Multimodal Collective Sensemaking in Extreme Contexts: Evidence from Maritime Search and Rescue

In extreme contexts, actors must often engage in collective sensemaking to enable coordinated action. While prior research has established that cognitive disparities and emotive distractions disrupt collective sensemaking, we lack theory on how actors overcome these common challenges in extreme contexts. To address this shortcoming, we conducted a process study, collecting unique multi-perspective video and archival data during a maritime search and rescue mission in the Aegean Sea where actors (i.e., rescue crew members and refugees) faced cognitive disparities (e.g., different levels of maritime expertise) and distracting emotions (e.g., fear, anxiety, and tension) yet needed to coordinate their actions to ensure a safe evacuation. We draw on this data to develop a collective sensemaking model that details the auxiliary process steps and multimodal communication - verbal, para-verbal, and non-verbal cues - actors use to alternately frame emotional states and convey task-related information. Our model demonstrates how actors, through multimodal collective sensemaking, overcome the challenges posed by cognitive disparities and distracting emotions in extreme contexts. It thus adds a dynamic emotive and bodily perspective to the predominantly cognitive and verbal understanding in sensemaking theory, and also has implications for practitioners working in extreme contexts.