Designing a News Evaluation Model in Crisis Management

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Our country, Iran, is vulnerable to various disasters and the national media plays an important role at the time of accidents and disasters as the public pays attention to the media at such times. In this regard, the present study aimed to achieve and design a news executive model for crisis management. METHODS: This research used a mixed approach and was conducted in two phases, namely qualitative and quantitative. The first phase was performed using the qualitative method based on the grounded theory and the next one was carried out based on the quantitative research method using a researcher-made questionnaire. The statistical population of the research in the qualitative section included managers, and media and crisis experts who were interviewed using purposive sampling and saturation (n=25). The statistical population of the quantitative section also included 196 managers, experts, and media and crisis experts of the country (Red Crescent Society and Crisis Management Organization). FINDINGS: Based on the findings, it can be said that categories, such as the nature and unprofessional coverage of news, biased news organization, lack of media independence, and ultimately public distrust and tendency towards alternative media as the requirements for designing news executive model in crisis management were coded as causal conditions. In the theory analysis process, the MAXQDA software (version 2020) was used, which identified a total of 120 concepts and 20 categories. Afterward, in the quantitative part, Smartpls3 software was used to obtain the relationship of these categories to explain the news in crisis management. CONCLUSION: According to the results, the categories of accountability of officials, social cohesion and increase of resilience, improvement of media performance, and achievement of public trust were the consequences of using appropriate strategies for the development of news in crisis management. The results showed that there is a positive and significant relationship between the nature and unprofessional coverage of news with the design and explanation of crisis management news as well as the public distrust and tendency towards alternative media with the inappropriate design of crisis management news