The parallel power in organizations’ defense: Exploring faith-holders and their crisis communication

Publics can be active participants of discussions around organizational crises. Through digital media, they can provide information about a crisis, criticize crisis participants or defend the organization experiencing the crisis (Coombs & Holladay, 2014). Limited research exists on the active role of publics in defending the organization. A handful of studies have looked at crisis communication of active organization supporters, including faith-holders (Luoma-aho, 2015); however there is a limited amount of public relations scholarship about the nature of faith-holders, their communication under crisis circumstances, and whether they in fact attempt to help organizations in times of crisis. By using a combination of content analysis and rhetorical analysis, this paper examined the crisis communication strategies offered by the organization’s faith-holders in the comments to the crisis-related articles published on the websites of media outlets. Through a case study of Tesla Motors’ crisis, the paper determined that faith-holders are a powerful force in defending the organization during the crisis, using both traditional reputation repair strategies identified by Coombs (2015) as well as new strategies identified by the study. Faith-holders were not a monolithic group and differed in terms of what aspects of the organization they had faith. Their communication was not restricted by legal and ethical demands. The results provide insights into understanding of faith-holders’ communication during crises, and also highlight the need for reconsidering the situational crisis communication theory in respect to organizations' faith-holders.     

Exploring public relations challenges in compounding crises: The pariah effect of toxic trailers

This study examined the distinct exigency of a compounding crisis, a crisis that occurs in close succession to another (potentially unrelated) crisis before an organization has had the opportunity to rebuild legitimacy. Specifically, we identified the public relations challenges faced by the US Federal Emergency Management Agency during the formaldehyde travel trailer crisis and examined how the Hurricane Katrina crisis encumbered the agency’s response efforts. We offer a theoretical frame for understanding the public relations challenges inherent in compounding crises and propose that, in a compounding crisis, organizational legitimacy and social capital decrease while stakeholder risk perceptions and attribution of crisis responsibility increase. A new phenomenon termed the pariah effect is offered to explain when an organization experiencing a compounding crisis is ostracized by other organizations that could assist with the crisis response to avoid negative spillover effects that could result from associating with the offending organization. This study also demonstrates how attribution of responsibility in a compounding crisis can create an exigency in which an organization must take actions beyond the scope and original mission of the organization.     

Enhancing Employee Engagement via Leaders’ Motivational Language in times of crisis: Perspectives from the COVID-19 outbreak

By bridging theoretical perspectives from diverse disciplines including public relations, organizational communication, psychology, and management, this study advances a sequential mediation process model that links leaders’ motivational communication—specifically, direction-giving, empathetic, and meaning-making language—to employees’ organizational engagement during times of crisis. The model incorporates employees’ psychological needs satisfaction and their subsequent crisis coping strategies so as to explain the process that underlies the effects of leader communication on employee engagement. We tested the model in a unique yet underexplored crisis context: organizational crises triggered by the global pandemic of COVID-19. The results of an online survey of 490 full-time U.S. employees provide strong support to the model’s predictions. Our research extends internal crisis communication scholarship in public relations by addressing what types of leader communication strategies as well as how these strategies contribute to employee engagement in a holistic fashion. It also advances theoretical development of the motivational language theory, self-determination theory, transactional model of stress and coping, and organizational engagement—the four theoretical bases of our study—in the context of organizational crises. Lastly, the study results provide timely practical insights on effective internal crisis communication.     

The crisis communication preparedness of nonprofit organizations: The case of German interest groups

A national survey of German interest groups showed that these nonprofit organizations are substantially lacking crisis preparations. Less than one third use crisis plans, crisis management teams, or crisis scenarios. In terms of web-based crisis communication, nonprofit organizations primarily relied on traditional forms of online communication for crisis response. Organizational experience with crises, the general status of the public relations function, as well as the crisis communication expertise of practitioners were positively related to the degree of crisis preparedness of these interest groups.     

