Understanding who you are communicating with — and how you can best reach and engage them — is central to effective disaster risk communication.
Different groups experience risk differently, trust different messengers, and respond to different formats. Targeting your communication to the right audience groups strengthens relevance, clarity, and impact.
Audiences: who you will communicate with and why
The public is not a target audience. If you target everyone, you risk reaching no one meaningfully.
The formative research will highlight groups with shared characteristics and common needs. Consider grouping audiences using the following dimensions:
1. Demographics
Characteristics that shape access, vulnerability and communication needs:
- age, gender, disability,
- location (urban, peri-urban, remote),
- religion, language,
- income, literacy levels.
2. Psychographics
What motivates people and shapes how they interpret messages:
- values and beliefs,
- aspirations, fears, personal goals,
- social interests, lifestyles, and everyday routines.
These insights help you identify what will resonate emotionally and cognitively.
3. Knowledge and mental models
What people currently understand and how they make sense of risk:
- risk perception, confidence, trust,
- past experiences with hazards,
- current behaviours and decision-making patterns.
People interpret information through the lens of their mental models, which often differ from scientific explanations. Tailoring messages to these mental models helps reduce confusion and increases uptake.
4. Influence and power to change conditions
Sometimes the most at-risk groups cannot make the structural changes required to stay safe. Consider:
- who holds decision-making power (local authorities, builders, farmers’ associations, elders, religious leaders),
- who shapes community norms,
- who can remove barriers that individuals cannot overcome alone.
Your communication may need different messages for different actors within the same ecosystem.
Connections: how you will reach and engage audiences
The research on the media ecosystem should guide you in choosing the most appropriate channels, messengers and formats. When selecting communication approaches, consider:
Reach
- Which channels reliably reach this group?
- At what times of day are they accessible?
- Are there environmental or livelihood constraints (e.g., fishers at sea, farmers in fields, vendors away from radios)?
Trust
- Who does this audience trust for different kinds of information?
- Which individuals, institutions, or community voices carry credibility?
- Does trust vary by hazard type or by phase of the emergency?
Preferences
- Do people prefer brief alerts, conversational formats, face-to-face communication, or visual guides?
- How do they share information with peers?
- Do they prefer anonymity or open dialogue when giving feedback?
- What channels are accessible to low-literacy or multilingual audiences?
Previous efforts
Explore how past communication attempts were received.
What worked? What created confusion? What was perceived as helpful, irrelevant, or mistrusted?
Budget
Select feasible combinations of channels and formats that balance ambition with available resources.
Building audience personas from formative research
Audience personas are fictional—but evidence-based—profiles that represent typical groups within your target audiences. Personas bring your research to life by helping teams imagine real people rather than abstract segments, thereby improving message design, tone, timing, and channel choices.
How to build personas (drawing on your UNDERSTAND research):
1. Start with real data
Use insights from your qualitative interviews, focus groups, community mapping, and media landscape review.
2. Identify meaningful clusters
Group people by shared needs or behaviours—not only by demographic traits. For example:
- “Cautious young mothers with strong community ties”
- “Highly mobile agricultural workers with limited digital access”
- “Elderly residents who distrust official messaging but trust religious leaders”
3. Describe each persona’s context
Include:
- daily routines, responsibilities, time constraints
- main information sources, trusted messengers
- typical beliefs and misconceptions
- barriers to action (physical, social, emotional)
4. Capture motivations and pressures
What do they value? What are they worried about? What would make them act?
Behavioural economics shows that motivations are as important as information.
5. Integrate communication preferences
Specify preferred channels, formats, languages, tone of voice and ideal timing.
6. Test your personas with local partners
Community organisations, local leaders and frontline responders can validate or refine your personas.