For my first undergraduate summer research experience, we will be researching campus crisis communications and taking a closer look at the rhetoric used when informing the campus community regarding their COVID-19 response.
Over the past couple of months, amid our current crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been collecting data from different colleges’ response to the pandemic and their methods in informing their campuses of actions being taken. We plan to analyze and compare the rhetoric used through their communication to students, parents, and the community. By collecting and logging emails, social media posts, and interactive video streams, we are looking to understand the effectiveness of specific crisis communication methods towards the different communities based on their demographics.
Our experiences thus far have shed light on the difference in the rhetoric used during crisis communication from community colleges as well as four-year universities. It has also been interesting to see a lack of language resources made available to the communities even when demographic data shows a high percentage of Spanish speaking communities. Topics such as these, as well as the differences in ethos used by university and college executives and the overlap of gender, are discussion points we aim to address in our final analysis of this study.
We hope the information we collect will be beneficial towards future college campus crisis communications and strengthen the rhetoric used to be more diverse, equitable, and inclusive.
Jesus Orozco 