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Crises can negatively impact communities that are already marginalized by existing social systems. Building trusting relationships with these communities is paramount to crisis and risk communication effectiveness, but little work has focused on the strategies crisis and risk communicators use to do so. Against this backdrop, we conducted a two-phase qualitative study with community health workers (CHWs) working in Latine communities. CHWs typically come from the communities they serve and are tasked with communicating important crisis and risk communication information to community members. In Phase 1, 20 CHWs were interviewed, and 21 CHWs were interviewed for Phase 2. Our findings show that CHWs seek to build trusting relationships with community members by leveraging shared social identities drawing from two important identity-based theories in communication—communication theory of identity and social identity theory. Specifically, CHWs in our study leveraged social identities including ethnic, national, and immigrant identities; family members and neighbors; and as economically and legally precarious immigrants. Extending theorizing in crisis and risk communication, our findings also show that identities are not a panacea for trust building in crisis and risk contexts but can lead to identity disconnections that can negatively affect communication. However, our findings also show that CHWs navigate these disconnections through creative communication. Our discussion highlights the implications for crisis and risk communication theory and practice.

How news media make emerging technological risks visible shapes how those technologies enter public debate. This study examines generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) risk representation in Australian digital news through a mixed-methods content analysis of 379 articles from seven outlets published between 2020 and March 2024. Ethical, legal, and regulatory compliance risks receive the most attention, followed by economic and employment concerns and technical performance risks, while sociocultural and mental health risks remain marginal. Extinction risk also receives substantial coverage. Public outlets give greater attention to governance, education, and sociocultural concerns, whereas private outlets more often emphasize technical and extinction risks. Public outlets also contain more original reporting and Australian contextualization. Across the sample, GPT is frequently named but rarely explained in technical detail, while developing country and Global South contexts receive limited attention. These findings contribute to a contextual understanding of how GenAI risks are represented in Australian digital news.

Crisis communication research is strongly influenced by the crises of our day. In this essay, we review the trends in crisis communication scholarship with reference to two major crises that have significantly influenced scholarship and society. Existing crisis communication scholarship has bifurcated into two groups, examining the base crisis responses and reputation management messages. We highlight useful models that can assist in this research such as the internalization, explanation, distribution, and action model (IDEA) model and the revised model of reputation repair (REMREP). Further, we argue the key to the future of crisis communication scholarship is a holistic approach that marries protecting stakeholder safety and building healthy relationships with stakeholders as the twin pillars of successful crisis communication. Like load-bearing pillars in construction, these two pillars are both necessary for organizations and communities to withstand the stress of crises. The failure of either pillar, in any type of crisis, can cause a collapse.