Branden B. Johnson

Disaster preparedness and emergency response planning, both within and around organizations specifically charged with providing critical lifeline infrastructure services, aim at anticipating and mitigating infrastructure failure vulnerabilities and addressing challenges to initial infrastructure service restoration and longer-term recovery efforts. Unfortunately, disaster events yield unanticipated difficulties, and the bigger the disaster, the more this is likely. Further, in many instances, disaster planning lacks adequate preparations and support for unexpected vulnerability of critical infrastructures to the failure of other infrastructures, and requires resilience in resources and strategies to cope with emergent requirements for effective and timely restoration of critical infrastructure service. The research covered here focused specifically on interinfrastructural connectivities (e.g., between water and power) that are undetectable under normal operations and emerge unexpectedly often as a result of the precipitating natural hazard event itself [e.g., a M9 Cascadia subduction zone (CSZ) earthquake and tsunami in the Pacific Northwest]. We summarize a research study involving personnel from frontline and control center infrastructure operations and emergency response in Oregon and Washington regarding water and wastewater, power, telecommunications, and transportation infrastructures. The goal was to identify the nature and degree of the problem, and its potential solutions, using the M9 CSZ event as a framing case but identifying the salience of the issue for other natural hazards, such as floods and wildfires, as well. Our contribution is to stress the importance of restoration resilience in immediate emergency response and initial restoration of lifeline infrastructure services.

As experts consider what it might look like for gene drives to manage agricultural pests, there remain several uncertainties across a broad range of issues, including technical, ecological, regulatory, and social implications. Drawing on 25 expert interviews, we parse out these uncertainties and the potential for Adaptive Management to help guide development, deployment, and governance of gene drives for invasive agricultural pest management. Adaptive Management emerged specifically to attend to uncertainties in complex social-ecological systems, prescribing collective learning and responsiveness to stakeholder feedback to effectively reach management goals. Thus, Adaptive Management provides clear direction on how to account for and make decisions in the face of considerable uncertainties surrounding these gene drive tools. We also give some attention to the ways in which the uncertainties that are specific to agricultural applications are somewhat distinct from or consistent with global discourse around gene drive development across sectors.

Background: Effective communication is essential for promoting preventive behaviors during infectious disease outbreaks like COVID-19. While consistent news can better inform the public about these health behaviors, the public may not adopt them. Objective: This study aims to explore the role of different media platforms in shaping public discourse on preventive measures to infectious diseases such as quarantine and vaccination, and how media exposure influences individuals’ intentions to adopt these behaviors in the United States. Methods: This study uses data from 3 selected top national newspapers in the United States, Twitter discussions, and a US nationwide longitudinal panel survey from February 2020 to April 2021. We used the Intermedia Agenda-Setting Theory and the Protective Action Decision Model to develop the theoretical framework. Results: We found a 2-way agenda flow between selected national newspapers and the social media platform Twitter, particularly in controversial topics like vaccination (F1,426=16.39; P<.001 for newspapers; F1,426=44.46; P<.001 for Twitter). Exposure to media coverage increased individuals’ perceived benefits of certain behaviors like vaccination but did not necessarily translate into behavioral adoption. For example, while individuals’ media exposure increased perceived benefits of mask-wearing (β=.057; P<.001 for household benefits; β=.049; P<.001 for community benefits), it was not consistently linked to higher intentions to wear masks (β=–.026; P=.04). Conclusions: This study integrates media flow across platforms with US national panel survey data, offering a comprehensive view of communication dynamics during the early stage of an infectious disease outbreak. The findings caution against a one-size-fits-all approach in communicating different preventive behaviors, especially where individual and community benefits may not always align.

BACKGROUND Effective communication is essential for promoting preventive behaviors during infectious disease outbreaks like COVID-19. While consistent news can better inform the public about these health behaviors, the public may not adopt them. OBJECTIVE This study aims to explore the role of different media platforms in shaping public discourse on preventive measures to infectious diseases such as quarantine and vaccination, and how media exposure influences individuals’ intentions to adopt these behaviors in the United States. METHODS This study uses data from 3 selected top national newspapers in the United States, Twitter discussions, and a US nationwide longitudinal panel survey from February 2020 to April 2021. We used the Intermedia Agenda-Setting Theory and the Protective Action Decision Model to develop the theoretical framework. RESULTS We found a 2-way agenda flow between selected national newspapers and the social media platform Twitter, particularly in controversial topics like vaccination (F1,426=16.39; P<.001 for newspapers; F1,426=44.46; P<.001 for Twitter). Exposure to media coverage increased individuals’ perceived benefits of certain behaviors like vaccination but did not necessarily translate into behavioral adoption. For example, while individuals’ media exposure increased perceived benefits of mask-wearing (β=.057; P<.001 for household benefits; β=.049; P<.001 for community benefits), it was not consistently linked to higher intentions to wear masks (β=–.026; P=.04). CONCLUSIONS This study integrates media flow across platforms with US national panel survey data, offering a comprehensive view of communication dynamics during the early stage of an infectious disease outbreak. The findings caution against a one-size-fits-all approach in communicating different preventive behaviors, especially where individual and community benefits may not always align.

Objective: Efforts to measure cultural identities in survey research rely on self‐reported ethnic, racial, and national identities. We test how survey operationalization of grid–group cultural theory (CT) influences the classification of individuals’ (sub)cultural identities.Methods: A national online sample of Americans (n = 697 for current analyses) rated items from CT indices, CT statements, and cultural cognition theory (CCT) indices in a 2016–2017 panel survey. Individuals were classified as identifying with a culture if they supported it (e.g., rating it above the scale mean or median, or in the top 35 percent of the scale distribution) or agreed with each item constituting the scale (the “midpoint method” introduced here).Results: Different classification methods and cultural measures yield different proportions of support of cultural biases, yielding statistically significant differences despite most people being similarly classified. Survey measures can unequivocally assign a minority of people to a single cultural identity, with a majority so classified only if one does not require the individual to support only one bias.Conclusions: Using a short, conceptually valid measure of culture with the novel midpoint method seems best for CT survey researchers but should have implications more broadly in cultural identity research and social science efforts to classify individuals.

Uncertainty that arises from disputes among scientists seems to foster public skepticism or noncompliance. Communication of potential cues to the relative performance of contending scientists might affect judgments of which position is likely more valid. We used actual scientific disputes—the nature of dark matter, sea level rise under climate change, and benefits and risks of marijuana—to assess Americans’ responses (n = 3150). Seven cues—replication, information quality, the majority position, degree source, experience, reference group support, and employer—were presented three cues at a time in a planned‐missingness design. The most influential cues were majority vote, replication, information quality, and experience. Several potential moderators—topical engagement, prior attitudes, knowledge of science, and attitudes toward science—lacked even small effects on choice, but cues had the strongest effects for dark matter and weakest effects for marijuana, and general mistrust of scientists moderately attenuated top cues’ effects. Risk communicators can take these influential cues into account in understanding how laypeople respond to scientific disputes, and improving communication about such disputes.