Heini Ruohonen is a PhD Student in Political Science, Media and Communication at Åbo Akademi University in Vaasa, Finland.
In her dissertation, she looks at how spontaneous volunteers come together online to help in crises and how these digital volunteers could be included in crisis management. In addition to this, she is involved in a few other projects. One is DemDialogue, a project that aims to promote the deliberative quality in local news sites’ online comment threads. She is also involved in Alerthub, a European COST research project that seeks to enhance the overall effectiveness of disaster response in climate-change-related crises. Here, she is the co-leader of a working group that identifies challenges and root causes with current risk communication practices.
For Heini, research is at its best when the process and results can be shared with practitioners. In these projects, she uses mostly qualitative methods, which enables her to work with public authorities, NGOs, and journalists. Hopefully, this practitioner-oriented perspective can help research findings reach all who benefit from them. Heini is the young representative for ECREA’s Risk and Crisis Communication Section.
