Analyze Your Audience

Abstract

This chapter talks about audience analysis in risk communication. You can begin to develop an understanding of your audience by looking at your purpose and objectives. After examining your purpose and objectives, you have limited knowledge of your audience. How much you more fully analyze your audience will depend on several factors within and without your organization. Factors within your organization include funding, schedule, availability of staff and information sources, and approvals required. Audience analysis efforts can generally be divided into three levels: baseline audience analysis, midline audience analysis, and comprehensive audience analysis. Each level of analysis builds on the last; that is, the midline includes everything in the baseline, and the comprehensive includes everything in the baseline and midline. The chapter also discusses how to find audience analysis information, and how to incorporate audience analysis information into risk communication efforts.