Hierarchical consistency of strategies in image repair theory: PR practitioners’ perceptions of effective and preferred crisis communication strategies

ABSTRACT

Drawing from image repair theory and situational crisis communication theory, this study advances crisis communication theory by analyzing nearly 800 public relations professionals’ perceptions of 15 image repair strategies. A national sample of US public relations professionals evaluated communication strategies for their effectiveness and preference for use in three crisis scenarios (accidents, product safety, and illegal activity). Compensation, corrective action, and mortification were the most highly ranked crisis response strategies, regardless of attribution of organizational responsibility or culpability, across 3 different types of accidental and preventable crises. This hierarchical consistency suggests that using communication strategies for maintaining and strengthening an organization’s relationships with its publics may be the best protection for sustaining and repairing positive reputation long-term.     

Incorporating competition and comparisons into crisis communication: How competing organizations respond to industry crises

Crisis communication research typically focuses on how a single organization strategically responds to crises based on its own set of situational factors. However, it is common for multiple competing organizations to be involved in responding to the same crisis. By analyzing two industry crisis cases in China, this study provides insights into what we termed competitive crisis communication, which involves not only crisis response timing and strategies but also competition and comparisons among the different organizations involved in the same crisis. The analysis of organizational statements on social media reveals the extent of differences in crisis response strategies adopted by competing organizations. Findings from an analysis of online media coverage and public posts on social media further suggest that stakeholders’ comparisons of different organizations’ crisis responses can influence stakeholders’ emotions and reputational perceptions of the organizations. Finally, the competitive advantages for an organization to respond as the first mover or late mover in industry crisis communication are discussed.     

How publics react to situational and renewing organizational responses across crises: Examining SCCT and DOR in social-mediated crises

The prevalence of social media among networked publics calls for more research regarding how organizations can conduct effective crisis communication on social networking sites. Based on the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) and the discourse of renewal (DOR) theory, this study examined how social media publics’ sentiments were affected by situational and renewing organizational responses in various clusters of crises. Twitter data of six crises representing three crisis clusters varying in the responsibility attribution (i.e., ambiguous, accidental, and preventable) were collected. We conducted a content analysis on organizations’ official tweets during crises (N = 59) and sentiment analysis on publics’ replies on Twitter (N = 4,340). The results showed that publics’ positive sentiments toward organizations were affected by organizational crisis responses that included instructing information, sympathy, systemic organizational learning, and effective organizational rhetoric. We recommend that crisis managers express sympathy toward publics as well as organizational learning that prevents a crisis from happening again.     

Emotional intelligence and public relations: An empirical review

Since the 1990s, the concept of emotional intelligence has garnered growing popular and scholarly attention in the past several decades. Emotional intelligence is generally defined as one’s ability to recognize one’s own emotions, regulate them, recognize others’ emotions, and manage social relationships and is proposed to yield various desirable outcomes for organizations. This study provides a critical and comprehensive review of empirical studies on the role of emotional intelligence in various domains of public relations practice. Findings reveal that existing research has focused mostly on emotional intelligence as a competency vital to effective leadership and employee communication in organizations. Considerable research has also examined emotional intelligence as a necessity for effective crisis management and communication. This study calls for investigating the role of emotional intelligence in different areas of public relations such as media relations and community relations, for improved measurement and methodological pluralism in future research, for EI-based training for future public relations leaders, and for an EI model of professionalism in public relations education.     

How publics use social media to respond to blame games in crisis communication: The Love Parade tragedy in Duisburg 2010

Crisis communication scholarship has been criticized for its “managerial bias” and for its tendency to marginalize the perspective of publics and audiences. However, the understanding of how publics cope with and interpret crises is crucial for developing the body of knowledge in crisis communication, from both critical and managerial/functionalist perspectives. This case study of the Love Parade crisis in Germany 2010 aimed at exploring how publics perceived the crisis response of the festival organizers and how they used social media to communicate about it shortly after the outbreak of the crisis. A content analysis of 1847 postings at two relevant message boards produced support for the assumption that attributions of cause and responsibility are important predictors of publics’ evaluations of organizations in crisis situations. Findings also revealed that stakeholders actively engage in such attributional inferences spontaneously without being prompted by researchers. The analysis of responsibility perceptions as well as evaluative judgments over time supported the situational crisis communication theory. Blaming others and denying responsibility in the context of a crisis that was perceived as human error accident triggered negative reputational outcomes for the organizations involved in the Love Parade.     

