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Understanding public media channel preferences can inform preparedness plans, response strategies, and long-term recovery. However, questions remain about how media consumption changes across pre-crisis, crisis, and post-crisis phases. Past theories argue that media use may change for several reasons, including during times of societal conflict and challenge. These theories point to the belief that, during a crisis, we expect media channel use to change because media preferences during a crisis will be fundamentally different compared to everyday routines. This paper takes advantage of a survey fielded to Texas residents soon after Hurricane Harvey. Here we ask: (1) What media channels are most prominent in each crisis phase? and (2) Do media channel preferences change across crisis phases? We use simple descriptive statistics and chi-squares tests to describe media channel preferences across the three crisis phases by demographics. Additionally, we use alluvial diagrams to visualize media channel preferences over time. In total, 62% (n=174) of respondents reported no changes in channel preferences. However, chi-square tests identified significant differences in media use changes related to a handful of demographic characteristics. These findings are explored alongside theories that would hypothesize likely media use changes across pre-crisis, crisis, and post-crisis phases. 

Disasters are typically unforeseen, causing most social and behavioral studies about disasters to be reactive. Occasionally, predisaster data are available, for example, when disasters happen while a study is already in progress or where data collected for other purposes already exist, but planned pre-post designs are all but nonexistent. This gap fundamentally limits the quantification of disasters’ human toll. Anticipating, responding to, and managing public reactions require a means of tracking and understanding those reactions, collected using rigorous scientific methods. Oftentimes, self-reports from the public are the best or only source of information, such as perceived risk, behavioral intentions, and social learning. Significant advancement in disaster research, to best inform practice and policy, requires well-designed surveys with large probability-based samples and longitudinal assessment of individuals across the life-cycle of a disaster and across multiple disasters.