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PIOs and the Public: How Wildfire Public Information Officers View and Interact with the Public as Street-Level Bureaucrats

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https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_projects/t435gn772

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  • Wildfires in the modern era have grown ever more destructive and dangerous following decades of suppression-only policies and climate change. Because of this, the wildfire incident management teams (IMTs) and their public information officers (PIOs) that manage these fires have taken on a more visible and important role, especially in the age of social media. However, IMTs are understudied as policy deciding bodies and PIOs are similarly understudied as deliverers of policy (information) as street level bureaucrats. How then do PIOs operate as street-level bureaucrats? Of interest to this study were 1) how PIOs define the public which they serve, 2) the role of that public as perceived by PIOs, and 3) the discretion exercised by PIOs as street-level bureaucrats. This study conducted semi-structured interviews of PIOs to investigate these topics which were subsequently analyzed through the institutional analysis and development framework (IAD) and street-level bureaucracy theory. General findings suggest PIOs operate unconventionally from standard SLB theory. Policy recommendations, sourced from the findings, encourage the hiring of additional PIOs into the National Incident Management System and further development of the government website InciWeb.
  • KEYWORDS: Wildfires; public information officers; wildfire incident management teams; public policy; institutional analysis and development framework
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