From Cyclones to Cybersecurity: A Call for Convergence in Risk and Crisis Communications Research

A robust body of literature investigates mechanisms for improving risk communication because effective risk communication saves lives. While effective risk communication strategies are equally desired across different hazard domains (e.g., natural hazards, cyber security), the extent to which risk communication experts utilize the “lessons learned” from disciplines outside their own is suspect. Therefore, we hypothesized that risk communication research is siloed according to scientific disciplines at the detriment to the advancement of the field of risk communications research writ large. We test this hypothesis by evaluating the disciplinarity of 5,264 published papers using a combination of simple descriptive statistics, natural language processing, and hierarchical clustering. Finding that the risk communication research is siloed according to disciplinary lexicons, we present our findings as a call for convergence amongst our risk and crisis communication scholars to bridge across our disciplinary silos. In so doing, we will increase our ability to affect transformative change in the efficacy of our risk and crises messages.