Alerting a Campus Community: Emergency Notification from a Public's Perspective

Abstract

Emergency notification systems have become an essential part of campus security since the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting in the United States. This study explored how a public‐centred perspective can inform campus‐alerting practices. In particular, this study provided depth to two independent variables of the situational theory of publics: constraint recognition and level of involvement. Additionally, this study proposed the development of a subcategorisation of hot‐issue publics called transient publics.