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 is

the topic we are going to explore today and how it applies to emergency management

and disasters.

Kehinde Bolu Adesina, also known as Kenny, is a PhD researcher in Mass

Communication at the University of Oklahoma’s Gaylord College. His work focuses on

the intersection of crisis communication, disaster communication, public trust, and

misinformation. He studies how institutions, government agencies, nonprofits, and

faith-based organizations communicate during high-risk events, and why those

communication systems often fail even when the people inside them are working hard

and acting in good faith.

He is a contributor to a major NSF-funded disaster resilience project at OU, where he