Abstract
One of the central missions of all institutions of higher education is to provide safe and secure learning environments. While most campuses across the United States are relatively safe, the tragic events at Virginia Tech in April 2007 revealed that campus communities are vulnerable and that technology may play a key role in better protecting it. After the shooting at Virginia Tech, a number of colleges in the United States started implementing their own emergency alert systems that could be used for any type of public crisis, including campus shootings, acts of terrorism, or natural disasters (Kopel, Sims, & Chin, 2014). Similarly, many universities have their own departments of emergency preparedness that help students prepare for an on-campus incident (Thompson & Schlehofer, 2014). They use warning channels such as voice calls, text messages, social media posts, and announcements posted on the schools’ official websites (Horton, 2012; Romano, 2013). However, there is little research about how students respond to those warning messages. The most relevant study was done by McGee and Gow (2012) at the University of Alberta in Canada. They did focus groups to examine how undergraduate students living on campus may respond to an emergency alert warning sent by the university through their cell phone.
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Appendix
Appendix
1.1 Mock Up Scenarios (Modified to Remove the Name of the University)
Social media shooting alert
Social media tornado alert
Text message shooting alert
Text message tornado alert
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Sheldon, P. (2017). Is Medium the Message? Perceptions of and Reactions to Emergency Alert Communications on College Campuses. In: Friedrichsen, M., Kamalipour, Y. (eds) Digital Transformation in Journalism and News Media. Media Business and Innovation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27786-8_34
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