In future crisis situations, citizens want to be informed about the current situation by authorities and the media in a faster, more comprehensible and more emotional way – and in the sense of a genuine dialog, they want to contribute their own different levels of knowledge and values. This is the result of the research project "MIRKKOMM – Multimodality in Risk and Crisis Communication", which was presented today at the Federal Press Office in Berlin. In the large-scale joint project led by the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), experts from the fields of communication, media and law, including the International Crisis Communication Research Group at TU Ilmenau, used the COVID-19 pandemic as an example to investigate how well science, media and authorities reach the population in times of crisis. At the closing event, they used the project results to discuss how public institutions can further improve communication in protracted crises.
For three years, researchers at TU Ilmenau investigated communication during the COVID-19 pandemic in the MIRKKOMM sub-project "Authorities", specifically from the perspective of state actors at federal, state and municipal level. In an initial study, the International Crisis Communication Research Group led by Prof. Martin Löffelholz interviewed 71 representatives of public administration in 55 guided interviews in spring 2024. At the same time, a representative survey of administrations and health authorities in 294 districts, 106 independent cities and around 416 health authorities in Germany began in March 2023.
"Based on our experiences during the coronavirus pandemic, we were able to gain a solid understanding for the first time of how local authorities in Germany can better prepare themselves in terms of communication for future major crises," explains Martin Löffelholz. According to the researchers' findings, municipal crisis management in particular requires more attention from higher levels: "It is the municipalities that ultimately have to implement the measures on the ground and act as a point of contact for citizens." Clear responsibilities and stronger bidirectional communication channels are therefore particularly necessary for the management of future crises in order to ensure a genuine dialog between authorities and citizens.
Martin Löffelholz, Kathrin Schleicher and Johanna Radechovsky from the International Crisis Communication Research Group had already presented further partial results at the annual conferences of the German Communication Association (DGPuK) and the International Association of Media and Communication Research in Lyon, France, among others. Other studies by project partners focused on internal and external knowledge management, social media communication and questions of legally compliant communication in crises.
The MIRKKOMM project was coordinated by the BfR and funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The project partners involved are the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the Ilmenau University of Technology, the SRH Berlin University of Applied Sciences and the European University Viadrina. The mecom Medien-Communikations-Gesellschaft mbH, a subsidiary of the German Press Agency dpa, supported the project as a practice partner.
All results and scientific publications of the MIRKKOMM project can be found on the MIRKKOMM_project page.
Contact
Prof. Martin Löffelholz
Director of the International Crisis Communication Research Group and Head of Media Studies