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Read. Understand. Apply.
The Warn Room blogs apply 70 years of research to the practice of alerts and warnings. We show how evidence-based changes to message content, style, and structure can create more effective warnings.
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Over-Alerting: Episode 3
RELEVANCY Earlier this week, in Episode 2, I wrote about the first part of over-alerting, where our research participants described the problem with alert frequency. In Episode 3, I'm going to write about RELEVANCE. This one has a lot of dimensions, and I won't cover them all right now. If you want to read the open access article, click here Sutton J. & Wood, M. (2025) Opting Out. Relevancy was defined broadly by our research participants as "things that affect them."
Jeannette Sutton
1 day ago
Over-Alerting: Episode 2
The first dimension of over-alerting: FREQUENCY In our recently published article on Over-Alerting , Michele Wood and I found three primary dimensions to describe over-alerting: 1. frequency 2. relevance 3. content Beginning with FREQUENCY, we found it was described in multiple ways. 1️⃣ To start, we need to consider how frequently a person's phone lights up, vibrates, or emits a noise to get your attention in general. We live in an "attention economy" and one study we
Jeannette Sutton
6 days ago
Over-Alerting Series: Episode 1
An Introduction. Just over a year ago, the RAND Corporation published their report assessing public reach of Wireless Emergency Alerts. What stood out to me was not who emergency managers ARE reaching but who they are NOT. In many cases, this can be attributed to OPTING OUT. (25-30% in Texas alone). How do we make sense of this? My colleague, Michele M Wood and I received funding from the US Geological Survey to investigate why people opt out of emergency alerts (if yo
Jeannette Sutton
Nov 17
A complete message for a chemical fire
Chemical fires are frightening. They represent a sort of "dread risk" that raises concerns about not only short term impacts but...
Jeannette Sutton
Sep 12
Over-alerting: Incomplete, inconsistent, and not actionable
Recently, my colleague Dr. Michele Wood and I published a paper that defines and identifies dimensions of over-alerting. While some of...
Jeannette Sutton
Sep 9
Closing the Communication Loop: thoughts about campus alerting
When people have been told to protect themselves by taking shelter; when the conditions are highly uncertain; when the threat holds a...
Jeannette Sutton
Aug 29
When a warning has ended, what do you say?
When a warning has ended, do you send a message or do you let silence speak for you? Do you let the public figure out that the coast is...
Jeannette Sutton
Aug 18
A preliminary assessment of WEAs issued for the July 29, 2025 Tsunami
This is a long post that includes a LOT of WEAs (14 to be exact). Because I followed the December 5, 2024 tsunami event fairly closely,...
Jeannette Sutton
Jul 30
Missing Person Alert Jargon: Ashanti, Ian, and Turquoise
When we take a look at the most prevalent WEA messages, the #1 type, following those issued by the National Weather Service for...
Jeannette Sutton
Jul 24
Law Enforcement messages can follow evidence based guidance too. Here's proof.
Initial shelter in place order. When Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, were fatally shot in...
Jeannette Sutton
Jun 23
Aloha, Hawaii - is this a test or a live message or a mistake?
On Friday morning, June 13, Hawaiians were startled by a statewide WEA. It indicated that it was a TEST - in fact it was some sort of...
Jeannette Sutton
Jun 19
Protest Activity WEA - an effective public safety warning?
Just after 6:00 PM on Sunday, June 8, the Los Angeles Police Department used the IPAWS system to issue a Wireless Emergency Alert to a...
Jeannette Sutton
Jun 9
WEA, EAS, Levi and AMBER Alerts
If you’re going to write an EAS message, why not use that same content to write a WEA? Recently, I saw a WEA that was issued for an...
Jeannette Sutton
May 20
BOLO... for what? This is why people opt out.
One of the advantages of Wireless Emergency Alerts is their ability to alert people, without requiring them to opt in, and to do so in a...
Jeannette Sutton
Apr 27
Live WEA Tests - there are rules for a reason
Live WEA tests are used to test the WEA system from end to end. This includes engaging the public who are receiving your messages and,...
Jeannette Sutton
Apr 7
Silver and Gold: missing person messages for aging and other populations
There are presently more than 45 alert types for missing and endangered persons. They are frequently given names such as AMBER, Silver,...
Jeannette Sutton
Mar 31
Lessons on rumoring, style, and consistency from a haz-mat message
A colleague sent this message to me, calling attention to the words "hazardous materials" and asking what might be a more plain language...
Jeannette Sutton
Mar 14
Child's Life in Danger! Comments on motivating action to search.
We've seen a lot of missing person alerts come through WEA these past few weeks. Many of them stand out for what they lack, but this...
Jeannette Sutton
Mar 10
Completing the communication loop with a post-alert message
There are a few reasons that really stand out about why an alert originator of public safety communicator could choose to send a...
Jeannette Sutton
Mar 6
A Model Plain Language Wildfire Message
Once in a while, a message will pop into the warn.pbs.org feed that is exceptional. This is one of those times. ** A complete, plain...
Jeannette Sutton
Feb 13
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