Chaos theory, informational needs, and natural disasters

Timothy L. Sellnow · Matthew W. Seeger · Robert R. Ulmer

240 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Applied Communication Research

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Public Relations and Crisis Communication Disaster Management and Resilience Communication Studies and Media

Abstract

This study applies chaos theory to a system-wide analysis of crisis communication in a natural disaster. Specifically, we analyze crisis communication during the 1997 Red River Valley flood in Minnesota and North Dakota. This flood, among the worst in modern American history, consumed entire metropolitan areas, displacing thousands of people. The conditions and decisions leading to the disaster, and the subsequent reactions are retraced. Communication related to river crest predictions (fractals), the shock at the magnitude of the crisis (cosmology episode), novel forms of reorganizing (self-organization), and agencies that aided in establishing a renewed order (strange attractors) are evaluated. Ultimately, we argue that preexisting sensemaking structures favoring rationalized, traditional views of a complex system led officials to make inappropriately unequivocal predictions and ultimately diminished the effectiveness of the region's crisis communication and planning.

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References

1996Sensemaking in Organizations 1993The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster 1999Ongoing Crisis Communication: Planning, Managing, and Responding 1988ENACTED SENSEMAKING IN CRISIS SITUATIONS [1]1995Accounts, excuses, and apologies: a theory of image restoration strategies 1998Communication, Organization, and Crisis 1991Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science.1996Chaos theory as a model for managing issues and crises

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2011Collaborative Decision-Making in Emergency and Disaster Management 2007Crisis Communication, Race, and Natural Disasters 2005Post‐crisis discourse and organizational change, failure and renewal 2006Crisis management or crisis response system?2004Organizational Communication: Challenges for the New Century 2011Use of microblogging for collective sense‐making during violent crises: A study of three campus shootings

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