We have more ways to communicate than at any point in history.
TV, radio, mobile phones, social media, apps, websites and instant alerts mean information can reach millions of people within seconds.
But many of those routes rely on the same things underneath them: electricity, broadband, mobile networks, data centres and cloud infrastructure.
So what happens when some of those things stop working?
This isn’t a prediction that Britain is about to go to war. It’s a question about how resilient UK media and communications really are during a national crisis, when the systems we take for granted are put under serious pressure.
And it raises some interesting questions about the role of broadcast media.
Emergency Alerts can reach millions, but they still need a network
The UK’s Emergency Alerts system gives the Government a way to send urgent information directly to compatible mobile phones in a particular area.
That gives it enormous potential during a national emergency. Information can be distributed quickly and targeted geographically without people having to be watching a particular television channel or following a particular account.
But mobile communication is still infrastructure.
Phones need power. Mobile networks need to remain operational. Masts, data centres and the systems connecting them all need sufficient resilience to keep working.
The more routes we have to communicate, the more important it becomes to understand what those routes actually depend on.
Radio suddenly starts to look very useful again
There is something remarkably resilient about radio.
A battery-powered radio doesn’t need Wi-Fi. It doesn’t need a SIM card, broadband router or access to a technology platform.
That simplicity matters.
Radio has long formed part of emergency communications planning, and in a situation where other systems were disrupted it could become one of the simplest ways of getting reliable information to large numbers of people.
The technology might be old compared with the phone in your pocket, but that doesn’t make it obsolete.
In some circumstances, it’s precisely what makes it useful.
Local media could become even more important
A national emergency doesn’t necessarily affect every part of the country in the same way.
One area might be dealing with transport disruption while another faces power outages. People may need information about schools, hospitals, roads, public services or local instructions that simply isn’t useful to somebody hundreds of miles away.
That’s where local television and radio become particularly important.
National broadcasters can explain the bigger picture. Local broadcasters can tell people what’s happening where they actually live.
For those of us working in broadcast PR, it’s also a reminder that regionalisation is about much more than putting a local statistic into a national story.
Different audiences need different information.
Social media would be incredibly useful, until it wasn’t
Social platforms would inevitably play a huge role in any modern national emergency.
They allow information to spread at extraordinary speed and give authorities, journalists and the public ways to communicate directly.
They also bring obvious problems.
False information can travel just as quickly as accurate information. Old footage can be recirculated as new. AI-generated material makes verification increasingly difficult. And the platforms themselves depend on the same electricity, connectivity and infrastructure as much of the rest of our digital lives.
When information matters most, knowing where it has come from becomes even more important.
That potentially makes trusted broadcasters more valuable, rather than less.
We have built an incredibly sophisticated system
Modern communications are extraordinary.
A Government alert can appear on millions of phones. A broadcaster can stream live pictures from almost anywhere. A local radio presenter can give people information about what’s happening a few streets away.
But sophistication and resilience aren’t necessarily the same thing.
The interesting question isn’t whether one platform or technology would survive while another disappeared.
It’s how all these different systems work together, where the dependencies sit and what remains available when parts of that network are disrupted.
We spend a lot of time thinking about how to reach audiences.
Perhaps we should spend a little more time thinking about what happens when reaching them becomes difficult.
Josh Tracey-Wheeler is co-founder of Be Broadcast, a specialist broadcast PR agency working across TV, radio and podcasts.
This article first appeared as part of Josh’s Broadcast Angle series on LinkedIn. Read and follow Broadcast Angle on LinkedIn →
