Knowing Your Audience
It is important for us to remember when dealing with an incident such as the Chilean mining accident, there is no such thing as a general audience. Every person reading an article, like those written on this disaster, may be connected to it in many different ways. The audience can include family, friends, co-workers, everyday concerned citizens and simply the general public. We also have to consider the individuals affected by the previous mining accident in 2007. This will bring up feelings of their personal tragedy as well as feeling of understanding for what the current families are going through. Considering this fact, it is important when using information of previous accidents to be accurate. Not only do we have to consider the roles of the recipients, we have to consider the wide diversity of the audience as well.
With a story of this magnitude, these articles are reaching people all over the world. This is important area to address since everyone communicates in a different way. For many of us reading the articles about the Chilean mining incident, the articles left us with many unanswered questions. I feel it should be a priority to keep the message to a minimum if the details are not yet clear. We must consider the feelings of the people involved; we don’t want to communicate incorrect information from the beginning. It is hard as a writer to recover from providing invalid information in the beginning. Stay away from worst case scenarios or uncertainty when first communicating a major disaster such as the mining accident. The family and co-workers of the victims need reassurance that every will be taken to help their family and friends. The first they hear of negative outcomes should be by private notification and not from an article publication. Normally officials and rescue aid workers are notified immediately and then they can use the resources needed to locate and save the trapped employees. The family is...