ALBANY — A new study from the University at Albany’s Center for Technology in Government investigates how local governments use technology to communicate emergency messages, addressing gaps in knowledge about effective technological practices for disseminating public alerts.
“Technological advances enable governments to reach citizens through multiple channels instantly,” said CTG UAlbany Director J. Ramon Gil-Garcia. “However, there remains a need for better understanding of technology’s role in emergency messaging, especially among local governments.”
The study, published in Government Information Quarterly, applies the Technology Affordances and Constraints Theory (TACT) to examine data from 18 local emergency management agencies in the U.S. The authors—Tzuhao Chen, Gil-Garcia, G. Brian Burke, Alessandria Dey, and Derek Werthmuller—explore the technologies that emergency managers use, their limitations, and strategies to overcome these challenges. They specifically examine four key questions about digital “artifacts” used in emergency messaging: the tools for writing and sending messages, the affordances and constraints these tools provide, and how agencies manage these constraints.
In this context, digital artifacts include technologies that support message creation, sharing, and distribution. For example, cell towers and the internet are classified as infrastructure artifacts, while social media platforms and mass notification systems serve as message-sharing artifacts.
