Signed in as:
filler@godaddy.com
Signed in as:
filler@godaddy.com
Funded by NOAA
Next generation media will allow the display of alert and warning content in new and novel ways. NextGen Advanced Emergency Information (AEI) can reach a wide range of fixed and mobile devices using a resilient broadcasting infrastructure. Limited research exists on how to effectively display alert and warning information in a visual format, where notifications cut into ongoing broadcasting, providing timely and urgent information about imminent threats. This research, funded by NOAA, will include content analysis to identify common features and layouts of screens and eye tracking experiments to investigate the allocation of visual attention in noisy and uncertain environments.
The results of this research will provide initial directions for future screen design that reduces cognitive load during decision-making under duress for severe weather threats.
Research team: Jeannette Sutton (UA), Mike Michaud (UA), Heather Sheridan (UA), Greg Cox (UA), Holly Obermeier (OU-CIWRO), Kodi Berry (NOAA-NSSL), Nate Johnson (NBC Universal), Chad Davis (PBS).
Rafizadeh, C. M., Michaud, M. S., Sheridan, H., Sutton, J., & Cox, G. E. (under review) Do we have your attention? Tracking eye movements during television weather warnings. Weather Climate and Society.
Michaud, M., Sutton, J.,Berry, K.L., Obermeier, H.B., Sheridan, H., Cox, G.E., Rafizadeh, C.M., Olivas, S., Johnson, N., Krocak, M. J., Trujillo-Falcon, J. E., & Sun, L. L. (revise and resubmit) NextGen TV and Advanced Emergency Alerting: The future of TV warnings and alerts. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
Various projects funded under the Earthquake Hazards Program at the US Geological Society.
Jeannette Sutton and Michele Wood, Co-PIs. Understanding the best ways to craft earthquake early warning (EEW) messages to motivate people to take action is essential to realizing the potential benefits afforded by ShakeAlert and other EEW systems. ShakeAlert currently sends a single message through the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS), regardless of users’ location or situation despite research demonstrating that personalized, detailed messages are more effective at motivating protective action than more general warnings (Frisby et al., 2014; Lindell & Perry, 2012; Sellnow et al., 2012; Sutton et al., 2018; Wood et al., 2018); however, this limitation may change in the future. The purpose of this study was to examine the potential benefit of including additional specificity in EEW messages by including information about the earthquake epicenter, countdown to shaking arrival, anticipated shaking intensity, anticipated impacts, and guidance.
Jeannette Sutton was funded through an IPA in 2019 to conduct eye tracking and behavioral experiments in response to earthquake early warnings. With co-investigator Laura Fischer at University of Kentucky.
Sutton, J., Crouch, S., Waugh, N., & Wood, M. M. (2024). “We ran outside and waited for it to come”: Resident experiences in response to a false earthquake early warning” Earthquake Spectra. 40(4).
Sutton, J., Wood, M.M., Crouch, S. & Waugh, N. (2022) Public perceptions of U.S. earthquake early warning post-alert messages: Findings from focus groups and Interviews. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. Vol. 84.
Sutton, J. & Wood, M. (2022). Testing the effects of increased message specificity for earthquake early warning: Collaborative research with the University at Albany, SUNY and California State University, Fullerton. Final Technical Report. U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Hazards Program. Awards No. G21AP10009-00 and G21AP20010-00.
McBride, S. K., Bostrom, A., Sutton, J., de Groot, R. M., Baltay, A. S., Terbush, B., Bodin, P., Dixon, M., Holland, E., Arba, R., Laustsen, P., Liu, S., & Vinci, M. (2020). Developing post-alert messaging for ShakeAlert, the earthquake early warning system for the West Coast of the United States of America. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 101713.
Sutton, J., Fischer, L., James, L. E., & Sheff, S. E. (2020). Earthquake early warning message testing: Visual attention, behavioral responses, and message perceptions. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 101664.
Funded by the US National Science Foundation as a RAPID award
Public health and emergency management agencies are on the front lines of informing and educating the public about the science of virus transmission and prevention. In response to a threat such as COVID-19, their mission requires the communication of accurate and credible information to local populations using a variety of media channels. Increasingly, social media is a critical component of their communication toolbox - but using it to rapidly and effectively inform the public in a crowded media environment remains a significant challenge.
Sutton, J., Renshaw, S., & Butts, C. T. (2020). COVID-19: Retransmission of official communications in an emerging pandemic. PLOS ONE 15(9): e0238491.
Sutton, J. Renshaw, S., & Butts, C. T. (2020). The first 60 days: American public health agencies’ social media strategies in the emerging COVID-19 pandemic. Health Security. 18(6).
