90-Character messages lead to milling...we've studied it, we've seen it, so why do it?

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 commonly described as "milling" and it is a routine activity when people are initially alerted, but it can be dangerous (see Wood et al. 2017).

90-character messages are, in general, a problem. When people are searching for information about the threat, the location, the impact, and what they should do, they are not actively protecting themselves. And even more problematic is when they have to guess who the message is from and how to find information to answer their questions - if they even take the time to do so.

The FCC and IPAWS expanded WEA message length in 2019 with WEA 2.0. With that, we saw changes to the way messages were written, but they challenges remained.

One study conducted by my research team evaluated the contents of a decade of WEAs and found that fewer than 8.5% of WEAs were complete, containing all five recommended contents: Source, Hazard, Location, Guidance, and Time. While 360-character messages increased their inclusion of these contents, 90-character messages remained largely incomplete. (You can read about it here: Olson et al. 2023).

I suspect that a repeat of this 2023 study will find that messages are increasing in their level of completeness, but those 90-character messages are hard to write and hard to interpret. And that's what I want to show today.

The message on the top is a 360-character message and is "complete" - containing the source, hazard, location, guidance, and time (indicated by the statement until further notice). For more information on complete messages, read the Warning Lexicon.

We know that the words "active threat" would likely raise a lot of questions about the nature of the hazard, suggesting that more transparency would increase public trust and willingness to act (see Olson et al. 2025). However, there is an explanation about how to shelter in place for this event, suggesting that this is a threat of violence and bodily harm could occur, even if they downplay the threat by saying it is a "safety risk" instead of clearly naming what is taking place.

In the 90-character message, on the bottom of the image, we see similar content but the sender didn't complete the message and there isn't very much information about who is supposed to shelter in place, how, or when.

Out of curiosity, I visited the DPD X account and found no messages about this particular event. There were a number of other alerts that had gone out over X that day about shooting incidents, crash alerts, and road closures, I found no associated message that referenced the area of 31st and Vine. Further queries using search engines also turned up nothing; so, an active search for more information would have been fairly frustrating.

There was a second message issued at the conclusion of the event, following recommended practices for ending the protective actions that were initially instructed (see Sutton et al. 2025 for more on post-alert messaging).

The message at the top is a 360-character message. Again, it is "complete" for a post-alert message, including the source, the location, a statement about the threat resolution, and an indication about resuming activity. The 90-character message at the bottom does little other than indicate there is an update. No update is provided, and receivers are told to go to X to get additional information (where no information is available).

Honestly, DPD did a reasonable job with those limited characters. I'd like to see a little more transparency in the identification of the threat and be able to find the additional information on X, but the messages were generally complete and instructive.

The creation of an effective 90-character message will remain a challenge so long as that message length exists for the WEA system. And unfortunately, it is unlike to go away any time soon. The requirement for all alerting authorities is that even when a good and complete 360-character WEA is issued, a 90-character message must also be sent because some phones can only receive the shorter messages and some cellular broadcast can only send shorter messages. Until changes to hardware are made, this requirement will remain. Best practices say: focus on the 360-character message and direct people to additional information in the 90-character message. Its the best you can do with a system that was initially designed to lead people to mill.

For more recommended contents, be sure to download The Warning Lexicon - it's free and offers step-by-step instructions on how to write a better warning message.

________________________________________________________________________

Feel free to post this on your social media site, just remember to attribute it to The Warn Room and include the web address: TheWarnRoom.com - Thank you!