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Category: communication
Assessing Virginia Tech’s response and text messaging as a crisis communications tool
Karine Joly points to an Inside Higher Ed article evaluating Virginia Tech’s response to the massacre as it unfolded on Monday, April 16. The article covers some by-now-familiar ground and points to the emerging trend in getting the word out to the masses: text messaging.
[T]he one medium that the university could not take advantage of was also the one that most experts cited as being the most useful: text messages. While not a major component of most universities’ crisis strategies at the moment, the messages are beginning to take hold.
A lot of universities (ours included) have been talking about including text messaging as a means to get the word out to students and others during times of crisis. But so far it’s been mostly talk. One exception, according to the IHE article, is Montclair State University in New Jersey. There, students are required to have a cell phone and service that are compatible with the campus’ network. “We’ve made some deliberate decisions about it, and that is that we’ll only use it for emergency reasons,” said Karen Pennington, the vice president of student development and campus life.
Andrew Careaga 