Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370: Effective & Ethical Communication

Effective communication, can be categorized into two parts, effective in the method of communicaiton, and how well the reciving party of your message understood the message, including the underlying emotions and context. Being effective in the method of communicaiton is fairly easy. Though it is particularly tricky geting the underlying emotions and context when communicating with non-verbal methods, like email and text message.

Ethical communication is following the law, telling the truth, being objective and communication clearly.

The Malaysian Airlines flight of MH370, was a tragedy in the world. 239 souls lost, no one knows where they are. There where over 4 different countries all working in conjunction with one another to search for any debris / parts of the flight to find the missing people. While the public was kept updated about the events unfolding and information as it was found. There was a lot of misconceptions due to a lack of effective communication between the counties investigative services. This lead rumours that were untrue about the flight, and stressing the families of the passengers on the flight, even further to what they were already experiencing.

This communication, towards each country can be viewed as ineffective communication, but towards the families of the passengers, this was not ethical.

Malaysia Airlines, and Malaysia, came under fire for sending text messages to the families when it was announced after searching for over three weeks, that the flight was lost at sea and it was most likely there were no survivors. This communication, while effective at sending the message, was unethical for providing the emotional response required in telling the loved ones of the lost passengers. It was intended to provide that response, though it completely missed that emotion and provoked the families that received that response to follow legal action against Malaysia Airlines for texting the news to them.

ABC (2014, March 26). http://www.abc.net.au.
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370: Authorities defend text message to families revealing missing plane's fate

Adam Withnall (2014, March 23). http://www.independent.co.uk.
Malaysia Airlines flight MH370: Distraught families told by text message to assume ‘beyond doubt no one survived’