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"Everyone in the organization is responsible for communicating fire messages" is a case often made. However, this admonition does not relieve organizations of the responsibility for planning their communications. Everyone having responsibility is a "shotgun" approach. But ecological communications planning is targeting specific messages to a specific audience for a specific response. Both communication approaches are important, as communication plans are part of overall strategic planning. Those who "fail to plan, plan to fail" states the much used, but true, adage. Systematic communication planning is required in order for wildland fire messages to become heard, acted upon, and impact policy and practice.
Currently wildland fire communication, other than prevention, is a site–by–site or state–by–state activity with a limited national–scale communication initiative. For integrated wildland fire management to be understood, appreciated, and supported by the American public(s) it will require the same level of commitment as has been given to prevention.
Over 100 years of prevention messages, and high name and message recognition, have made major impacts in fire prevention. This 100–year history, combined with public perceptions that generally view fires as bad and our long–standing suppression fire policy, has left us a fire–starved nation. The lack of natural fire is being addressed through prescribed burning and other fuel load reduction initiatives. When fire is prescribed, the issue of "not in my backyard" often impedes the efforts of the wildland fire manager. As wildland–urban interface areas continue to expand, the complexity of wildland fire management will only become more difficult.
Communication planning for wildland fire management is not a panacea but is one more critical tool to aid in building a nation of ecologically literate people, including leadership at all levels that understands and supports wildland fire management practices. While few users of this Guide will have responsibility for national campaigns, most of us can influence wildland fire communication planning at the local or regional landscape level. Out of these grassroot planning exercises comes impetus for more national efforts.
Communications planning is a process yielding a product. That product is not static. Instead of a linear process, communication is circular, constantly providing new knowledge for changing the planned action as shown in Figure 1.
Each step is based on the preceding steps. When properly planned, delivered, and evaluated, wildland fire communication plans greatly improve managers' chances of attainment of communication objectives. Without a systematic approach, wildland fire messages will be randomly scattered with little chance for meaningful impact and feedback. Without feedback we will be forced to continue to deal with fire on two fronts, i.e., fire in excessive fuel–loaded ecosystems and "fire" from publics who do not understand and/or accept the need for a change in wildland fire management policies and practices.
Just as each of us learn to communicate at an interpersonal level, we must learn the process of targeted communications, be that large or small group communications or mass communications. In its most basic form, communication is the flow of information between sender and receiver, each acting on and reacting to new information. Ecological communication, a term used to capture the full range of communication strategies wildland fire organizations must embrace, is a very planned, systematic effort intended to effect change in the listener.
Wildland fire communications has multiple dimensions that must be considered in the early stages of planning. Most notably are:
All ecological communications must seek to bring together ecological, political, economic, and social perspectives. While ecological knowledge is based on experimentation, adaptation, and model building, economic, political, and social perspectives have a high element of human values attached. Bringing the best scientific knowledge available (at that point in time), and society's perspectives on that knowledge, requires concerted communication efforts. While scientists may agree on how data are collected and merged to form information, society, in general, may question them. Our audiences often question the "wisdom" of decisions in that cultural groups move from data to information to knowledge to wisdom. Wisdom is a long–term process of accumulation and testing of knowledge over time.
However, issues such as wildland fire management require a more immediate response. Fortunately we are trying to move to reestablish a more natural fire regime; hunter–gatherer societies long held the wisdom that these natural regimes sustained their way of life. Drawing on those arguments of wisdom may be helpful to an extent but we are still faced with the proliferation of expanding wildland–urban interface zones and the perceived risk of fire in our backyards. Certainly there are no easy answers or "silver bullet formulas." At minimum, we can seek to engage, inform, and educate our colleagues and clientele.
Because wildland fire is a landscape scale phenomenon, it must be addressed in an ecosystem context. That context views people as an integral part of the system. To communicate within this context requires acceptance of three tenets. The tenets state that the level of acceptance and implementation is related to:
The aforementioned concepts and tenets are to be reflected in communication planning.
