How to communicate with multicultural crowds in mass gatherings

04 Sep 2019

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By Alessia Golfetti and Sabina Giorgi, Deep Blue. September 04, 2019. The LETSCROWD Communication toolkit is available for download.

Mass gatherings are vulnerable events. Dense concentration of attendees from different countries, high visibility, event popularity, public attention, media coverage and VIPs participation pose the potential of security threats for the crowds. In this scenario, an effective communication is of prime importance for running an event smoothly and safely, preventing and mitigating harms caused by likely critical situations. It consists in preparing the people attending the event and disseminating safety and security information both in the pre-event and the execution phases.

It also includes the communication capabilities of who is in charge of interacting with the crowd (e.g. event organizers, Law Enforcement Agencies officers – LEAs, first responders) to understand the target audience and their socio-cultural characteristics, deliver effective messages and enable a two-way communication with the public. The objective is to reach a common understanding of the on-going situation, a shared experience of what is happening, in order to properly behave, especially in case of emergency. This is not an obvious scope, especially in case of international events, where multicultural crowds are expected to come and many different socio-cultural factors filter the communication and the mutual comprehension.

In order to enhance the communication with crowds, this communication toolkit aims at improving event organisers, security officers and first responders’ crowd awareness and intercultural competences in the pre-event and execution phases of the event.

The communication tool presents the main results of a study carried out within the H2020 EU project LETSCROWD – Law Enforcement agencies human factor methods and Toolkit for the Security and protection of CROWDs in mass gatherings. The process for building-up the toolkit included a literature review, a workshop and qualitative interviews with LEAs and first responders involved in LETSCROWD, and the review of their communication procedures. Data collection aimed at identifying communication practices applied to different types of mass gatherings, unsatisfied needs and gaps concerning communication with crowds and socio-cultural issues affecting the communication.

The LETSCROWD communication toolkit is available below.