Trust Factor During Disasters

Trust is a basic ingredient in every relationship. This applies to individuals, marriages,business partners, nations and the relationship of governments to individuals. Trust isthe topic we are going to explore today and how it applies to emergency managementand disasters.Kehinde Bolu Adesina, also known as Kenny, is a PhD researcher in MassCommunication at the University of Oklahoma’s Gaylord College. His work focuses onthe intersection of crisis communication, disaster communication, public trust, andmisinformation. He studies how institutions, government agencies, nonprofits, andfaith-based organizations communicate during high-risk events, and why thosecommunication systems often fail even when the people inside them are working hardand acting in good faith.He is a contributor to a major NSF-funded disaster resilience project at OU, where heconducts research on how organizations share critical knowledge during emergencies,analyze misinformation patterns on social media, and support cross-sectorpreparedness workshops involving emergency managers, nonprofits, faith-basedorganizations, and public health communicators. His research builds toward aframework called the “Crisis Meaning-Making Model,” which examines howcommunities interpret events through emotion, identity, and social context, not justofficial information.Originally from Nigeria, he completed his bachelor’s degree in Communication atBeijing Normal University in China and his master’s degree in Communication at theUniversity of Illinois Springfield. Before beginning his doctoral work, he served as anIllini Science Policy Fellow and Media Production Coordinator at the Illinois Departmentof Agriculture, supporting communication on conservation and climate resilience.Kenny is multilingual, speaking English, Yoruba, French, and Mandarin, and brings adistinctly cross-cultural lens to questions of trust, public risk, and institutional credibility.He has a newsletter, Making Sense of Uncertainty, translating crisis communicationresearch into practical guidance for leaders working in emergency management, publichealth, and organizational communication.Please visit our sponsors!L3Harris Technologies' BeOn PPT App. Learn more about this amazing product here: www.l3harris.com Visit The Readiness Lab and learn about our Next Level Emergency Management training! https://www.thereadinesslab.com/Impulse: Bleeding Control Kits by professionals for professionals: www.dobermanemg.com/impulseDoberman Emergency Management Group provides subject matter experts in planning and training: www.dobermanemg.comCheck out how you can use digital twins in your training, exercising, and planning using RSET https://rset.com/ For sponsorship requests, check out our Sponsorship Portfolio here or email us at contact@thereadinesslab.com