“Communicating more dialog-oriented in future major crises”: Media Studies Group at BBK conference "Research for Civil Protection”

Prof. Martin Löffelholz, Kathrin Schleicher and Johanna Radechovsky from the Media Studies Group at Ilmenau University of Technology spoke about challenges and optimization options for risk and crisis communication by the federal, state and local authorities at the "Research for Civil Protection" congress, which the Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK) hosted for the first time in Bonn from January 12 to 14, 2023.

In their presentation, the research team from Ilmenau presented initial results of semi-structured interviews of political decision-makers on the conditions, obstacles and opportunities for improvement of governmental risk and crisis communication. At the federal level, the respondents felt that more dialog-oriented and participatory communication should be practiced in future major crises and responsibilities should be more clearly defined among the institutions involved. Community organizations should be more involved in national decision-making committees.

At the level of the federal states, communication specialists should be regularly involved in fundamental decisions, according to the respondents. They also called for a systematic evaluation of existing risk and crisis communication. In particular, local decision-makers would like to see the respective federal state define a joint communications strategy in future crises, information materials made available in a timely manner and managers better prepared for risk and crisis communications.

With these and other findings of the qualitative interviews of state actors at federal, state and municipal level, Prof. Löffelholz's team is currently preparing a two-wave representative survey of all counties and cities in Germany. In addition to mayors and district administrators, the heads of municipal health offices will be asked about their experiences in risk and crisis communication. Both studies are part of the research project on state risk and crisis communication in Germany, led by Prof. Löffelholz since October 2021 and funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research for three years.

Contact: Prof. Dr. Martin Löffelholz (martin.loeffelholz@tu-ilmeau.de)

Picture description: (left to right): Johanna Radechovsky, Prof. Martin Löffelholz, Kathrin Schleicher