Framing the flames: Addressing public disengagement through fear framings in Australian bushfire preparedness campaign videos

Abstract

As bushfire seasons lengthen and intensify due to climate change, Australian fire agencies express concern about widespread public complacency and unpreparedness for bushfire. Agencies address this problem through public communication, relying particularly on short-form video campaigns in doing so. Building on previous quantitative analysis of Australian bushfire preparedness video campaigns, we present an in-depth qualitative examination of four videos that headlined fire agencies’ public communication campaigns between 2015 and 2022. We identify a dominant survivalist frame which assumes that public fear of bushfire is a precondition to rational preparation for bushfire risk informed by agency expertise. Preparedness is presented as a survivalist response to imminent threats to life and private property. This frame privileges individualistic, privatised and reactive forms of bushfire preparedness. In contrast, the most recent of the videos we study, coming after the 2019–20 Black Summer fires, indicates the presence of a collectivist frame. This frame presents collaborative forms of proactive, on-going preparation in the face of shared dangers as empowerment, with bushfire understood as a normal part of Australian life. In the context of research showing that fear appeals may entrench the disengagement they are designed to puncture, our analysis suggests that a dominant survivalist framing of preparedness aligns with institutional logics within fire agencies to weaken the effectiveness of public bushfire communication. These logics do so by privileging technical expertise that undervalues social diversity and social context and reduces complex dynamics of information and emotion to a critique of complacency. The presence of a counter-frame emphasising collectivist modes of preparedness raises important questions about opportunities to reduce reliance on fear-based bushfire communication.