Building Extension Capacity to Support Effective Risk and Crisis Communications with Agricultural Stakeholders

Julie Smith , University of Vermont, Katherine Waters, University of Minnesota, Traci Naile, Texas A&M University, Shannon Degenhart, Texas A&M University, Faith Peppers, University of Georgia Introduction Nationwide, the need is growing for Extension to develop increased capacity to communicate effectively with agricultural stakeholders, thereby improving the capabilities of agricultural communities to mitigate, prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters affecting agriculture. Risk and crisis communications are important and distinct avenues for helping stakeholders build resilience to disasters. Risk communication refers to informing people about hazards and what steps they can take in advance of a crisis to reduce the likelihood that they could be affected or reduce the consequences of being affected. Crisis communication refers to messages that are generated in the event of a disaster that explain the situation as it unfolds and help people take immediate protective or reactive actions. Because the needs of agricultural stakeholders may differ considerably from the general public, strategies to create and deliver targeted messages to agricultural audiences must be built into emergency communications plans. Extension is positioned to play a key role in this process. Given the diversity of agricultural stakeholders, a single message/single messenger model is likely inadequate to generate desired responses uniformly among the target population. “Often, when the common single spokesperson model is used for communicating during a risk or crisis situation, the general public receives the focus of attention and diverse perspectives are not acknowledged” (Sellnow, Ulmer, Seeger, & Littlefield, 2009, p. 33). Communications activities must include consideration of how people see themselves in relation to the things around them and how various social and cultural factors will affect the interpretation of messages. The words and language used to…