“One Single Official Voice or Multiple Voices?” Ensuring Regulatory Compliance in Communicating (CBRN) Emergency or Crises

Abstract

The chapter explores the adoption of the single official voice principle across selected European emergency and crisis communication mechanisms—as they are defined by relevant national standards. It investigates to what extent these instruments accommodate the possibility of having more actors than a single authoritative one that provide warnings and other type of crisis-related information to the population affected by a critical event. Regardless of the formal adoption and implementation of the “single voice” or “multiple voices” principles, the chapter concludes that the key challenge for successful crisis communication is achieving high and consistent coordination among the different actors that contribute in disseminating alerts and information during crisis.