Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

What’s in a #Name? An Experimental Study Examining Perceived Credibility and Impact of Winter Storm Names

What’s in a #Name? An Experimental Study Examining Perceived Credibility and Impact of Winter... AbstractThe practice of naming winter storms has generated a large amount of discussion within the meteorology community of late. While storm naming has typically been reserved for tropical systems, some media organizations in the United States recently began naming winter storms - but often-times using differing criteria. Anecdotal comments have labeled this practice as a marketing initiative and other forecasting organizations have criticized The Weather Channel for naming storms (Palmer, 2013), but little to no research has investigated whether naming winter storms serves useful to forecasters, practitioners, and the general public. The purpose of this study is twofold. First, we hope to further the discussion and investigation of naming winter storms. We provide empirical evidence which suggests that little difference exists between individual perceptions dependent on whether a name is used or the type of name used. The results indicate that individuals do not differ in levels of perceived severity or susceptibility toward a fictional winter storm dependent on the type of name used. Similarly, perceptions of credibility of media organizations do not change dependent on the storm name. Second, we discuss the implications of our results with respect to the current storm naming process, and provide future areas of exploration which can further an understanding of the practice. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Weather, Climate, and Society American Meteorological Society

What’s in a #Name? An Experimental Study Examining Perceived Credibility and Impact of Winter Storm Names

Download PDF
24 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/ams/what-s-in-a-name-an-experimental-study-examining-perceived-credibility-3TO6JkvJt0

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
American Meteorological Society
Copyright
Copyright © American Meteorological Society
ISSN
1948-8335
DOI
10.1175/WCAS-D-16-0037.1
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

AbstractThe practice of naming winter storms has generated a large amount of discussion within the meteorology community of late. While storm naming has typically been reserved for tropical systems, some media organizations in the United States recently began naming winter storms - but often-times using differing criteria. Anecdotal comments have labeled this practice as a marketing initiative and other forecasting organizations have criticized The Weather Channel for naming storms (Palmer, 2013), but little to no research has investigated whether naming winter storms serves useful to forecasters, practitioners, and the general public. The purpose of this study is twofold. First, we hope to further the discussion and investigation of naming winter storms. We provide empirical evidence which suggests that little difference exists between individual perceptions dependent on whether a name is used or the type of name used. The results indicate that individuals do not differ in levels of perceived severity or susceptibility toward a fictional winter storm dependent on the type of name used. Similarly, perceptions of credibility of media organizations do not change dependent on the storm name. Second, we discuss the implications of our results with respect to the current storm naming process, and provide future areas of exploration which can further an understanding of the practice.

Journal

Weather, Climate, and Society – American Meteorological Society

Published: Aug 16, 2017

References

  • The Health Belief Model and personal health behavior
    Becker, M. H.
  • Creation and communication of hurricane risk information
    Demuth, J. L.; Morss, R. E.; Morrow, B. H.; Lazo, J. K.
  • Is that a bot running the social media feed? Testing the differences in perceptions of communication quality for a human agent and a bot agent on Twitter
    Edwards, C.; Edwards, A.; Spence, P. R.; Shelton, A. K.
  • Twitter use during a weather event: Comparing content associated with localized and nonlocalized hashtags
    Lachlan, K. A.; Spence, P. R.; Lin, X.; Najarian, K. M.; Greco, M. D.
  • Social media and credibility indicators: The effect of influence clues
    Lin, X.; Spence, P. R.; Lachlan, K. A.
  • Workshop on Weather Ready Nation: Science Imperatives for Severe Thunderstorm Research
    Lindell, M. K.; Brooks, H.
  • Predictors of recycling behavior: An application of a modified Health Belief Model
    Lindsay, J. J.; Strathman, A.
  • Goodwill: A reexamination of the construct and its measurement
    McCroskey, J. C.; Teven, J. J.
  • Improving storm surge risk communication: Stakeholder perspectives
    Morrow, B. H.; Lazo, J. K.; Rhome, J.; Feyen, J.
  • Climate change and climate variability: Personal motivation for adaptation and mitigation
    Semenza, J. C.; Ploubidis, G. B.; George, L. A.
  • Variability in Twitter content across the stages of a natural disaster: Implications for crisis communication
    Spence, P. R.; Lachlan, K. A.; Lin, X.; del Greco, M.
  • Tweeting fast matters, but only if I think about it: Information updates on social media
    Spence, P. R.; Lachlan, K. A.; Edwards, A.; Edwards, C.
  • The function of credibility in information processing for risk perception
    Trumbo, C. W.; McComas, K. A.
  • Cognitive and affective responses of Florida tourists after exposure to hurricane warning messages
    Villegas, J.; Matyas, C.; Srinivansan, S.; Cahyanto, I.; Thapa, B.; Pennington-Gray, L.
  • Putting the fear back into fear appeals: The extended parallel process model
    Witte, K.