Sutton, J., Rivera, Y., Sell, T. K., Moran, M. B., Bennett, D. M., Schoch-Spana, M., Stern, E. K.,Turetsky, D. (2020). Longitudinal risk communication: A research agenda for communicating in a pandemic. Health Security
Renshaw, S.L., Mai, S., Dubois, E.V., Sutton, J. & Butts, C.T. (2021). Cutting through the noise: Predictors of successful online message retransmission in the first 8 months of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Health Security. 19(1): 31-43.
Joan Donovan & Jeannette Sutton
communication+misinformation
My guests today are experts in the ways that risk communication works--in the ways that public officials push important information out to the public, but also in how information is manipulated.
Project HEROIC is a collaborative, NSF funded effort by researchers at the University at Albany, Jeannette Sutton (PI), and the University of California-Irvine, Carter Butts (PI), to better understand the dynamics of informal online communication in response to extreme events. Through a combination of data collection and modeling of conversation dynamics, the project team aims to understand the relationship between hazard events, informal communication and emergency response.
The nearly continuous, informal exchange of information — including such mundane activities as gossip, rumor, and casual conversation — is a characteristic human behavior, found across societies and throughout recorded history. While often taken for granted, these natural patterns of information exchange become an important “soft infrastructure” for decentralized resource mobilization and response during emergencies and other extreme events. Indeed, despite being historically limited by the constraints of physical proximity, small numbers of available contacts, and the frailties of human memory, informal communication channels are often the primary means by which time-sensitive hazard information first reaches members of the public. This capacity of informal communication has been further transformed by the widespread adoption of mobile devices (such as “smart-phones”) and social media technologies (e.g., microblogging services such as Twitter), which allow individuals to reach much larger numbers of contacts over greater distances than was possible in previous eras.
Although the potential to exploit this capacity for emergency warnings, alerts, and response is increasingly recognized by practitioners, much remains to be learned about the dynamics of informal online communication in emergencies — and, in particular, about the ways in which existing streams of information are modified by the introduction of emergency information from both official and unofficial sources. Our research addresses this gap, employing a longitudinal, multi-hazard, multi-event study of online communication to model the dynamics of informal information exchange in and immediately following emergency situations.
Vos, S. C., Sutton, J., Gibson, C. B., & Butts, C. T. (2020). #Ebola: Emergency risk messages on social media. Health Security. 18(6). https://doi.org/10.1089/hs.2019.0158
Sutton, J., Renshaw, S. L., Vos, S. C., Olson, M. K., Prestley, R., Gibson, C. B., & Butts, C. T. (2019) Getting the Word Out, Rain or Shine: The Impact of Message Features and Hazard Context on Message Passing Online. Weather, Climate and Society 11(4) 763-776.
Olson, M. K., Sutton, J., Vos, S.C. , Prestley, R., Renshaw, S. L., & Butts, C. T. (2019) Build community before the storm: The National Weather Service’s use of social media. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management 27(4) 359-373.
Jeannette Sutton (2018) Communication Trolls and Bots Versus Public Health Agencies’ Trusted Voices American Journal of Public Health. 108(10) 1281-1282.
Vos, S. C., Sutton, J., Yu, Y., Renshaw, S., Olson, M. K.*, Gibson, C. B., & Butts, C. T. 2018) Risk Communication: The Role of Threat and Efficacy Risk Analysis. 38(12).
Sutton, J Spiro, E., Johnson, B. Fitzhugh, S., Gibson, B. & Butts, C.T. (2013) Warning tweets: serial transmission of messages during the warning phase of a disaster event Information Communication and Society, 17(6), 765-787.
Sutton, J., Spiro, E. S., Gibson, B. C., Fitzhugh, S., Johnson, B., League, C., & Butts, C. T. 2015) What it Takes to Get Passed On: Message Content, Style, and Structure as Predictors of Retransmission in the Boston Marathon Bombing Response. PLoS ONE, 10(8), e0134452. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0134452
Sutton, J., Gibson, C. B., Phillips, N. E., Spiro, E. S., League, C., Johnson, B., Fitzhugh, S. M., & Butts, C. T. A cross hazard analysis of terse message. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 1112(48), 14793-14798.
Funded by the US National Science Foundation
This project focused on research on public understanding of tsunami warning messages. Using NOAA tsunami warning products, we conducted focus groups with a population that was unfamiliar with tsunami hazards followed by a public survey. We found that tsunami messages must be conveyed using plain language, and public education is necessary for increasing understanding of the threat and protective action intent. We also learned about reasons that people may not be willing to click on an informational URL as part of a message: it could be spam, malware, or other content that is false or dangerous to the receiver.
