When industries fail to address warnings adequately, risk situations may manifest into crises. Although the U.S. swine industry planned thoroughly for potential infectious disease outbreaks among the animal population, COVID-19 highlighted a planning gap: What happens if the humans working to keep the industry operational can no longer work? This oversight ultimately resulted in a crisis event impacting all aspects of the U.S. swine industry. This study examines the process of engaged learning from failure that took place via retrospective accounts provided in interviews with 18 industry subject-matter experts. Lessons learned, practical applications, and areas for future research suggest that engaged learning values diverse perspectives and, ultimately, promotes meaningful systemic change. Conversely, organizations opting to disengage during or after crises are likely to repeat mistakes and experience similar crises in the future.

This study focuses on the critical role instructional communication plays in effective risk and crisis communication. More specifically, we examined efforts made by the United States’ swine industry to teach biosecurity practices in response to the African Swine Fever virus, a highly contagious novel disease. To do so, researchers interviewed 14 research, veterinary, and extension specialists to assess the swine industry’s capacity to function as a community of practice (CoP). Strategies were coded under the three major functions of CoPs: mutual engagement, shared repertoire, and joint negotiation. Respondents indicated that the industry was successful primarily because they engaged in effective instructional communication as a learning CoP to create a clear shared repertoire and negotiate consistent messages to teach better biosecurity practices among diverse people and facilities. Although the goal of biosecurity remains the same—maintaining a line of separation between infected areas and uninfected areas—the means for achieving it may differ among locations and the instructional strategies for achieving it must be tailored for diverse populations to achieve the desired affective, cognitive, and behavioral learning outcomes. Implications for instructional communication research to address other risk situations and crisis events are also proposed.

This chapter describes and evaluates WUCF's efforts to adapt their Meet the Helpers program to address the long-standing threat of a global pandemic. It offers a more detailed review of the IDEA (internalization, distribution, explanation, and action) model and introduce the concept of collective efficacy as the ultimate behavioral learning outcome desired in response to COVID'19. The IDEA model has demonstrated its utility as a viable framework for designing and distributing effective instructional messages for mitigating harm and taking protective actions, thereby, providing the theoretical grounding for this analysis. The chapter describes the adaptations made in the Meet the Helpers program to meet the challenge of collective efficacy. Meet the Helpers was distributed through a variety of channels with a consistent message about what the coronavirus is and how to stay safe and healthy. The chapter provides conclusions and recommendations for communicating collective efficacy to children in healthrelated crises such as pandemics.

Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) is a global disease that is increasing in both frequency and intensity in North America. Recent outbreaks of HPAI in Iowa, Minnesota, and Indiana resulted in the cumulative loss of millions of birds and over a billion dollars for poultry farmers. This study examined the instructional communication used by state and national responders to promote effective biosecurity intended to limit the spread and impact of HPAI in the three recent outbreaks in the United States. Specifically, the researchers asked, what biosecurity strategies serve as an instructional model for an effective crisis response, and, conversely, what biosecurity strategies serve as an instructional anti-model for an effective crisis response during an HPAI outbreak? Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's (1969) conceptual framework for model and anti-model arguments guided the analysis. Model strategies include maintaining lines of separation protecting healthy birds from exposure, providing instruction that presents biosecurity practices as feasible for workers, having supervisors model the appropriate biosecurity practices, adapting biosecurity plans to fit the needs and resources of individual farms, and realizing the importance of mental health for farmers facing the loss of their animals. Anti-model practices were seen as breaches of the model recommendations. Practical applications include providing instructions on maintaining a line of separation and avoiding common errors, consistently engaging in a biosecurity workable plan prior to outbreaks, providing adequate and timely biosecurity messages as part of a comprehensive and coordinated communication plan uniting farmers, state, and national agencies, and monitoring the mental wellbeing of impacted farmers.

Hoaxes have long been a reputational threat to organizations. For example, false claims that syringes had been found in bottles of Pepsi-Cola products, that a portion of a finger had been found in Wendy’s chili, and that Domino’s employees had intentionally served contaminated food to customers have topped the media’s agenda. More recently, the hoax phenomenon has been tactically reversed. Heavily trafficked Internet sites and controversial television personalities frequently argue that well-documented crises themselves are hoaxes. The potential for claims of crisis as hoax to disrupt the discourse of crisis renewal is examined through an analysis of three cases. We argue that overcoming such disruptions requires corporate social responsibility, a focus on the issues rather than the hoaxers, and continued efforts to improve media literacy for all audiences.

Background: This study tested the influence of the ‘Protect Their Future’ video intervention on adult intentions to vaccinate their adolescents.Method: The study included 529 parents of 11- to 19-year-old adolescents in Appalachian Kentucky enrolled in group randomized controlled trial arms at 14 health clinic and community sites (seven in each arm) across eight counties. Approximately half the parents (n = 263) were enrolled in the full intervention. Participants in the intervention and control did not significantly differ by education, race, percentage working full-time or gender.Results: Individuals in the intervention were 3.2 times more likely (P = .005) to intend for their female adolescent to receive HPV immunization. However, there was no support for the multivariate model for male HPV immunization. Inconsistent reasoned action findings for HPV, meningitis and flu intentions are also discussed.Conclusions: This study suggests the importance of immunization-specific information motivating parents embedded in a general ‘adolescent vaccination platform’ promotion video may be most supportive in immunization contexts where the descriptive norms are well established parents, as is currently the case for meningitis, flu and female HPV immunization rates. Implications for male HPV parental education needs are discussed.