Getting emotional: An emotion-cognition dual-factor model of crisis communication

The effect of emotional experience on cognitive processes is an under-explored phenomenon in crisis communication research, despite indications of the increasing importance of emotion-based communication in the digital era. Emerging evidence indicates that the emotional experiences of publics play a critical role during organizational crises and determine the degree to which organizations are able to successfully devise communications that help them deal with such crises. Yet no comprehensive, theoretically sound model exists for analyzing how emotions influence the cognitive processing of crisis information. Our study proposes just such a model, capable of describing how cognition and emotion, separately or interactively, influence the publics’ processing of crisis information and consequently their attitudes and behaviors. Our model describes how emotional variables determine whether the publics take a cognition-oriented approach or an emotion-oriented approach to information processing and subsequent formation of interpretations, evaluations, and judgments directed toward organizations. Moreover, our model explains how an emotion-to-cognition assessment of publics’ attitudes is possible and makes a case for how it is critical for predicting and influencing the publics’ behavior during organizational crises. The hope is that this model will aid practitioners and academics in understanding why the publics’ emotions matter during crisis communication as well as how to craft more effective communication strategies as a result. Finally, several avenues for future research are suggested in order to test the validity of our conceptual model in different contexts.     

Social media dialogues in a crisis: A mixed-methods approach to identifying publics on social media

Despite the promise of social media to engender dialogue, the common approach to studying social media may prioritize monologue, whereby research considers the strategies organizations use in targeting publics, particularly in a crisis. This study uses a mixed-method approach to analyze dialogue in a crisis—semantic network analysis and content analysis. Specifically, this study examines the emotional expression and crisis coping behaviors on social media during two separate terror attacks: the Paris terror attacks in 2015 and the Barcelona terror attacks in 2017. Results demonstrate how publics may be identified and understood through semantic network analysis and content analysis. This study also shows the connection between emotions and coping, expanding the crisis communication literature in public relations, and suggests the need to consider agenda-setting and resilience in crisis communication research. Finally, we discuss this study’s implications for assuming a dialogic orientation in public relations.     

Why practitioners do (not) apply crisis communication theory in practice

Twenty-five in-depth interviews with Belgian crisis communication practitioners were conducted to examine the gap between theory and practice. Crisis communication has become an important research area within public relations. Several studies have resulted in theories and guidelines regarding the effective use of communication during organizational crises. Unfortunately, these findings are not always put into practice. This study examines to what extent public relations practitioners apply theory in practice during crises and why. The findings offer an opportunity to formulate potential ways in which we can bridge the scholar-practitioner divide in public relations, through guidelines for both scholars and practitioners.     

“We are the land:” An analysis of cultural appropriation and moral outrage in response to Christian Dior’s Sauvage scandal

By analyzing the online social construction of Christian Dior’s 2019 Sauvage ad, the present study contributes to the literature on public relations and diversity from the perspective of cultural appropriation, a research line that has remained unexplored. The study builds on Coombs and Tachkova’s (2018) recommendation for a theoretical and practical delineation between crises related to products, services and operations, and scandals (crises that spur moral outrage). The results reveal that the online users’ perceptions of cultural appropriation require communicative approaches that differ from previously employed crisis communication practices. A primary and secondary type of moral outrage were found to thrive in the aftermath of the scandal. The foundation of the primary moral outrage constituted perceived injustice, exploitation, and controllability, as users attributed a high level of responsibility for a corporate scandal they deemed preventable. The secondary type of moral outrage revealed the users’ concern about injustice, referred to as double standards vis-à-vis the cultural appropriation of ethnic groups that had not been historically marginalized. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Emotional crisis communication

Organizational crises are usually highly emotional experiences for both organizations and stakeholders. Hence, crisis situations often result in emotionally charged communication between the two parties. Despite the attention of organizations and scholars to the emotions of stakeholders during crises, little is known about the effects of the emotions communicated by organizations on corporate reputations. Through the use of vignettes, this experiment reveals that besides crisis-response strategy (diminish vs. rebuild), the communicated emotion (i.e., shame and regret) has a positive effect on corporate reputation. Mediation analyses showed that this effect of communicated emotion could be explained by the public's (negative) affective as well as cognitive responses (i.e., account acceptance). This study confirms that emotional signals embedded in crisis responses may affect corporate reputations by reducing feelings of anger and by increasing the acceptance of the organizational message. In doing so, this study provides a starting point for further exploration of the effectiveness of other emotions in crisis communication.     

