As I stated in my last blog, I am doing my research on the Valley City State University community. The reasoning behind that is because I lived in the dorm and worked in the cafeteria. I still think that the spokesperson for VCSU is the president Steven Shirley. Basically all of the emails concerning campus were from him. The means of communication for VCSU were email, notifind, a special flood page setup on the VCSU homepage, and also word of mouth.
I am not sure who all I need to talk to for all the information I need for this assignment. The only person I can think of to find out how they handled the communication for campus is if I talk to or email Steven Shirley. Even though I was affected by this flood, because I lived and worked on campus, I don’t know much about the communication except for the few ways that I received information. I live in Edmore, which is about 2 and a half a hours north of Valley City, and would only hear a few things here and there from people about the situation.
Research for this project is going slow, but it is being conducted. I am finding bits and pieces to try to fit together into this project. A lot of the information found is from the emails received and the flood information page on the VCSU website. That is the best information I can find at the moment.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Crisis Communication Research
The community that I am going to conduct research on is VCSU. The reason I am choosing VCSU as my community is because I lived on campus in Snoeyenbos dorm. This flood has affected me because of that reason. The spokesperson of VCSU was Steven Shirley who is the President of VCSU. The reason I believe that Steven Shirley was the spokesperson is because he is the one who would keep people informed on what was going on. I received many emails from him regarding the flood and what was being done. The reason that he was the spokesperson was probably because he was the President of VCSU.
The channels of communication used get information to the public of the VCSU community were Notifind and email. Notifind was used to inform the students that for the week of the 13th to the 17th, no one was to return to campus and there were no classes. On April 15th, Steven Shirley sent out an email saying that for the remainder of the semester all classes will be online. Other emails have been sent about what to do for getting laptops back, how to sell back books, how to check out of dorms, forwarding addresses for mail, and other concerns. One email has three documents that contain some of the frequently asked questions.
A flood information page was setup on the VCSU webpage. It helped to give updates on what was going on in Valley City. It a map that showed different areas of Valley City like the Wintershow Building, the hospital, VCSU campus, and other important areas. The map also showed which bridges were closed down, what roads have dikes on them, and the area that was to be evacuated. Regular updates were added to the site as more information was known.
I think that the people at VCSU handled this situation very well. They made sure to notify everyone of changes that were happening. Without them keeping everyone up to date, there could have been a lot more confusion. If this happens again, I believe that the faculty of VCSU will know how to handle the situation better since they did so well this time. I think that people should thank the faculty and staff of VCSU for doing such a good job keeping everyone informed.
The channels of communication used get information to the public of the VCSU community were Notifind and email. Notifind was used to inform the students that for the week of the 13th to the 17th, no one was to return to campus and there were no classes. On April 15th, Steven Shirley sent out an email saying that for the remainder of the semester all classes will be online. Other emails have been sent about what to do for getting laptops back, how to sell back books, how to check out of dorms, forwarding addresses for mail, and other concerns. One email has three documents that contain some of the frequently asked questions.
A flood information page was setup on the VCSU webpage. It helped to give updates on what was going on in Valley City. It a map that showed different areas of Valley City like the Wintershow Building, the hospital, VCSU campus, and other important areas. The map also showed which bridges were closed down, what roads have dikes on them, and the area that was to be evacuated. Regular updates were added to the site as more information was known.
I think that the people at VCSU handled this situation very well. They made sure to notify everyone of changes that were happening. Without them keeping everyone up to date, there could have been a lot more confusion. If this happens again, I believe that the faculty of VCSU will know how to handle the situation better since they did so well this time. I think that people should thank the faculty and staff of VCSU for doing such a good job keeping everyone informed.
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