When crisis strikes the field:The evolution of sports crisis communication research in an era of new media

Abstract

Newspaper and website headlines, sports radio talk shows, and television sports news segments, are constantly updating sports fans about player lockouts, National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) investigations, the arrests of star players, and other crises that face both collegiate and professional sports organizations. Coombs (2012: 4) states that a crisis “disrupts or affects the entire organization or has the potential to do so.” Recent cases such as the Penn State University sex abuse scandal and the New Orleans Saints bounty scandal that offered monetary incentive for inflicting injuries upon opposing players show the far-reaching negative consequences that can result from such crisis situations, affecting both game performance and a sporting organization’s overall reputation.When a crisis strikes, a sports organization must immediately employ carefully orchestrated crisis response strategies in order to minimize the impact on the organizational reputation. However, recent trends in communication technology, namely the rise of social media websites, alter the delivery and content of the traditional organizational crisis response. In the new era of social media, sports organizations have, in many ways, lost some of thecontrol they once possessed over the crisis narrative. In many instances, organizations no longer control the dissemination of their own messages by planning news releases around broadcast and print news deadlines. Rather, one simple Tweet, Facebook post, Instagram photo, or YouTube video can propel an event or story to become “viral” in minutes. Coombs (2012) acknowledges that social media is driven by user-generated content, placing much control and power in the hands of average stakeholders. No longer can organizations simply feed their key stakeholders information; rather, active stakeholders desire more interaction and connectivity, especially during times of crisis.Audiences are no longer passive recipients of messages designed by organizations; rather, they are now active, and sometimes aggressive, information-seekers who desire instant information (Stephens and Malone, 2009).This new environment makes itcrucial for organizations to ensure that their stakeholders will be advocates and spokespersons on behalf of the organization on their social media accounts. Perhaps no organization has more engaged and active stakeholders than sports-affiliatedorganizations and athletes. Sports fans are driven by their sense of connection to their team (Wann, 2006), leading them to utilize the power afforded to them by social media to drive the conversation. Several studies have examined organizational crisis response (e.g. K. Brown and White, 2011; Coombs and Holladay, 2008; Fortunato, 2008), but few have considered how social media outlets have allowed fans to adopt and implement similar response strategies on behalf of the organization or sports figure with which they identify. This chapter will begin by examining the role of crisis response in the crisis communica-tion process, and explore two predominant crisis response theories: Benoit’s Image Repair Theory (IRT) and Coombs’ Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT). After we provide the theoretical background,we will discuss the evolution of the study of crisis response in sports and social media’s role in sports crisis response. Finally, we will examine how the rise of social media should serve as a catalyst for an expansion of crisis response literature, providing a new theoretical lens through which scholars can better examine sports crises.