Trust Factor During Disasters

Trust is a basic ingredient in every relationship. This applies to individuals, marriages,
business partners, nations and the relationship of governments to individuals. Trust is
the topic we are going to explore today and how it applies to emergency management
and disasters.

Kehinde Bolu Adesina, also known as Kenny, is a PhD researcher in Mass
Communication at the University of Oklahoma’s Gaylord College. His work focuses on
the intersection of crisis communication, disaster communication, public trust, and
misinformation. He studies how institutions, government agencies, nonprofits, and
faith-based organizations communicate during high-risk events, and why those
communication systems often fail even when the people inside them are working hard
and acting in good faith.

He is a contributor to a major NSF-funded disaster resilience project at OU, where he
conducts research on how organizations share critical knowledge during emergencies,
analyze misinformation patterns on social media, and support cross-sector
preparedness workshops involving emergency managers, nonprofits, faith-based
organizations, and public health communicators. His research builds toward a
framework called the “Crisis Meaning-Making Model,” which examines how
communities interpret events through emotion, identity, and social context, not just
official information.

Originally from Nigeria, he completed his bachelor’s degree in Communication at
Beijing Normal University in China and his master’s degree in Communication at the
University of Illinois Springfield. Before beginning his doctoral work, he served as an
Illini Science Policy Fellow and Media Production Coordinator at the Illinois Department
of Agriculture, supporting communication on conservation and climate resilience.
Kenny is multilingual, speaking English, Yoruba, French, and Mandarin, and brings a
distinctly cross-cultural lens to questions of trust, public risk, and institutional credibility.
He has a newsletter, Making Sense of Uncertainty, translating crisis communication
research into practical guidance for leaders working in emergency management, public
health, and organizational communication.

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