Threatening Communications and Behavior Perspectives on the Pursuit of Public Figures (2011) / Chapter Skim
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Communication-Based Research Related to Threats and Ensuing Behavior--H. Dan O'Hair, Daniel Rex Bernard, and Randy R. Roper
Communication-Based Research Related to Threats and Ensuing Behavior--H. Dan O'Hair, Daniel Rex Bernard, and Randy R. Roper
Pages 33-74
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From page 33... ...
. Therefore, since indirect communications expressing violent intentions often exist, threat assessment efforts should target indirect as well as explicit threatening messages by would-be attackers.
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In what is simply referred to as the threat assessment approach, "violence is seen as the product of an interaction among the perpetrator, situation, target, and the setting" (Reddy et al., 2001, p.
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Three areas of communication research that have direct implications for assessing threatening communications and behaviors are addressed. The first area concerns the internal processes of conflict and the behavioral reactions to those internal processes.
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Assessments of threatening communications might find research in conflict communication helpful in examining the effects of emotional arousal on threatening communications and ensuing behavior. More specifically, studies might ask what resources are available to ascertain an individual's affective state.
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influence particular strategies of threatening communications and resultant behavior. The value-laden secondary attribution associated with fairness may be a particularly rich area of inquiry.
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Future research should assess the specific types of inappropriate or violent behavior most easily predicted from conflict-driven emotions. Although anger may seem to
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Conflict-Related Emotions Considering the role conflict plays in the elicitation of emotion and the role emotion may play in threatening and violent behavior, we now turn to emotions often associated with conflict. There are several different emotions associated with conflict as well as different activation levels, intensities, and affective valence.
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Could preventative or responsive persuasive messages aimed at disseminating and/or teaching coping strategies be developed? Jealousy Jealousy can provide an impetus for threatening behavior.
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Another example would be if an individual found out that a close friend had stolen his or her property; because the theft would violate a relational rule about what it means to be close friends, the individual that had their property stolen would likely experience emotional hurt. Investigations aimed at understanding threatening and violent communications may want to focus on the emotional hurt an individual is experiencing as well as the emotional hurt that person is trying to inflict by way of threatening messages and communications with potential targets.
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Organizations charged with the task of examining threatening communications may want to also focus on the types of messages they compose, with an emphasis on avoiding hurtful ones. Future research should examine which behaviors are most consistent with threatening communications when motivated by jealousy and hurt feelings.
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Although conflict and related internal processes can produce particular physiological changes, the next section focuses only on the deliberate expression of conflict. Specifically, the section explores verbal aggressiveness and threat assessment.
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. Future research might consider to what extent verbal aggressiveness and threatening communications share verbal characteristics.
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. Interestingly, individuals who lack communication skills such as argumentativeness, which is necessary for effective conflict resolution, have a tendency to demonstrate verbally aggressive behavior that results in violent behavior (Infante et al., 1989)
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However, use of the scale in the context of risk assessment of threatening communications is seemingly nonexistent. As previously mentioned, verbal aggressiveness is considered a personality trait emerging from an individual's predisposition to communicate aggressively (Infante and Wigley, 1986; Beatty and McCroskey, 1997)
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Although several studies have investigated the role of verbal aggressiveness in future violent behaviors, these studies rely on self-reported data, which can be overtly biased by social desirability, fallacious memory, and self-interests. Another limitation concerns the relationship between verbal aggression and violence or physical aggression as a response behavior provoked by someone else's verbal aggressiveness rather than a successive behavior after one's own verbally aggressive communication.
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Although this research is still emerging, many of the conclusions are based on case studies and actual crisis or hostage scenarios. Thus, understanding communications between a perpetrator of threats or violence and larger organizations may be useful in research to assess threatening communications and behavior.
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Relational interdependence can best be described as a reciprocal relation of mutual dependence or influence between two individuals. They have suggested that features of crisis and hostage negotiation increase emotional intensity, thereby increasing the pressures on law enforcement personnel, particularly when a crisis/hostage negotiator is trying to establish a relationship with a suspect.
