Information School News

Dr Paul Reilly and Dr Elisa Serafinelli presented the AESOP guidelines at the 5th International Crisis Communication Conference that took place in Lisbon, Portugal between 19-21 October, 2017. The list guidelines for effective crisis communication has been developed within the Horizon 2020 funded EU project IMPROVER . The paper discussed how critical infrastructure resilience can be enhanced through the communication practices of critical infrastructure operators. In its conclusion,the paper proposed a set of guidelines (AESOP) for critical infrastructure operators to implement in order to increase critical infrastructure resilience through the use of both traditional and digital media.

Research Associate Dr Elisa Serafinelli is due to present her recent paper 'Mobile Mediated Visualities: An Empirical Study of Visual Practices on Instagram', co-authored by Professor Mikko Villi from the University of Jyväskylä, at the 'Ways of Being in the Digital Age' review conference at the University of Liverpool. This conference will close the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) review. Dr Serafinelli's paper discusses how social platforms and smart mobile devices are affecting individuals’ visual, social and digital practices. In particular, it examines the social exchange of photographs online in order to advance an in-depth reading of contemporary mobile media. In its conclusions, this paper offers a conceptual apparatus that can help to understand the visual hyper-representation of social practices exemplified by the current trend of giving to everything a visual justification. You can find out more about the conference here.

Dr Elisa Serafinelli presented the AESOP Guidelines for effective communication between Critical Infrastructure operators and members of the public during crisis situations at the IMPROVER project workshop that was held at the Joint Research Centre, in Ispra Italy on the 11th and 12th May 2017. Recommendations included: creating platforms and/or channels of communication that can provide feedback about CI operators’ services before, during and after a major incident. The guidelines was published along with the deliverables for task 4.2. Researchers, operators and the IMPROVER consortium joined forces for two days of presentations, knowledge sharing, and networking. The workshop was also an opportunity to present IMPROVER project activities and results in order to get feedback from critical infrastructures (CI) operators.

A paper co-authored by Senior Lecturer Dr Paul Reilly, Research Associate Dr Elisa Serafinelli and their colleagues from EMSC was nominated for a prize at the 2017 ISCRAM (Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management) conference. This work, entitled 'Public expectations of social media use by critical infrastructure operators in crisis communication' and based on results from the EC H2020 IMPROVER project , explores public expectations of social media use by critical infrastructure operators during crisis situations. Previous research into the role of social media in crisis communication has tended to focus on how sites such as Twitter are used by emergency managers rather than other key stakeholders, such as critical infrastructure (CI) operators. This paper adds to this emergent field by empirically investigating public expectations of information provided by CI operators during crisis situations. It does so by drawing on key themes that emerged from a review ...