Volume 14, Issue 1

Recently, crisis response organizations are adopting a networked communication structure, as a means to connect different sources of crisis information and enable a more effective crisis response. However, this change has introduced legal complications that so far remain unaddressed, for instance regarding the exchange of privacy-sensitive information aimed at rendering a coherent picture of the crisis. This paper examines how information managers interpret legislation during crises. We analyze our results by drawing on Radbruch’s tripartite taxonomy, showing that information managers oscillate between the values of certainty of law and purposiveness in regards to legislation, while the value of justice remains remarkably absent in their interpretation. By introducing a legal perspective on crisis information management we provide an important contribution to the crisis coordination debate.

This article examines risk communication and perception differences via social media in the context of crisis management. Based on data from the Shifang Protest, this study constructed a relational matrix identifying how critical actors facilitated risk communication and interactions. In addition, the article identified measures of network structure and risk perception differences with Social Network Analysis (i.e. density, centralization, structure holes and subgroups) using UCINET software program along visual structures with NetDraw. Key findings of this study include: a) ranked actors controlled most of the information resources and threat diffusion; b) the level of interaction between government users and others users is extremely low; and c) divergence occurred between personal (informal) and official (formal) nodes in the context of risk perception.

The U.S. Navy has declared humanitarian assistance and disaster response (HADR) operations as a core mission in support of the U.S. national security strategy. However little work has been done to illustrate which vessels are typically deployed for such operations or the costs of these deployments which, as contingencies, are not part of the regular defense budget. In this work we summarize some of the work that has been done in the area of cost analysis for U.S. Navy HADR operations and conclude with implications for policy makers.

This study investigates how the demographic characteristics (i.e. gender, age, immigrant status) of people volunteering for civil protection organizations, as well as the type of organization, influence the volunteers’ motivation to provide this service. A sample of 3320 volunteers was drawn from the following non-profit civil protection organizations in Germany: a) Voluntary Fire Brigade, b) German Red Cross, and c) German Federal Agency for Technical Relief. Reasons for volunteering were assessed by the Scales of Attitude Structure of Volunteers. Correlation analyses, and ANOVAs were conducted. No effects of type of organization and immigrant status on reasons for volunteering were detected. Men’s and women’s reasons for doing voluntary service were equal, with one exception: self-experience motivation, i.e., the motivation to gain knowledge, skills etc., was higher among female volunteers. Age was negatively associated with social motivation, self-esteem, and career motivation. Our finding that gender and age affect volunteers’ motivation can be used to improve recruitment advertisements in the future: the various age groups can be targeted according to their specific motives for doing voluntary service, and the result that self-experience is more important to women than it is to men could also be explored to enhance the recruitment of women.