Speakers » Lakelyn Taylor

Lakelyn Taylor is a first-year doctoral student at the University of Central Florida. She is currently a research fellow and a graduate teaching associate for the Nicholson School of Communication and Media. She has taught Fundamentals of Oral Communication, Advanced Public Speaking, and Persuasion in Communication, emphasizing feminist and critical communication pedagogy. Her research interests lie at the intersection of risk and crisis communication, religious communication, ethics, and instruction. She has conducted research exploring instructional communication in youth ministries, critical discourse tracing on identity formation in Spain, and emergency management plans for the local Ronald McDonald House Charities. 

“Bridging the gaps with a new agent: Analyzing religious organizations’ messages about Hurricane Dorian”

In this study, I analyze the agents (or sources) of public warning messages. I argue religious organizations as sources of public warning messages do influence congregants’ perspectives about impending crisis events. As a preliminary exploratory study, I will conduct a document analysis on the messages sent out by religious organizations in the Orlando area before, during, and after Hurricane Dorian. I will then complete a thematic analysis based on Saldaña’s (2009, 2011) cycle coding outline, using Mileti and Sorensen’s (1990) research on warning message content and style as the theoretical framework. Therefore, I will extend the literature on risk messaging and religious organizations, answering Torry’s (2016) lament and call for the importance of more religious organizational-centered scholarship.