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. During crisis negotiations, typically two types of substantive goals are identified: central and peripheral substantive interests/demands (Hammer and Rogan, 1997; Rogan and Hammer, 2002)
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Emotional distress is often a key indicator of success or failure in crisis negotiation. Negotiators are typically trained to listen and respond to a subject's emotions in order to mitigate the potential for a negative and/or violent behavior.
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Obviously, persuasion and other forms of social influence represent general categories of research that refer to attempts at attitude and behavioral change. It comes as no surprise that threatening communications would be linked to persuasion attempts.
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Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM) , which traces its lineage through the classic fear-appeal theories, attempts to explain both when and why fear appeals work, as well as when and why they fail.
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Agencies and organizations interested in using persuasive messages to deter threatening communications and violent behavior can utilize a fear-appeal strategy to shift a would-be attacker's attitudes. Specifically, these persuasive messages can focus on creating messages that instill fear and efficacy to incorporate the suggestions of the persuasive message to limit or stop threatening messages and possible escalation to violent behavior.
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Given the similarities in tactical and strategic features of threatening messages and deception, it would be advantageous to develop studies comparing these systems for their commonalities, making extrapolation of the more extant deception research available to scientists who focus on threatening communications. Likewise, deception researchers would benefit from other researchers' studies of threatening messages.
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Additional research would be needed to identify which potential indicators of threatening communications (as implicated from deception cues) can be combined to index a more accurate assessment of resultant violent behavior from threatening messages.
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Their results suggested that objective, social, and person/technology factors such as perceived media richness, message equivocality, number of recipients, perceived recipients' attitudes, and distance between message sender and receiver all had merit for explaining media attitudes and behaviors. Media richness refers to a communication channel's ability to convey a range of visual, auditory, and verbal cues to a receiver (Daft and Lengel, 1984; Kraut et al., 1992)
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Given the broad audience and relative ease of dissemination, these new media sources are fertile ground for the proliferation of threatening messages (Allen et al., 2009; Matusitz and O'Hair, 2008)
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. The field of marketing communication research takes a more technical approach to interactivity and website properties, arguing for more focused attention on two-way communication, navigability (lower information search costs)
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Along these lines, future research could study whether threats and advocated violent behaviors are more likely to occur on online venues that offer more interactional efficacy. Online Communication Metrics As a means of summarizing some of the relevant research focused on online communication, Table 2-1 identifies measures and metrics that have either been used in online communication research or have been suggested as worthy candidates for inclusion in future areas of experimental or case study research.
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(2010) , a better understanding is needed of how the actors involved in threat management recognize and leverage each other, not as independent
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62 TABLE 2-1 Online Communication Metric Description, Relevance to Other Purpose, and/or Metrics or Overall Objective Marker Outcome Analysis Metric Semantic Network Network mapping of Use of network Provides patterns (and Easily combined with Analysis structure or content mapping software to tendencies) of messages other markers for charting of threaded messages reduce large datasets of reflecting in situ and longitudinal to describe patterns of message interactions.
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specifically with perfect, progressive, and emphatic tenses. Message Framing Framing is the Slant Provides an indication Easily triangulated · manner in which Structure of the strategy or with other metrics of · communication Emphasis approach used assimilation.
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. Future studies should investigate how dimensions of interorganizational collaboration can positively affect data exchange and threat management among organizations in the intelligence and law enforcement communities.
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The goal of shedding light on the relationship between communication and actual behavior will mostly be accomplished through a triangulation of observational, actuarial, experimental, and case study research. The propositions offered at the outset of this paper suggest that communication theory and practice are intrinsic to the study of threatening behaviors and that finding strategies for managing violent behavior against others will be served by addressing even the most demanding research conundrums.
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Hu man Communication Research, 20:175-198. Donohue, W.A., C
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1995. Threat Assessment: An Approach to Prevent Targeted Violence.
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Journal of Applied Communication Research, 13:33-44. Infante, D.A.
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Journal of Applied Communication Research, 31:76-90. Meloy, J.R., L
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2008. Emerging adult siblings' use of verbally aggressive mes sages as hurtful messages.
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Journal of Applied Communication Research, 22:216-231. Rogan, R.G., and M.R.
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Assessing risk from threatening communications. Doctoral dissertation abstract.
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1992a. Putting the fear back into fear appeals: The extended parallel process model.
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