From left: Assistant Professor Elizabeth Carlson; Assistant Professor Michelle Saunders of Mississippi State University; Elizabeth Hurst Marold, PhD, University of Oklahoma; Associate Professor Emily Paskewitz.
When Beth Hearst Marold (‘17) was growing up in a small, rural town in East Tennessee, she’d always been told that tornadoes weren’t a threat as they don’t cross mountains. That commonly held belief was proven a myth when her hometown of Wartburg was hit by a rather large tornado.
That experience helped shape Marold’s approach to an interdisciplinary project she is leading to improve intergroup and emergency communication around weather events in rural Appalachian communities. As part of the project, Marold enlisted two School of Communication Studies faculty members, Associate Professor Emily Paskewitz and Assistant Professor Elizabeth Carlson. Their shared research resulted in a paper that they will be presenting at the National Communication Association conference in November, and they are hoping the paper will be published in a journal.
Marold, a graduate of the College of Communication and Information’s master’s program, currently works as a research scientist in a grant-funded position at the University of Oklahoma in the Center for Analysis and Prediction of Storms and the Center for Applied Social Research. She seeks out grants to support her work and the ideas for her grant-funded projects often build on previous research; in this instance, the idea grew out of another project wherein she created a collaborative tool that mapped out weather vulnerabilities
As the vulnerability mapping project took shape, it prompted Marold to think about how community members working in emergency preparedness (she calls these people “partners”) communicate with National Weather Service meteorologists and vice-versa.
“The big thing I talk to partners and the National Weather Service about is that the time to get to know partners isn’t during a severe event or after a severe event, it is before, on blue skies days,” she said.
There can be a disconnect between partners and the National Weather Service (NWS) meteorologists whose regional coverage includes these rural communities, as the meteorologists may not be from the area and don’t always have established relationships with partners. This disconnect was, in Marold’s eyes, a communication issue that she hoped to improve by organizing Rural Region Readiness Integrated Warning Team (IWT) workshops in each National Weather Service region comprised of NWS employees, broadcast media, and community partners. She submitted a grant proposal based on this idea and was one of four people to receive the grant through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s VORTEX-USA Awards.
The first step was to get everyone on the IWT into the same physical space to discuss vulnerabilities, community culture, and more to aid in improving communications. Marold put out a call for National Weather Service offices to participate, and the first office to sign on was, perhaps serendipitously, the region known as Morristown-Knoxville (MRX). Once she realized her first stop would be in her stomping grounds of East Tennessee, Marold reached out to bring Paskewitz on as a collaborator.
“Emily was really a mentor in so many different ways; I was her graduate research assistant for my first year there, I took her classes, and to say I learned a lot from her would be an understatement,” Marold said.
Paskewitz happily signed on to the project and suggested they include Carlson, who had just joined the School of Communication Studies and technically wasn’t set to start until August—but once Carlson heard about the nature of the research, she was eager to be part of it. Carlson’s research has focused broadly on risk and crisis communication, but she has specifically studied the content of weather message alerts, making her “the perfect person” for the project, Paskewitz said.
“As for me, I come from a rural community, and I grew up on a dairy farm. My heart to give back to that rural community is doing research to improve the lives of people in those communities,” Paskewitz said. “And that’s part of the land-grant mission—to do research that can actively help people in the state of Tennessee to improve their lives. It really was an opportunity to bring together these groups who don’t normally talk to each.”
In the summer of 2024 Paskewitz, Marold, and Carlson observed the meeting, which quickly revealed that the groups present had very different lived experiences and coming together to share their perspectives could be vital to improving both internal and external communications. Their research methodology in this case was ethnographic, which meant their data was listening to people and taking notes.
“These folks have different kinds of expertise, and we were asking, ‘How are they figuring out how to use their expertise together?’ The other question we brought to this is what they have in common, what was the shared identity,” Carlson explained.
After the meeting, the trio discussed their notes to explore those questions, noting instances where there may be differing perceptions between the National Weather Service and community partners. For example, how a tornado watch is defined versus a tornado warning, Carlson said.
While there is still plenty of research to be explored in this area, it became apparent to the trio that, if the National Weather Service wants to better serve the public, the agency needs to build relationships, share information, and create trust with community partners before a severe weather event occurs. Those steps could improve outreach in rural areas, identify people and locations that are more at risk and vulnerable during severe weather events, and aid in increasing community resilience and rebuilding after such events.
Marold has since hosted another Rural Region Readiness IWT meeting in Charleston, WV, and plans to host another in Blacksburg, Virginia; there will be one additional IWT before the project is completed, she said. She is working with each NWS office for six months and is hoping to create guidelines so other NWS offices can create their own Rural Region Readiness IWTs.
She said a large part of this was understanding that there are cultural differences in each region and knowing what those differences are is vital to creating a shared understanding between the NWS and their community partners. One way the researchers are approaching this issue is by making a list of terms around vulnerability and resilience as a way to ensure everyone is on the same page when communicating with each other. Once the NWS and partners build stronger relationships with each other, Marold believes they’ll be able to better prepare and communicate with their communities when those blue skies are darkened.
“It’s such a challenge for the National Weather Service because they move so much. Most local forecast offices are not staffed by locals, so these workshops are a way for them to get to know their community and lots of times they don’t get to do that. It all goes back to communication,” Marold said.