the status quo message and resulted in greater behavioral intentions to engage in appropriate self-protective actions in the event of an acute risk or crisis situation. Strategies for implementing the model are also provided.     

Development of an aerobic capacity prediction model from one-mile run/walk performance in adolescents aged 13–16 years

A popular algorithm to predict VO_2Peak from the one-mile run/walk test (1MRW) includes body mass index (BMI), which manifests practical issues in school settings. The purpose of this study was to develop an aerobic capacity model from 1MRW in adolescents independent of BMI. Cardiorespiratory endurance data were collected on 90 adolescents aged 13–16 years. The 1MRW was administered on an outside track and a laboratory VO_2Peak test was conducted using a maximal treadmill protocol. Multiple linear regression was employed to develop the prediction model. Results yielded the following algorithm: VO_2Peak = 7.34 × (1MRW speed in m s^?1) + 0.23 × (age × sex) + 17.75. The New Model displayed a multiple correlation and prediction error of R = 0.81, standard error of the estimate = 4.78 ml kg^?1·min^?1, with measured VO_2Peak and good criterion-referenced (CR) agreement into FITNESSGRAM’s Healthy Fitness Zone (Kappa = 0.62; percentage agreement = 84.4%; Φ = 0.62). The New Model was validated using k-fold cross-validation and showed homoscedastic residuals across the range of predicted scores. The omission of BMI did not compromise accuracy of the model. In conclusion, the New Model displayed good predictive accuracy and good CR agreement with measured VO_2Peak in adolescents aged 13–16 years.     

Occupational branding for diversity: managing discursive contradictions

In line with recent efforts to increase the representation of women in the field of computing and information technology (I.T.), the National Center for Women and Information Technology has spearheaded an occupational branding campaign that seeks to encourage more women to enter this field. We use this campaign as a case study to investigate how representations of work in an occupational branding campaign (“official branding discourse”) compare with the ways in which practitioners represent this work (“unofficial branding discourse”). Through our analysis, we show that whereas the official branding discourse represents computing and I.T. as a field where women are valued, unofficial branding discourse represents this field as hostile to women. We then propose three avenues through which these contradictions can be managed: (1) acknowledging the challenges expressed by practitioners, while simultaneously discussing how to foster a more inclusive occupational culture, (2) changing the primary goal of the campaign from increasing the number of women in computing and I.T. to making the culture of computing and I.T. less hostile, and (3) committing fewer resources into organized branding campaigns and more resources into direct organizational interventions that seek to make work environments inclusive.     

Dialed In: Continuous Response Measures in Televised Political Debates and Their Effect on Viewers

As a result of emerging debate formats and technological advancements over the years, the media started using continuous response measures (CRMs) in the form of on-screen trackers, allowing select audiences to rate candidate performances in political debates in 2004. Given the limited amount of scholarly research that has tackled this issue, this study aims to investigate the effect of CRMs on college students’ voting choices and perceptions of political candidates. This experimental study has found that these trackers did influence the participants’ evaluations of the political candidates shown in the debate regardless of previously stated political affiliation.     

Educating for Ecological Conversion: An Ecstatic Pedagogy for Christian Higher Education amid Climate Crisis

Abstract

Christian universities are obligated by their mission to confront the climate crisis as the pressing existential issue of our time. In his encyclical Laudato Si', Pope Francis calls for the ecological conversion of the church and all of humanity. Ecological conversion entails an existential shift from a relationship with the earth marked by possessive, wasteful consumption to one marked by delight in creation, concern for its suffering, and preservation of this divine gift. Following the work of Bernard Lonergan and Robert Doran on conversion, we propose pedagogical strategies of connectedness and encounter that emphasize the psychic dimension of ecological conversion.