Revisiting the SMCC model: How Chinese public relations practitioners handle social-mediated crises

As social media are used widely by Chinese organizations, this study comprehensively examines how Chinese public relations practitioners cope with social mediated crisis and how culture interacts with social mediated crisis response. An in-depth interview was conducted to collect data from 23 Chinese public relations practitioners who had experience in dealing with crises and issues via social media. The results showed that Chinese public relations practitioners use diverse social media platforms to satisfy the publics’ needs and social media usage preferences. In addition, the results also showed the importance of matching information platform and information sources in response to social-mediated crises. Furthermore, we revealed how the uniqueness of Chinese culture moderated information platforms and information sources, such as face-saving strategies, collaborating with opinion leaders and influencers to shape the publics’ opinions, using no response, apologizing, and self-mockery, and emphasizing the importance of media relations.     

Proxy communication in crisis response

This study analyzes the role of third party crisis communication during the expansive food contamination crisis caused by Peanut Corporation of America (PCA). The information void caused by PCA's mismanagement of the crisis and subsequent reticence was filled by third party organizations serving as proxy crisis communicators. The need for organizations to plan for and engage in proxy communication when organizations in affiliated industries fail to communicate effectively during crises is demonstrated.     

The influences of relationship quality with external partners and required levels of approval of messaging on crisis preparedness

As funding for public health promotion is increasingly limited in the U.S., public relations research informing management of crises that threaten public health is especially critical. Crisis planning models such as Reynolds and Seeger’s (2005, 2014) crisis and emergency risk communication model offer comprehensive directives for crisis managers and present opportunities to extend the utility of best practice recommendations. A survey of public information officers (PIOs) (n=208) at local public health departments across the U.S. examines the quality of their relationships with partners in public health crisis management, including first responders, media, law enforcement, and hospitals, and reveals that relationships with key publics in crisis management are lacking. Further, PIOs at state governed health departments may face critical delays in releasing crisis messages, as their messages are required to clear more levels of approval than locally (city/county) governed departments. Implications and future research for these key variables extending public relations crisis communication research with a focus on inter-organizational relationships are discussed.     

Tracking the defining moments of crisis process and practice

Crisis holds the potential for profound change in organizations and industries. The past 50 years of crisis management highlight key shifts in crisis practice, creating opportunities for multiple theories and research tracks. Defining crises such as Tylenol, Exxon Valdez, and September 11 terrorist attacks have influenced or challenged the principles of best practice of crisis communication in public relations. This study traces the development of crisis process and practice by identifying shifts in crisis research and models and mapping these against key management theories and practices. The findings define three crisis domains: crisis planning, building and testing predictive models, and mapping and measuring external environmental influences. These crisis domains mirror but lag the evolution of management theory, suggesting challenges for researchers to reshape the research agenda to close the gap and lead the next stage of development in the field of crisis communication for effective organizational outcomes.     

Enduring image: Capturing defining moments in crises

In today's media environment, crises are magnified as media events and are rich sites for the inception of images. Particular images, like a photograph or a sound bite are found to endure as representations of defining moments of crises. This study seeks to examine the concept of an enduring image, how it is engendered and how it impacts crisis communication efforts. The study utilizes five case studies of crisis with an inherent enduring image. An enduring image constitutes a prime representation of the accused in a given crisis. These images are loaded with symbolic potential and exhibit a sense of permanence in public consciousness. Understanding the implications of an enduring image can offer insights to organizations on how to better manage one's public and media image during or after a crisis. The study is arguably the first in examining the significance and potency of enduring images in crises.