During crisis events, emergency responders must verify the particulars of an event before sending out warning messages. The gap between an event's occurrence and official notification is often used by those impacted by that event to verify what is happening before taking action. The addition of information communication technologies has had an impact on what we term the verification pause. This pause is the amount of time it takes to verify what has happened before messages are received and before reaction can begin. More than milling about post notification, this understudied period of time is rarely visible for researchers. The present case study contains an analysis of a verification pause between an earthquake event and the actions taken by students in a classroom in a large university in the United States. The students in the classroom felt the earthquake and immediately began to search for verification that what they felt was indeed an earthquake. The authors conclude with a discussion of the utility of case studies and call for more focused analysis of the similarities between cases.
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Finding ways to help people respond appropriately to emergency notifications and crisis events is a challenging issue for emergency management. Messages are often ignored, overlooked, or do note generate a response. The designers of messages and messaging systems seek to warn impacted residents of a dangerous event without relying on hyperbolism, yet even the most hyperbolic messages are not always taken seriously (K. K. Stephens, Barrett, & Mahometa, 2013; Yoder-Bontrager, Trainor, & Swenson, 2017) leading some to push for new strategies in message construction (E. Wood & Miller, 2020). These designers also must overcome desensitization to notifications due to the volume of alarm overload messages from automated spam, apps, and advertising. When warnings are noticed and read, recipients often do not immediately react; they verify and then begin to react. Getting a message seen and getting a message believed seem to be the two issues that designers must overcome. This is important because even if these processes of verification and attention are improved by even a few seconds, this faster response can save lives. Yet, there is a third unanticipated consequence of crisis in a connected world.
The third consequence is this: before a warning message is sent by crisis professionals, those inside the affected area will feel, witness, or sense the danger around them. Before reacting, those impacted by the event will attempt to find out what exactly is happening. Memes, urban legends, and tropes in pop culture consistently display this reaction. For example, a dangerous prank at a Wal Mart began with someone lighting a firework display on fire. As the fireworks went off, people did not run or leave the store, they demanded to know what was going on; or worse, they took out their phones and started filming until they were instructed to leave. There is a moment–a period between event and instruction–when people seek to verify an event’s extent or details before reacting.
Events like earthquakes, flash floods, fires, terrorist attacks, or active shooters all begin with an outburst of violence. The period of time between the outburst and the reaction after a warning message is received was recently discussed as “milling” (M. M. Wood et al., 2018). The impact of milling post-message is an important research topic; however, we suggest that there is a brief period before message reception that can not only be studied but potentially mediated by device-specific tools, training, or local sensors to decrease injury and loss of life before messages arrive. We further suggest that with a diverse sampling of case studies that insights into event detection can be gleaned and that a more detailed comprehension and understanding of victim reaction can allow for new ways to think about how to deal with what we call the “verification pause.”