The New Ecology of Tornado Warning Information: A Natural Experiment Assessing Threat Intensity and Citizen‐to‐Citizen Information Sharing

• Date: 01 November 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13030
• Author: Scott E. Robinson,Wesley Wehde,Jason M. Pudlo
• Published date: 01 November 2019

The New Ecology of Tornado Warning Information: A Natural Experiment Assessing Threat Intensity and Citizen-to-Citizen Information Sharing 905

Wesley Wehde is a PhD candidate

in the Department of Political Science

and a graduate research assistant in the

Center for Risk and Crisis Management at

the University of Oklahoma. His primary

research interests include emergency

management and environmental policy

preferences.

E-mail: wwwehde@ou.edu

Jason M. Pudlo is assistant professor

of political science in the Department of

History, Humanities and Government at

Oral Roberts University. His teaching and

research covers disaster response and

faith-based organizations, emergency

management, and environmental attitudes.

E-mail: jpudlo@oru.edu

Abstract: The complexity of the modern information ecosystem raises many questions for public organizations. In the

context of emergency management, information (such as warning messages) is communicated not only from a source

of authority to the public but also between members of the public. The authors use a series of storms that affected

Oklahoma in the spring of 2016 to test propositions related to how information about tornado warnings reached the

public and who received and shared information about the storm, as well as to identify how gender and age mediate

the influence that exposure to an extreme weather event has on the sharing of this information. Overall, the authors

find that reported exposure to a tornado increases information sharing through a variety of media and technology.

The effect of the tornado erases the otherwise present gender gap in sharing information, while it has little effect on the

media platforms that are most popular among older respondents.

Evidence for Practice

• Traditional media platforms remain the most popular channels by which the public receive tornado warnings,

although cellular phones have become quite important as well.

• Reported exposure to a tornado increases the sharing of information, especially across newer media

technologies.

• The effect of tornado exposure eliminates the gender gap in information sharing.

• The effect of tornado exposure is dwarfed by the effect of age across new media technologies.

• An effective warning strategy that seeks to reach all members of the public needs to balance efforts across a

range of technologies suited to the demographics of the community.

Scott E. Robinson

University of Oklahoma

Jason M. Pudlo

Oral Roberts University

Wesley Wehde

University of Oklahoma

Research Article

Scott E. Robinson is Bellmon

Chair of Public Service and chair of the

Department of Political Science at the

University of Oklahoma. His research

focuses on emergency management and the

management of change by organizations

and policy systems.

E-mail: scott.e.robinson@ou.edu

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 79, Iss. 6, pp. 905–916. © 2019 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13030.

The New Ecology of Tornado Warning Information:

A Natural Experiment Assessing Threat Intensity and

Citizen-to-Citizen Information Sharing

Government organizations use a variety of

policy tools (Salamon 2002).1 While most

of the attention in the public administration

literature is on the direct provision of services, the

government also provides information on a variety

of subjects. On some subjects, the government is an

irreplaceable provider of essential information. For

example, the government is a primary provider of

information on a variety of product safety issues and

weather data and information.

Given the dense information environment of

contemporary life (with people receiving information

from many sources, including traditional news sources,

social media platforms, and many others), government

organizations need to understand how people receive and

share information. The success of a message in reaching a

large audience relies on a combination of a broad initial

transmission and the propagation of that information

as the initial recipients share the message. As people

increasingly rely on new technologies for information,

it is likely that the propagation component of successful

message transmission will grow in importance.

This article investigates the specific case of tornado

warning information following a series of dangerous

storms in Oklahoma in 2016. It assesses both

authority-to-citizen (A2C) and citizen-to-citizen

(C2C) communication. Specifically, we examine the

media through which people received information as

well as the effect of particular disaster experiences on

the propensity of people to use various technologies

to receive (and send) information. The results

indicate that more severe storm experiences (e.g., a

reported tornado) motivate the use of a variety of

technologies—with effects that vary across platforms

and subpopulations. A better understanding of these

use patterns promises to shed light on who will likely

receive important information—and who will not.

Literature

Tornado and Disaster Warnings

The government is a key provider of information

during weather events. For example, the National

Weather Service (NWS) is responsible for both

forecasting weather outlooks and issuing warnings

about hazardous weather such as tornadoes (NOAA