Operations, events, and communicating to multiple audiences

The paper explores technical communication prepared for multiple audiences. The nuclear processing industry is an example of a (technically) complex industry where it is unlikely to have an operational event of a serious nature, but where the consequences of an event (if it occurred) are potentially significant. Communication within this industry encompasses many relevant groups (audiences). Evaluating operations events and then communicating the results to the multiple affected constituencies challenges the technical communicator. Audience is considered, including the audience addressed, audience invoked, multiple audiences, and the public. The Wallace S. Sayre model (W.G. Held, 1979) is borrowed from the public policy literature and adapted to model the communications process to multiple affected constituencies. The Sayre model is applied to a case study of a professional writer (E. Huettman, 1996), and the evaluation and reporting of operations events within the nuclear processing industry. The Sayre model can aid the technical communicator in making decisions about audience.