Identifying community values related to heat: recommendations for forecast and health risk communication

Abstract

Abstract. Effective communication of heat risk to public audiences is critical to promoting behavioral changes that reduce susceptibility to heat-related illness. The U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) provides heat-related information to the public using social media platforms such as Facebook. We applied a novel rhetorical framework to evaluate five years (2015–2019) of public responses to NWS heat-related Facebook posts for the Phoenix (Arizona) County Warning Area, one of the hottest regions in North America and the tenth largest metropolitan area in the U.S., to identify “commonplaces” or community norms, beliefs, and values that may present challenges to the effectiveness of heat risk communication. We found two key commonplaces: 1) the normalization of heat, and 2) heat as a marker of community identify. These commonplaces imply that local audiences may be resistant to behavioral change, but they can also be harnessed in an effort to promote protective action. We also found that public responses to NWS posts declined over the heat season, further suggesting the normalization of heat and highlighting the need to maintain engagement. This work provides a readily generalizable framework for other messengers of high-impact weather events to improve the effectiveness of their communication with receiver audiences.