Browsing by Author "Diers-Lawson A"

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Editorial: COVID-19: risk communication and blame
(Frontiers Media S.A., 2024-01-05) Bouguettaya A; Ahmed R; Diers-Lawson A; Dutta MJ; Team V; Agarwal V
Modeling the role of institutional trust to improve vaccine confidence: The New Zealand case
(Taylor and Francis Group, 2025-07-03) Diers-Lawson A; Ashwell D; Murray N
This study explores how institutional trust influences vaccine confidence during public health crises, using New Zealand’s COVID-19 response as a high-trust case study. Applying the Stakeholder Relationship Management (SRM) framework, the research investigates how demographic, value-based, health, institutional, and informational factors shape vaccine attitudes across varying levels of institutional trust. Results demonstrate that institutional trust is a critical predictor of both vaccine confidence and skepticism, with trust in science and reliance on official sources driving confidence, and social media reliance correlating with skepticism. Segmenting participants by trust levels revealed distinct patterns, highlighting the importance of tailoring communication strategies to trust-based subgroups. The findings reposition vaccine hesitancy as a crisis and risk communication challenge—rooted not solely in individual traits but in institutional relationships and the complex information environment. The study advocates for integrating strategic communication principles into public health risk communication, emphasizing long-term trust-building, credibility, and message alignment across platforms. This research offers a model for cross-contextual testing and underscores the need for governments and health authorities to engage low-trust communities more effectively, particularly through strategic use of social media during health emergencies.
Testing times: Communicating the role and uncertainty of analytical procedures in a food safety crisis
(Public Relations Institute of Australia, 17/06/2019) Galloway C; Ashwell D; Croucher S; Diers-Lawson A
Through a case study analysis, this paper examines how scientific testing was involved in both the triggering and the resolution of the largest food safety scare ever to hit New Zealand. The paper examines the practical applications for communicators dealing with food safety-based risks and discusses how when dealing with crises, they need to take into account lay publics’ biases towards assurances of zero risk. This should be part of determining audiences’ information needs and of calibrating the provision of scientific information, including information about necessary testing, in ways that meet these needs. Doing so will help build trust, including about the scientific method and the organisations applying it to determine not only the nature of a given risk but also to assess how best it might be mitigated. While distrust might surface in a risk-based crisis, communicators should focus on messaging that addresses uncertainty through providing consistent and credible information.