Analyzing the Communication between the Public Safety Authorities and the Population in Crisis Situations

Abstract

The effective and efficient use of communication technologies be-tween the public safety authorities and the population is essential for coping with crisis situations. Therefore, the aim of this work is to examine the means of communication which are used by the public safety authorities in Germany. A survey among the relief workers was planned, conducted and analyzed on the basis of a custom questionnaire. The evaluation of the results revealed that the public safety authorities mainly use traditional media such as radio or the daily newspaper to communicate with the population in crisis situations. In the future, the communication between public safety authorities and the population will benefit from bi-directional communication channels, and thus the population’s feedback will improve crisis communication. At the moment, so-cial media is the best solution to reach this goal and to bidirectionally communicate with the population in crisis situations. It can be assumed that social media interactions only take place if these communication channels have established themselves in everyday life between the public security authorities and the population; in addition, the reliability of the technology must be stable so that those affected in a crisis situation can expect that the use of the medium helps them to successfully manage the crisis situation.