Communication between local and regional self-government units in crisis situations

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Organizations affected by crisis situations must become the primary source of information. Therefore, the importance of the work of public relations officers becomes most evident in crisis situations. During crisis situations in local and regional self-government units, citizens seek information about the cause and extent of the crisis, as well as instructions on how to behave in such situations. It is necessary for the administrative authorities to communicate as quickly as possible and provide accurate and specific information. Numerous types of crisis situations can affect local and regional self-government units. What they all have in common, however, is that they are unpredictable and occur when we least expect them. The most feared crises are major accidents and disasters. These are crisis situations or events which, due to their scale and the impact of natural forces, technical/technological or other factors, pose a risk to people and property and whose consequences cannot be remedied by the intervention of emergency services alone. In these situations, the management of protection and rescue measures as well as communication with the population is handled by the municipal/city/district disaster control centers. The successful management of crisis situations requires the development of a crisis management plan and a crisis communication plan. Crisis communication plans should, among other things, provide for the response of local and regional self-government units at the very beginning of a crisis situation, i.e. in the first few minutes or at most a few hours. Crisis communication is increasingly determined by the use of online media or multimedia communication and one of the levels at which relations with the media take place is the crisis level. It is therefore extremely important to build and maintain good relationships with the media. The development of information and communication technologies has led to the emergence of new models of communication with the public that are characterized by speed and interactivity, allowing a response within minutes of a crisis situation occurring.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The research methodology used in this document is desk research and survey (e-survey). Desk research involves the collection and use of existing, previously collected data. The data used in this paper is internal data, that is, data that we already have. The survey method is a procedure in which a questionnaire is used to research and collect data, information, attitudes and opinions on the subject under investigation. An e-survey is conducted online by sending the survey directly to the respondent by e-mail.

MOST IMPORTANT RESULTS OF THE WORK

In addition to the personnel requirements for successful communication of municipal and regional administrative units with the public, there are also normative and legal requirements for communication with the public and crisis communication, namely a strategy for public communication and a crisis communication plan. According to the research conducted, only three out of twenty county towns in the Republic of Croatia have a crisis communication plan, and eleven towns have no public communication strategy at all. Considering the fact that crisis situations in various forms have become our everyday life and a crisis communication plan is one of the basic requirements for communication in local and regional government units, we hope that the above-mentioned research results will encourage the administrations of municipalities/cities/counties to reflect on the need to prepare this very important document. Based on the analysis of several authors describing the elements of a crisis communication plan, the document presents a crisis communication plan that would be applicable in municipalities, cities and counties. Municipal/city/county disaster control centers that manage protection and rescue operations and crisis communications under the Civil Protection System Act do not have a media officer or spokesperson, and there is no requirement to develop a crisis communications plan. The public relations tasks in the disaster control centers are mainly carried out by municipal, city or district spokespersons or PR officers. Media relations is one of the fundamental activities of public relations and can be described as a continuation of the good cooperation with the media in the pre-crisis period, during the crisis and after the crisis situation. With the convergence of traditional media and the emergence of new information and communication technologies and online media, communication tools have emerged that can be used to achieve the fundamental goal of effective media relations, which is to communicate with citizens. According to studies, the most frequently used social networks and online media tools in cities and districts are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.