Risk Communication

Opinion | How to Control the 'Information Fire Hose' of the Pandemic Government agencies need to hire a narrative officer Randy Olson, PhD medpagetoday

...

Throughout the pandemic the biomedical community has unleashed a veritable fire hose of information on the public. Experts of all sorts have appeared on national television with countless explanations of the science. But for most of the public, it has simply been TMI: too much information. Not TMI of the silly personal type, but rather the more dangerous public health variety.

...

For public health leaders, understanding different communication styles and preferences — and how people respond to them — is key to reducing the spread of the coronavirus.

Humans often don't behave logically. Their decisions don't always follow the evidence.

Those are among the ideas that Gaurav Suri considers in his work studying decision-making and motivation. He's an experimental psychologist and a computational neuroscientist at San Francisco State University.

Not surprisingly, choosing the right words matters a lot when it comes to public policy.

Something as basic as how public health officials talk about wearing a mask — for example, as "protection" instead of a "mandate," could make a difference, Suri says.

Here are excerpts from Suri's interview with All Things Considered.