Public, Media, and Institutional Responses to the IBEN Browning Earthquake Prediction

When the late self-proclaimed climatologist, Iben Browning, predicted that a damaging earthquake would occur in the mid-Mississippi Valley's New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ) in early December 1990, individuals, the media, and social institutions in the region were all caught up in an episode of collective behavior that drew almost unprecedented attention. Although Browning's was neither the first nor the last pseudoscientific earthquake prediction to catch the attention of the public somewhere in the world, it did draw greater public and media attention than other such predictions have. Among those whose attention was drawn by this event were a good number of social scientists. Studies were conducted throughout the region on public response to the prediction, on the effects of the prediction on earthquake preparedness, on the media role in the entire event, and on the effects of the Browning prediction on organizations and institutions, both those concerned with earthquake risk mitigation and other institutions too, such as workplaces and schools. Preliminary reports on much of this research were exchanged among scholars at a Research Conference on Public and Media Response to Earthquake Forecasts, held at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville (SIUE) in May 1991. Those participating in the conference represented a variety of disciplines including geography, sociology, psychology, mass communications, and journalism, and included both academics and practitioners in emergency management and earthquake preparedness. The academics were about evenly mixed between scholars with a background in disaster research and scholars in a variety of fields with no disaster research background who were interested in the social and media phenomena occurring in response to the Browning prediction. Language: en