Lessons on rumoring, style, and consistency from a haz-mat message

A colleague sent this message to me, calling attention to the words "hazardous materials" and asking what might be a more plain language approach to describing the dangers that could ensue from this particular wildfire. Given that it was burning near a marijuana farm, one might guess that the hazardous material was the marijuana itself and the danger from smoke inhalation was a contact high that could result in secondary impacts if a local resident was stopped while driving.

My, my. Look at the guesses that we can come up with absent clear information that explains what is taking place! Some call this rumoring and in scientific circles, rumoring is part of sensemaking; under conditions of uncertainty information seeking intensifies. And people will fill the gap with their best interpretations of what is happening. If we'd shared our private text messages on social media, there could be more than smoke for Oklahoma emergency managers to deal with.

A second part of this message that stood out to me was the combination of "EMERGENCY 3." A careful reader will note that the word and the number are not connected to each other, it is an EMERGENCY occurring within 3 miles of a location. But a quick reader whose eyes are drawn to the ALL CAPS word EMERGENCY followed by the number 3 might make some assumptions that this is a really bad situation because it has reached a level 3. And this is exactly what happened for at least one reader/repeater on social media.

They wrote on X:

"An immediate evacuation order has been put into place for areas surrounding the immediate vicinity and including the town of Jennings, Oklahoma this evening, due to a level 3 hazardous materials emergency in association with an ongoing, brush fire near the area."

Fortunately, that particular channel had few impressions and even fewer followers. Perhaps more fortunate still was the limited duration and impact of the event on the area.

A third point that is useful to raise in response to this message: it is an example of internal inconsistency. We often talk about message consistency related to external consistency, that is, coordinating messages between organizations to say similar things. But here, we see internal inconsistency: people are told to evacuate immediately, without delay suggesting that the situation is dire enough to warrant a WEA. But people are also told to shelter in place (if they cannot leave). What is missing is information about how to shelter that will serve to protect those people with as much certainty as the evacuation notice.

These observations lead to some key points:

1. When information is not made clear to message receivers, we fill in the gaps with our own interpretations. This sensemaking activity is called rumoring and its a normal path for people who are trying to understand what is occurring. When rumoring goes wrong, it turns into misinformation.

2. Writing a good, clear message is tough. It takes practice and it takes consideration. There are tools that are available to help improve message writing including classes, software, such as the FEMA Message Design Dashboard, and documents like the Warning Lexicon.

   
   

THEORY TIME...

And a quick note about rumoring vs. milling. They are similar, yes. Both are sociological concepts related to collective behavior. Rumoring in disaster was studied by Shibutani and then emphasized by scholars like Quarantelli, Tierney, and Aguirre at the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware. It is described as a natural process or emergent norms that occur in disaster when there is intensified information seeking. A true rumor is accurate information that is shared across networks. False rumors are inaccurate. Online rumoring has been the focus on the work by Starbird and Spiro at the University of Washington.

A similar concept is milling. This, too, is a collective behavior activity that was discussed by Turner and Killian as a sort of disorganized social activity where one is "milling about" but that milling is guided by the social norms which emerge among group members. Mileti picked up on milling when he described the information seeking and sharing that occurs as part of the warning response. Because it is social, we look to others to make sense of the message and its interpretation and to make decisions about the actions to take.

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.

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