Emerging and Readily Available Technologies and National Security by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The National Academies Press
Published: 2014-04-03T00:00:00+00:00

All these sources prescribe roughly the same process for developing and vetting a strategic approach to communication, a defensible risk/benefit analysis in advance of any controversy, and communication activities that are both audience-driven and interactive. This process calls for:

• Identifying the information regarding context and scientific background that is most critical to members of the audience for making the decisions that they face (e.g., whether to accept or adopt a technology, how to use it, whether it is still effective). That information may differ from the facts most important to an expert or the ones that the expert would love to convey in a teachable moment.

• Conducting empirical research to identify audience members’ current beliefs, including the terms they use and their organizing mental models.62 Effective messages depend as much on the nature of the target audience as on the content of the messages themselves. Crafting effective messages nearly always requires the participation of and input from individuals who are representative of the audience. And since it is often impossible to obtain participation and input from the target audience on the time scales needed for response, such input must be obtained before controversies erupt.

• Designing messages that close the critical gaps between what people know and what they need to know, taking advantage of existing knowledge and the research base for communicating particular kinds of information (e.g., uncertainty).63

• Evaluating those messages until the audience reaches acceptable levels of understanding.

• Developing in advance multiple channels of communication to the relevant audiences, including channels based on media contacts, opinion leaders, and Internet-based and more traditional social networks, and avoiding undue dependence on traditional media and public authorities for such communication.64

• Disclosing problematic ethical, legal, and societal issues earlier rather than later. Early disclosure is almost always in the interest of the researchers and/or sponsoring agency, provided the disclosure can be handled properly (e.g., without initially providing information that turns out to be wrong and controversial).

• Ensuring that messages reach the intended audiences in a prompt and timely fashion. Controversies can emerge and grow on the time scale of a day, requiring responses on similar time scales. Any message will be less effective if audience members have already formed their opinions or feel that its content was not forthcoming.

• Persisting in such public engagements even over long periods of time.65

Achieving these goals typically requires a modest investment of resources, along with a strategic commitment to ensuring that critical audiences are informed—and not blindsided.66 Nonetheless, the comments above should not be taken to mean that the process of risk communication is an easy one. Some of the important issues that arise in crafting an appropriate strategy for risk communication include the following:

• Identifying stakeholders and social networks. For any emerging and readily available technology, the stakeholders are likely to vary. Identification of the appropriate stakeholder groups and the communication environment in which those stakeholders interact is key to understanding their engagement and their beliefs, attitudes, and values.67 Information is commonly shared among interpersonal networks.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.