Public communications in slow-moving crises

Like the housing collapse or the recent Gulf oil spill, some crises are complex, difficult to warn of, and don't cleanly fit traditional media frames. They are slow moving, and the media still struggles to rhetorically or technologically cover these simmering — rather than boiling — dramas.

This Communications Forum — taking place from 5-7 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 18, in 4-231 — will examine what new media tools and strategies can be used to help everyone better prepare for the unique communications challenges of slow-moving crises.

Panelists include

• Andrea Pitzer, editor of Nieman Storyboard, a project of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University that looks at how storytelling works in every medium;
• Abrahm Lustgarten, an investigative reporter for ProPublica, whose recent work has focused on oil and gas industry practices;
• Rosalind Williams, a historian who uses imaginative literature as a source of evidence and insight into the history of technology. She has taught at MIT since 1982 and currently serves as the Dibner Professor for the History of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society

For more information, visit the Center for Future Civic Media website