Premium
The clock is ticking: Temporal dynamics of campus emergency notifications
Author(s) -
Madden Stephanie
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of contingencies and crisis management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.007
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1468-5973
pISSN - 0966-0879
DOI - 10.1111/1468-5973.12162
Subject(s) - ambiguity , meaning (existential) , interpretation (philosophy) , public relations , emergency management , emergency response , business , computer security , political science , psychology , medical emergency , computer science , medicine , law , psychotherapist , programming language
As first responders to incidents, public safety officials must quickly converge on meaning of what occurred, the threat to the university and what information is pertinent to the campus community. Utilizing in‐depth interviews with current campus public safety officials in the Washington, D.C. metro area, this study explored how emergency communicators interpret the concept of timely in campus emergency notification decision‐making and what factors impact their ability to enact this interpretation. Findings from this suggested that the temporal ambiguity of the law creates differing expectations of timely, with prealert processes impacting how quickly notifications can be sent. Further findings indicate that universities with the more sophisticated emergency management roles also had the more robust emergency notification functions.