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.
When we first began to study public responses to Wireless Emergency Alerts in 2012, we immediately saw significant issues with alerts that were limited to 90-characters. Study participants indicated that these messages could not contain enough information to act upon, so instead of leading them to protect themselves, it led to them to search for more information ( see Bean et al. 2016 ). Information search to confirm the message is trustworthy and requires action is commonl
Much of the time that I have written about language inconsistency and the use of jargon in messages, it has been focused on WILDFIRE. Many previous posts to the Warning Gallery have pointed to the use of operational and technical language (Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 or Ready status, Set status, Go status) that has more meaning to responders and commanders than to the public. In fact, we’ve published about the use of inconsistent language in the National Fire Protection A
