Karlsruhe Institute of Technology: Crisis communication: provide credible and understandable information
The corona pandemic is currently showing how important reliable and generally understandable information is. The joint project MIRKKOMM, which has now been launched, deals with multimodal forms of risk and crisis communication. In a sub-project, experts in science communication at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) are investigating how multimodal crisis information is received and what cognitive and affective effects it has, and for this they receive funding of around 418,000 euros from the Federal Ministry of Research.
How do citizens want to be informed by authorities and the media in times of crisis? How well do health care messages reach the public? How can information be prepared in a generally understandable and credible way and effectively disseminated? Questions like these have become more topical and explosive in the corona pandemic. The new joint project “MIRKKOMM – Multimodality in Risk and Crisis Communication” deals with them. The special feature of the project is that it explores multimodal forms of communication, i.e. communication on different channels such as dashboards, brochures, new types of video formats and visualizations.
Laboratory study and online survey
“We are contributing an extensive laboratory study with gaze recordings and knowledge tests as well as an online survey on the evaluation and acceptance of multimodal communication offers,” explains Professor Hans-Jürgen Bucher, who was appointed a Distinguished Research Fellow by the KIT due to the project application and the sub-project at the Department for Science Communication together with Professor Annette Leßmöllmann. “In crises, both authorities and citizens have to make decisions about action when the information situation is often uncertain and sometimes also controversial,” explains Leßmöllmann. “It is therefore important to find out which communication offers convey credibility and build trust.” How citizens, on the one hand, and government employees, on the other hand, receive multimodal crisis information and what cognitive and affective effects the information has on them, i.e. the criteria according to which they evaluate the information, how it influences their risk perception and what requirements for action they derive from it. These studies are intended to help develop target-oriented offers and to remedy deficits in communication with the authorities. The project team at KIT can draw on broad experience from previous research on science communication. The criteria according to which they evaluate the information, how they influence their risk perception and which action requirements they derive from it. These studies are intended to help develop target-oriented offers and to remedy deficits in communication with the authorities. The project team at KIT can draw on broad experience from previous research on science communication. The criteria according to which they evaluate the information, how they influence their risk perception and which action requirements they derive from it. These studies are intended to help develop target-oriented offers and to remedy deficits in communication with the authorities. The project team at KIT can draw on broad experience from previous research on science communication.
Cooperation between research and practice
The interdisciplinary project MIRKKOMM comprises a total of eight sub-projects. Researchers from media and communication studies, politics and law, psychology and computer science are involved. The joint project started on October 1, 2021 and will run for three years. As part of the “Research for Civil Security” program, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is funding the project with a total of around two million euros, of which around 418,000 euros are attributable to the KIT sub-project. MIRKKOMM is coordinated by the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), an independent scientific institution that advises the federal government. In addition to the BfR and KIT, the Technical University of Ilmenau, the SRH Berlin University of Applied Sciences, the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt an der Oder and, as a practice partner, mecom – Medien-Communikations-Gesellschaft mbH, a subsidiary of the German Press Agency (dpa), participated in the joint project. Researchers from the USA, the Netherlands, Australia and Germany as well as institutions such as the Robert Koch Institute, the Federal Agency for Civic Education and the dpa support MIRKKOMM.