Figure 1 provides one graphic among many representations of the steps to communication planning. Other models may show more or fewer steps, various paths that converge then split again, or use different terminology. Each planning model is based on whether the model maker is a "lumper or splitter" and the preference for specification. Almost all communication planning models are based on the idea of "analysis to synthesis to conclusion." Major problems that occur in model building and on–the–ground implementation are:
Greater attention to these problem areas can strengthen planning.
Each of the following steps to communication planning are discussed in turn: 1. Gather Data, 2. Set Goals and Objectives, 3. Formulate the Message, 4. Select Format and Identify Communication Channels, 5. Pretest the Message, 6. Communicate the Message, and 7. Evaluate.
It is human nature to create a product and take action immediately. Communication planning does not lend itself to this predisposition. Wildland fire managers must be as meticulous in communications planning as they are in prescribed fire planning. Just as inadequate meteorological data can result in a prescribed fire becoming a conflagration, incomplete data in the communications plan can turn a communications effort into a public relations nightmare. The challenge in both is to provide time and resources to conduct the background data gathering, i.e., "doing the footwork" before embarking on an effort. The best laid plans in wildland fire management inherently have enough risk without inclusion of poorly planned communication effort.
The data to be gathered fall into a number of general categories, but each situation (ecosystem) will have somewhat different data needs. Categories of data to gather typically include:
One can collect extensive data within each set. The question is to collect usable data that provide pertinent information for decision–making. Data needs are often framed in questions so that data generated tend to inform, i.e., become information, rather than static info–bits. The thesis of the entire communications planning approach is to move data and information into all constituency groups in such a manner that they "experience" these data, feel knowledgable, empowered, and begin to accept fire management and fire ecology data and information as knowledge. Over time the intent is to see knowledge become wisdom, those long–held valued beliefs within society.
Audience Analysis–General
Who is listening? Why? Communicators adapt marketing language by referring to target marketing. But this concept does not imply one way communication. It states that you are developing messages for "targets," i.e., delivering your message to a specific audience for a specific purpose. The interaction with that targeted audience is anticipated. Questions that can guide this inquiry are:
Social and Psychological Data
These data include insights into conditions of individuals and groups. Social and psychological constructs may be measured in terms of perception, knowledge, skills, attitudes, status (socioeconomic, social, employment), etc. Questions that may be germane (examples only) are:
Political Data
Political data often merge with audience analysis and social and psychological data in that groups of people form and sanction processes based on the "body politic" as a means of decision making. These bodies are governed by (1) written rules (laws, agreements, regulations), and (2) by unwritten social norms and conventions. To be effective in your understanding of the implications of political data to wildland fire management requires an insight into both.
Questions that may guide the gathering of these data are:
Economic Data
Organization Data
Ecological Data
Data should not be equated with knowledge or wisdom. Data only becomes information after it is synthesized within the context of the bigger questions.
Communicators often gather the best data they can and communicate "what science tells us we must do," equating data as science. "Data dumping" only baffles listeners; recipients must understand how to interpret and use data. Informed decision making is the aim of communication planning. The community of users of data and information will then determine over time what constitutes knowledge and wisdom.
Goals are big ideas or generalized targets for wildland fire communications. Objectives are very direct statements that are assumed attainable and can be measured. To write clear communication objectives you must:
Goals and objectives are often set in an idealistic frame. In today's shift to adaptive management, clear objectives are the bases leading to how one will adapt. Lack of attention in setting objectives for communication action is analogous to unclear prescribed fire objectives. The results from both could be conflagrations.
What do you have to say? Why do you need to say it? To whom? When? Where? So what? Messages about wildland fire are encyclopedic in number and complexity. The most critical task is selecting the appropriate message. Your audience is bombarded with sound, worthwhile messages. Your job is to "prescribe" the appropriate message. To do this effectively, a number of questions can be asked to help clarify the situation:
Of course the agency or organization must select messages tied to resource needs and its mission and authority. However, the message must also be based on the recipients' needs–either overtly stated needs or latent needs which may not be so apparent. A Venn diagram approach would include: (1) the resource needs or prerequisites, (2) the sponsoring organization's needs, and (3) audience needs and wants. This approach frames a three–way test for managers' messages.
