Ideas into Impact, Ep. 03: Communicating in crisis
The third episode looks at how institutions communicate during a crisis, and argues that the outcome is largely determined by what they did in the quiet period beforehand. The series is in production.
Crisis communication is usually discussed as a set of techniques deployed once something has gone wrong. The third episode of the series argues that this is the wrong frame. By the time a drought, an outbreak, a displacement surge or a security incident is under way, an institution's credibility is already fixed at whatever level it built in the preceding two years. The techniques matter, and they operate within a ceiling set earlier.
What the episode discusses
The conversation covers the specific conditions of communicating in the Horn of Africa: an information environment in which radio and word of mouth still reach further than any official channel, where WhatsApp and voice notes carry information faster than institutions can verify it, and where audiences have long experience of official announcements that did not hold. It deals with the tension every communications team faces under pressure, between speed and accuracy, and with what to do in the hours when the institution genuinely does not know.
The episode deals with communicating in an environment where radio, word of mouth and voice notes travel faster than official verification.
The argument
The position taken is that saying what you do not know, early and plainly, costs less than the alternatives. An institution that publishes what it has confirmed, what it is still checking, and when it will next speak, retains the ability to be believed on the following day. One that waits for certainty cedes the account to whoever is already talking, and one that overstates its knowledge spends the rest of the crisis correcting itself.
The episode also argues that crisis communication is an operational function rather than a media function. It depends on a decision chain agreed in advance about who may speak and on what authority, on relationships with community and religious leaders and local broadcasters that cannot be created at short notice, and on the discipline of communicating in the language and register the audience actually uses. A statement issued in English, in a form written for donors, has not reached the people it concerns, whatever the distribution report says.
A further section deals with rumour, which is treated in most communications planning as an aberration and behaves more like a default. Where official information is slow, incomplete or historically unreliable, people fill the gap with the account available to them, and that account moves faster than any correction. The episode's position is that rumour is answered by presence rather than by rebuttal: an institution that is already speaking regularly, in the same channels, on ordinary days, is in a position to be heard on a bad one.
What it takes internally
The conversation also covers what has to be true inside the institution for any of this to work. Communications staff need access to the operational picture in real time rather than a briefing after decisions are taken, and they need standing authority to confirm agreed facts without a separate approval for each sentence. Without both, the delay is not caused by caution but by the routing.
Who it is for
The episode is aimed at communications leads in ministries, agencies and humanitarian organisations, spokespeople and press officers, and the senior officials who have to decide, under pressure, what their institution will say and when.
Status
The Veynuus podcast is in production. No episode has been released, and the description above sets out the intended content of the third episode rather than a summary of a recorded conversation. To be notified when the series launches, or to propose a guest or a subject, write to [email protected].