Handling Outrage

Some of this handbook actually read more like principles in mass-brainwashing, but on the wh***, that is the best way to control an information crisis. The H1N1 freakout was started by a small group of infections and deaths and elevated with the eight-second sound bites which further inflamed the hysteria. However, people were ignorant of information that compared it to the regular flu, which was much more deadly. H1N1 was covered in such intricate detail that it made all other news seem frivilous.

So I've chosen the Outrage management section, which takes the natural outrage of the general population and tries to calm it down in ways that do not accidentally elevate it. If you stand in a room with a bomb and tell people to "calm down," they will actually get more outraged. But if you start explaining in exhaustive, technical detail the minor workings of the detonating device, the type of explosive, and timer in a way that makes it boring, then people will calm down. I'm not entirely sure I would, but making a subject seem boring makes it less of a hot point.

I think that if many news sources had instead of showing deaths and quarantine areas during the H1N1 kerfuffle had shown a day-long conference of scientists reading very scientific papers about the virus, the panic would have diminished. This could also explain why Americans are willing to get their news about legislation in sound bites on cable news networks instead of reading the bills for themselves and watching day-long debates on C-SPAN.

People are more interested and willing to over-react to small, digestible bits of information instead of understanding the wh*** context.

Outrage management

When we are looking at risks that are high in outrage and low in hazard, people are very likely to get upset and not very likely to get hurt. This calls for “outrage management.” Your goal is to decrease the outrage. It’s the flip side of precaution advocacy. If the paradigm there is “Watch out,” here it is “Calm down.”

But what happens to outraged people when you say “Calm down”? Where does the outrage go? It goes up, right?

So you don’t actually say “Calm down,” but that is your goal.

Instead of an eight-second sound bite, you have an eight-hour meeting. It’s a very different situation and there’s no need to keep it short.

Should you make it interesting? Of course you should not. Your goal is to make this issue as boring as you can possibly make it. The problem is not insufficient interest. They’re already interested; in fact, they’re obsessed. In outrage management, you very much want to diminish their interest.

Outrage management is done largely with the ears; precaution advocacy is done exclusively with the mouth. Outrage management involves a lot of listening, and a very weird thing happens when you listen to people’s concerns—they become calmer. I’m not saying the outrage disappears. It’s not magic, but they get calmer. The other thing that happens is they start wanting to hear from you.