From Bridget Satinover Nichols, Hannah Stolze and Jon Kirchoff writing in the Harvard Business Review: It’s always been true that when companies behave badly, consumers react by spreading the word and sometimes boycotting. But our recent research found that negative news is also bad for business in a new way: Consumers react even when the bad news extends beyond […]
From Zach Olsen, writing in Inside Higher Ed: Public perception has become reality — reputations are made and destroyed overnight thanks to the power of social and online media and an emboldened public who has seen Twitter bring down corporate titans and foment socio-political unrest around the world. Schools can no longer be certain they’ll […]
Once again, we turn to Peter Sandman, one of the country’s foremost experts on the subject of risk communications. In a recent interview, Dr. Sandman focused on how he thinks the U.S. public health profession mishandled and miscommunicated COVID-19 over the last few months, suggesting that health officials underreacted and left us unprepared. Then they […]
Tabitha Moses, a doctoral candidate at Wayne State University, offers an interesting approach to communicating about COVID-19, with lessons for business leaders, too. We see this war reflected in the language that gets used by politicians, policymakers, journalists and healthcare workers. As the “invisible enemy” rolled in, entire economies halted as populations “sheltered in place.” […]
By Nora Jacobs, Hennes Communications Pre-COVID, few of our clients had ever experienced a crisis event with the potential to threaten the very existence of their organization. Now, almost everyone we talk to has had first-hand experience managing disruptions in supplies, sales, finance, staffing, production, logistics, communications, marketing and technology. Some organizations have emerged stronger […]
From Greg Friese, writing for PoliceOne.com… t has been more than a week since mass protests and riots erupted in dozens of cities in the U.S. in response to the death of George Floyd. In the days that followed, public safety leaders expressed their grief for Floyd, condemnation of the four former officers, and discussed their […]
Public trust in the media has tanked in the last four years. Police have become increasingly hostile to media, lately arresting or hectoring reporters covering demonstrations of George Floyd’s killing by one of their own. Yet, media tend to gravitate to milquetoast verbs writing about police behavior in riots. Police “deploy” anti-riot tactics or “disperse” […]
From ContinuityCentral.com: In an interview-style article, experts from the Institute of Operational Risk and Institute of Risk Management discuss COVID-19 and how the risk management profession is reacting. Participants: Carolyn Williams, CMIRM, Director of Corporate Relations, Institute of Risk Management and Dr Jimi Hinchliffe, SIRM, Chairman, England and Wales Chapter Institute of Operational Risk. Question: Is the coronavirus likely […]
From our good friend and colleague, David Wolowitz. With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, most schools have instituted remote learning. We are fortunate that so many schools and families have access to the technology to make this possible. Not surprisingly, the sudden and unexpected shift to remote learning comes with many challenges. One particular […]
Written by Peter Sandman, this was written at the request of the Sunday Times of London for its March 15, 2020 edition – but not published. Nearly every journalist who contacts me about the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic wants to talk about panic. I usually ask the reporter, “Do you know anyone personally who’s panicking?” The […]