A silver lining to a busted forecast? Building relationships after the storm through humanising messages

Abstract

Grounded in the quiet weather communication typology, we conducted two between-subjects experiments comparing humanising to organisational voice messages in predicting disaster organisation-public relationships, publics' message passing intentions, and publics' community resilience perceptions in the U.S. tornado context. Study 1 examines these relationships in the missed event context, where a tornado was not forecasted, but occurred. Study 2 examines these relationships in the false alarm context, where a tornado was forecasted, but did not occur. Results show differing processes across the two studies, with Study 1 results showing direct message effects, but no indirect effects. Study 2 results show indirect effects of the experimental condition on the outcomes via perceptions of conversational human voice. The discussion extends the quiet weather communication typology by theorising how context influences message strategy effectiveness.