Samlokalisering vid krissituationer - En mikrovärldsstudie om betydelsen av kommunikation ansikte-mot-ansikte gentemot kommunikation via radio

Sammanfattning: Due to society’s modernization and climate changes, transboundary crisis is becoming more severe. This means that communication in many cases needs to be virtual, especially via radio, instead of face-to-face. At the same time, there is a willingness to co-locate in a greater extent. The aim of this paper is to increase the understanding of how the means of communication affects the outcome of a crisis. To get there, experiments were performed with the help of a computer-based game called MikroRisk, which is supposed to simulate a fictional crisis. In these experiments, the participants could communicate via radio. The results from the experiments in this thesis were then compared with results from previous experiments with communication face-to-face. The participants performed the game in groups of three with the common goal to get as low total consequences as possible. During the game, participants were able to distribute resources over their own game plan but could also share with their fellow players. It turned out that the way of communication does not necessarily affect the outcome of a fictional crisis, as no significant difference in the number of consequences or shared resources could be shown. During the experiments it was also found that no participant took the lead in a group and no correlation between the experienced collaboration and the total consequences was discovered, which seemed to differ from the groups that communicated face-to-face.