ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a concise critical and analytic review of the literatures on risk and crisis communication in an attempt to dispel the myths, and formulate the maxims, by which communication functions in these contexts. Importantly, in order to gain the compliance of a person or a particular public, it is essential that a message be perceived as relevant to some risk to the audience or some person(s) the audience cares about. Therefore, risk and crisis communication are integrally intertwined. The chapter presents the principles of communication that represent general “best practice” lessons drawn from research across a broad range of crises, disasters, and terrorist events, but they are more grounded in and tethered to communication theory and research than more “how to” lists such as the “Seven Cardinal Rules of Risk Communication”. The principles are organized by the relevant focal entity in the communication context.