Sutton, J., & Woods, C. W. (2016). Tsunami warning message interpretation and sense making: Focus group insights. Weather, Climate, and Society, 8(4), 389-398.
Sutton, J., Woods, C. W., and Vos, S. C. (2017). Willingness to click: Risk information seeking during imminent threats. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management.
Sutton, J., Vos S. C., Wood, M., & Turner, M. (2018). Designing effective tsunami messages: The role of short messages and fear in warning response. Weather, Climate, and Society. 10(1), 75-87.
Funded by NOAA-VORTEX
The risk information seeking and processing (RISP) model allows scholars to model how individuals process information about a perceived hazard. Most studies using the RISP model have focused on how individuals process information to slow moving environmental or health hazards. However, less is known about how individuals process fast moving meteorological threats that require more immediate decision making. Even less is known about how individuals process visual risk messages.
In this project, Sutton and Co-PI Laura Fischer investigate individual processing of visual risk images during a fictitious tornado threat. Drawing from RISP, we will identify if individuals process risk information systematically (i.e., attempts to thoroughly understand or evaluate through careful thinking and intensive reasoning) or heuristically (i.e., the activation of well-learned judgments through cues such as source credibility and visual salience) through the allocation of visual attention to maps. To do so, we will conduct eye-tracking experiments to investigate how individuals with varying levels of hazard experience process visual information for a meteorological hazard to reduce their information insufficiency.
Findings from this research will provide empirical evidence to develop a preliminary model of Visual-Risk Information Seeking and Processing and will offer applied benefits to risk communicators in their design of risk imagery.
Fischer, L.M., Huntsman, D.O., Orton, G., & Sutton, J. (2023) You have to send the right message. Weather, Climate and Society. 15(2)
Fischer, L. M., Orton, G., Sutton, J., & Wallace, M. (2023). Show me and what will I remember? Exploring recall in response to NWS tornado warning graphics. Journal of Applied Communications. 87(3)
Sutton, J. Fischer, L. M., & Wood, M. M. (2021). Tornado Warning Guidance and Graphics: Implications of the Inclusion of Protective Action Information on Perceptions and Efficacy. Weather, Climate, and Society.
Sutton, J., & Fischer, L. (2020). Understanding visual risk communication
messages: An analysis of visual attention allocation and think aloud responses to tornado graphics. Weather, Climate, and Society. 13(1) 173-188 DOI:
Calls To Action in Short Warning Messages: A Comparative Study of 3 Hazards. Presented at the 102nd Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society, 17th Symposium on Societal Applications: Policy, Research, and Practice, Session 10 Utilizing Social Media for Weather Research, Education, and Risk Communication. Houston, TX.
A recording from the AMS 5th Conference on Weather, Warnings and Communication by Dr. Jeannette Sutton on June 14, 2019
Eye-Tracking the Storm: The Effect of Variation in Presentation of Visual Risk Information
A recording from the American Meteorological Society annual meeting, Phoenix, AZ by Dr. Jeannette Sutton on January 8, 2019
by Hamilton Bean, Brooke Liu, Stephanie Madden, Dennis Mileti, Jeannette Sutton, Michele Wood
Funded by US DHS S&T
This project sought to determine the optimized message contents of imminent threat wireless emergency alert (WEA) messages delivered over mobile communication devices. This report presents findings for the first WEA messages disseminated about imminent threats (i.e., first alert messages) from two research phases with U.S. adults: (1) eight experiments, seven focus groups and 50 think-out-loud interviews; and (2) a survey of an actual “real world” severe flood in Boulder, Colorado. It also integrates findings from across study methods and provides actionable guidance and considerations for optimized message contents of imminent one-hour-to-impact threat alerts delivered over mobile communication devices.
Wood, M., Mileti, D., Bean, H., Liu, B. F., Sutton, J., & Madden, S. (2017). Milling and public warnings. Environment and Behavior.
Liu, B. F., Egnoto M., Wood, M., Bean, H., Sutton, J., Mileti, D., & Madden, S. (2017). Is a picture worth a thousand words? The effects of maps and warning messages on how publics respond to disaster information. Public Relations Review 43(3), 493-506.
Bean, H., Liu, B. F., Madden, S., Sutton, J., Wood, M., & Mileti, D. (2015). Disaster warnings in your pocket: A qualitative study of how audiences interpret wireless emergency alerts. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 24(3), 136-147.
Bean, H., Sutton, J., Liu, B. F., Madden, S., Wood, M., & Mileti, D. (2015). The study of mobile public warning messages: A research review and agenda. The Review of Communication, 15(1), 60-80.
Comprehensive Testing of Imminent Threat Public Messages for
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