Formulation of messages is a skill. Long verbose scientific messages tend to lose their "punch." Message formation outside the formal academy (P–graduate school) is perhaps best framed as stories or story segments as Freeman Tilden (1957) suggested:
Without attention to telling a concise story with a theme, showing relationships among all the parts, communications as a process is often doomed to fail.
With detailed attention to steps I, II, and III, it is now time to select the format (e.g., fact sheet, video, slide presentation, public service announcement), and channel (e.g., public service announcement on local public access [cable] channel or a video at an ecosystem partnership meeting).
Format and channel selections are part of matching message, audience, and media. Of course there are no recipes; each ecosystem and each audience have different wildland fire informational needs. Thus consideration must be given to the following:
Do you select a billboard or help local schools develop a wildland fire education unit? Do you create fact sheets for park visitors or press kits for the media? The message format and delivery channels are abundant and relatively inexpensive per contact.
This step links the recipient with the message originator. Poor planning means that great messages planned for the ideal audience may never get conveyed.
Pretesting your message is formative evaluation, i.e., you are evaluating as you form. Just as wildland fire managers often do small burns in test areas prior to conducting a series of major prescribed fires, a message pretest is the same.
Taking knowledge from steps I–IV, select a small target audience for a site pretest. Try out your data gathering, goal formulation, message development, format, and channel selection. Deliver and evaluate. What happened? What does the feedback tell you? Where do you adapt? Pretests give you the knowledge necessary to move forward.
While all of these steps may seem a waste of time, they are not. Given the amount of money required to develop and distribute something as basic as a brochure, such pretests are warranted, economically, politically, and managerially.
Communicating the message involves using the knowledge gathered in steps I–V to refine the media and message for the targeted audience. The best suggestion is if you do not have in–house capabilities to produce a communication product commensurate with the need or demand, you should seek assistance from another level in your organization having those capabilities, or contract to have the items professionally produced. In the case of professional programming, time and resources may be needed to train existing staff or to hire temporary or permanent staff. Poor quality programs or materials usually do more harm than none at all.
Given all of the knowledge collected in steps I–V, you may conclude that colleagues have developed similar materials that you can acquire permission to adapt to your situation. Although you will have gathered these data as you have planned, only your pretest will tell you what has a good chance of acceptance.
Communicating the message once it is refined means delivering it in a manner that is acceptable in content, style, format, and tone for your targeted audience. Your audience must be attracted to the message (message appeal) to the extent that they will stop and listen or read. Designing for message appeal is the responsibility of the message planners/communicators. If the audience is not receptive, it is not the audience's problem.
You have now created a strategy that takes you from gathering data to how you will communicate the message. The last step, or in reality the first step in adaptive management, is evaluation. How well did you accomplish your objectives? What did you learn in the process? Were the objectives the appropriate objectives?
Without the knowledge we gain from evaluation, we do not understand our levels of success, we do not maximally grow from our experience, and we may repeat a mistake thinking we are repeating a success.
Evaluation is relatively complex. It is not an area to engage in lightly. Evaluation occurs before (formative), during (process), and after (outcome). Formative evaluation was called for as in pretesting the message. During the process we are to monitor each stage of the communication event. As we reach the end we engage in assessing the outcomes in relationship to our objectives. It is the learning at all three evaluation stages that leads to our modification of our communication planning, i.e., adaptive management.
To engage in evaluation requires an understanding of communication evaluation strategies. Evaluation, where in–house expertise does not exist, requires self–education and seeking assistance from education and communication evaluators from local colleges, universities, or private consultants.
Communication planning is not an option; it is a prerequisite to success.
National Wildfire Coordinating Group. 1992. Strategic Communications for Wildland Fire Management: Discussion Guide and Strategic Communications for Wildland Fire Management: Facilitator Guide. National Interagency Fire Center, Attn: Supply, 3833 S. Development Ave., Boise, ID 83705. www.nifc.gov
Tilden, F. 1957. Interpreting Our Heritage. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Author: Gary W. Mullins