ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a rhetorical approach to mobile crisis communication, one that emphasizes context, complexity, and indeterminacy in order to improve public understanding of the benefits and limitations of new media, especially in regards to the timeliness and specificity of messages. It provides background about the wireless emergency alerts (WEA) system and discusses mobile crisis communication’s dominant socio-psychological orientation and research methods. The chapter analyses how temporality complicates officials’ ability to adequately understand and control public behavior during rapid-onset emergencies. It also explores shifting away from the dominant orientation to consider what a rhetorical approach might offer scholars of new media and mobile crisis communication. The chapter analyses some practical implications of a rhetorical approach for WEA officials and crisis communicators. The experience of time is fundamental to human existence, and issues related to time are captured under the moniker of “temporality.”
