Beauty and fear

New Zealand — particularly the South Island/Te Waipounamu — is one of the most seismically active regions in the world. For this reason, the country has acknowledged the importance of building awareness and preparedness.

In this kind of disaster communication, emotions — whether conscious or not — play a crucial role. Caroline Rowe, researcher at the Centre for Sustainability Research, University of Otago, New Zealand, explored this dimension, showing how risk communication can balance fear and anxiety with positive emotions such as fascination and confidence, using vivid imagery, storytelling, and certainty. The result is an in-depth exploration of how emotional aspects of risk communication operate in a real-world context, contributing to a deeper understanding of risk communication in real-world contexts. The study was published in the special issue on emotions and science communication in the Journal of Science Communication (JCOM).

“In New Zealand there is a 75% chance of a magnitude 8 earthquake or greater happening on the Alpine Fault within the next 50 years,” explains Rowe. “So this got the interest of emergency managers who were saying, you know, we need to be better prepared for this.”

Launched in 2016 as a boundary organization, the Alpine Fault magnitude 8 - AF8 programme acts as an interface between seismic hazard science and emergency management practice, developing communication initiatives directed both at professionals and the wider public.

Rowe, who studies communication within the emergency management sector, recalls: “Through talking to emergency managers you could see that the programme had had this really strong kind of personal and organisational effect. I started to make the connection:  there’s something going on here with emotion.”

Her research consisted of two main parts. The first was a document analysis of 14 AF8 communication materials. “Tone came through as being something I wasn’t really expecting to see,” she notes. Scientists, she found, conveyed risk with enthusiasm and positivity: “It is not really what you expect when you’re talking about a massive earthquake. But they were really excited about the science and really excited to share that science.”

Their enthusiasm also stemmed from the South Island’s remarkable geology. “It’s one of the few places in the world where you can observe a plate boundary up close, along a major fault line,” she adds. “The Alpine Fault is a world-class example of this transform plate boundary.”

AF8’s communication also highlighted not only the threat but also the beauty of the landscape shaped by the same geological forces.

“Yes, there is this risk, and it is something that can cause anxiety, but it’s also part of where we live and it’s brought us beauty. The fault line itself is responsible for the landscape of the South Island. It’s brought economic value as well through tourism.”

The second part of the study involved interviews with emergency management professionals — from civil defence officials and indigenous and community leaders to police, fire, and medical services. Their responses revealed that AF8’s emotional appeals were handled with careful balance: an engaged yet reassuring tone, the use of certainty framing (inevitably grounded in historical data), and efficacy messages (“we can act and prepare”). Tools such as animations, maps, and postcard-like imagery of the Southern Alps helped make the risk tangible without inducing paralysis.

What emerges is a nuanced picture in which emotions have genuine value, not as something to suppress, but to understand and use wisely. For risk communicators, emotions are not a side effect to be avoided: eliminating them is impossible. Recognising and channelling them allows the positive aspects — such as self-efficacy, confidence, and motivation to act — to surface, while preventing fear and anxiety from taking over.

“People are going to feel emotions regardless. Risk communicators need to accept that and work with it,” concludes Rowe. “The risk itself is inherently scary,  but if it is framed with empowering messages of agency and efficacy, people are better able to deal with it.”

The paper “Walking the Faultline of Fear: How affect-inducing risk communication can help promote disaster preparedness” by Caroline Rowe, Caroline Orchiston and Fabien Medvecky is part of a JCOM special issue titled “Emotions and Science Communication”.

“This article shows how important it is to understand emotions in a context of risk and fear,” says Luisa Massarani, researcher at the Brazilian Institute of Public Communication of Science and Technology and one of the guest editors of the special issue on emotions and science communication.

"Despite their significant role, emotions are under-theorised and under-researched in science communication - although there is a growing interest among researchers and practitioners in understanding their role in science communication. This led us - Neta Shaby (UK), Daniel Silva Luna and myself - to propose this special issue, inviting researchers and practitioners around the globe to submit their manuscripts. We hope this special issue inspires other people to think further about the different facets of emotions and science communication , as well as to carry out more studies on the subject,” she says.