JMCE Current Issue

Homeland Security

A colleague called recently with an intriguing invitation. A coalition of state agencies has received federal funding to "build capacity for homeland security." Among its strategies is the development of communication course materials "reflecting the integration of service learning, discipline specific knowledge, and emergency response/disaster preparedness." Would I contribute? As an independent civilian contractor, I would be entitled to a $5,000 payment for my academic service. I would simply need to provide, among other things:

Protocols for connecting service to mass communication
A syllabus that integrates community service and course objectives focused on preparation of students to work with communities in times of emergency and/or crisis
A list of possible agencies with whom students could work and the types of work they could perform as part of the course
Suggested texts to use with the course.

I had to pause before responding to this lucrative and seemingly civic minded appeal. What does it mean to contribute to homeland security through our work in journalism and mass communication education?

Communication During Emergency and Crisis

The substantive requests I received are familiar elements in our teaching, research, and service. The notion of security deserves additional reflection, but first things first. Let's begin with a brief look at communication and crisis.

Public relations educators and research scholars have long understood and taught the role of communication in emergency and crisis management situations. A classic example, documented by former Johnson and Johnson executive Larry Foster, described the threat to public confidence and brand loyalty in 1982 when seven people in Chicago died after consuming cyanide-laced Tylenol. The drug company's information response recognized that the crisis at hand was public safety, and it placed the public's safety, and the values of transparency and truth, above all considerations of sales and profit. Johnson and Johnson advised the public through the mass media to stop using all Tylenol products until they could again vouch for the integrity of their product line. Good public relations practitioners attempt to avoid crisis. That role is embedded in the curriculum. Successful public relations education also teaches effective crisis management-not spin, not cover your tail, but communication professionalism in which craft springs from principle.

Health communications educators also have put together an enviable, if underappreciated, record in their development of media campaigns focused on prevention and health advocacy. Decades of risk reduction campaign work on heart disease, cancer, childhood immunization, and the AIDs crisis, have produced meaningful advances in our understanding of communication, attitudes, opinion, and public behavior, as well as contributions to the public's health and welfare.

The Dart Center at the University of Washington provides another example, this one drawn from journalism education. Professor Roger Simpson developed and leads this innovative initiative, which focuses on trauma, conflict, and tragedy. The center develops practices for news media coverage of crisis events, as well as protocols to assist journalists who may at times witness the unthinkable.

Undergraduate communication students in advertising and public relations, journalism, documentary film, media studies, broadcasting, and the new technologies are increasingly involved with faculty in public scholarship courses and initiatives in which media literacy, nutrition, environmental education, health, and, of course, the public's need to know are taken from classroom to community. Graduate and faculty research also contributes directly, not only to our knowledge about, but also to our ability to impact in a positive manner these and other domains of significant consequence.

Providing a syllabus (or scores of syllabi) focused on communication in times of emergency and crisis presents little challenge. Walk down the hall of any of our communication departments-faculty and students already are engaged. Previous work in service learning; in broadcast, newspaper, and other lab courses; and in communication ethics courses has generated useful and tested protocols for student/ community engagement.

"Thank you for your invitation," I wrote back. "I am unable to accept your offer." My hesitancy to contribute was not based on an ethical concern that it would be improper to take money for what we are already doing. Reinforcement is a time tested and effective element of learning. If you would like to pay me for additional tutoring, so much the better.

My concerns over facilitating increased curricular attention to homeland security crisis communication lay in three domains.

First, the Meiklejohn question. Would ramped up engagement in the drama of crisis management sidetrack students from Alexander Meiklejohn's tenet that "a primary task of American education is to arouse and to cultivate, in all the members of the body politic, a desire to understand what our national plan of government is"? I fear that it would. Democracy depends on communication professionals and citizens for a rich marketplace of ideas and on the media for its watchdog vigilance, as well as for the ability to serve as bugler in times of emergency. Educating students to effectively assume these roles involves a delicate balance. The greatest weight-and the most difficult teaching-falls within the realm of learning the obligations of the democratic ideal-our national plan of government.

Second, there is a source question. How much weight should faculty give to the government's call to transform curricular balance? Unlike a call for research proposals, the immediate goal of Homeland Security is a change in curricular emphasis. It is not all clear from the evidence that calls for increased crisis management education sounded from within the homeland security political arena should influence the current curricular balance.

And third, the invitation raises professional doubts about shading the curriculum with a pall of impending doom, a natural by-product of an ambiguous, if colorful, alert system. To be fair, a documented benefit of experiential learning through internships, public scholarship, and international exchange is the added real world context that challenges sheltered ideas and experiences. Work in crisis management is neither inherently problematic, nor necessarily a poor idea. No one can reasonably argue that communication education should be isolated from the harsh landscapes reporters and producers witness daily. Realism and cynicism, however, are not the same thing. There is little to recommend a curriculum of emergency preparation delivered at the expense of the sense of hope for the democratic ideals of social justice, rule by law, and belief in the future, that are inherent elements of our nation's democratic structure. Students, like nations, thrive on a sense of hope and a belief that they can make a difference. In its current formulation, the message of homeland security seems anything but hopeful.

Contributing to Homeland Security - A Recommended Text

The homeland security invitation also called for recommended texts. I offer one of particular relevance, The Declaration of Independence. The 1776 Congressional gathering in Philadelphia equated the public's security with "unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" and the recognition "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among [the People], deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Freely given consent goes to the heart of how and why journalism and mass communication curriculum is relevant to our nation's security. Here's how it works.

Democracy is nourished by and dependent upon the willingness of people to view their government as legitimate.

Legitimacy doesn't just happen. It is dependent upon the consent of citizens.

Consent doesn't just happen. It emerges from a dynamic of public deliberation.

And deliberation does not, like the Universe after the Big Bang, suddenly appear. Deliberation is a learned behavior. It can be learned in grass roots neighborhood meetings, in the union hall, from the editorial and opinions pages, and yes, within a well-developed curriculum.

An this bring us full circle to the question of what it means to contribute to homeland security through our curriculum in journalism and mass communication education.

Some of our most important work in journalism and mass communication education is in bringing students to understand that our security as a nation lies in the deliberative processes of democracy and the First Amendment values on which they rest-including the freedoms of speech and press and freedom from an established religious orthodoxy.

Curriculum is a deliberate political choice, not an accident, not pre-ordained, not governed by the laws of physics. As faculty, we decide what to emphasize, what to question, and which teachings best embody the knowledge, history, and challenges of our field. In doing so, we have an impact upon our students, and indirectly, on the vitality of the press and public deliberation that leads to the cornerstones of homeland security, consent, and legitimacy.

Princeton sociologist Paul Starr views this dynamic as "constitutive choice"-the establishment of conditions that set the path for an institution's future direction. (The Creation of the Media, Political Origins of Modern Communication. Basic Books. 2004) Before altering our curricular balance in the name of homeland security, we need to ask: what makes the democracy secure? It is hopeful to believe that by focusing curriculum on the processes of communication within the deliberative practices of democracy, we are likely to make the greatest contribution to the nation's well-being.

Peace,
Jeremy Cohen, Editor
jxc45@psu.edu