Discourse Of Renewal Research Articles

#BetterTogether: examining race-related crisis communication on a university campus

ABSTRACT This case study examines crisis communication during a series of racial incidents at the University of Oklahoma (OU) using the discourse of renewal theory and corporate responsibility to race (CRR) theory. Crisis messaging analysis showed organizational learning, ethical communication, prospective vision, and engaging rhetoric differences. OU’s crisis messaging differed greatly from its mission statement’s DEI goals. Conversely, several campus organizations more successfully communicated relationship management and emotional intelligence than OU. Comparison to preceding leadership during previous racial incidents showed stakeholders perceived previous racial incidents were better handled. Our study expands on discourse of renewal and CRR by showing key stakeholders – students, faculty, staff, and alumni – want racial incidents handled swiftly and decisively, with a clear university-level commitment to DEI efforts. In a U.S. higher education climate fraught with anti-DEI sentiment and tense racial relations this study shows the responsibility of leadership in responding to racial crises and stakeholder-preferred responses.

Keystone theories of postcrisis discourse: Communication Theory of Resilience and Discourse of Renewal

AbstractTheories of resilience are keystones for understanding how individuals, small groups, organizations, and communities arrive at collective meaning, resolve uncertainty, and respond to crisis events. In response to a crisis, organizations can pursue three goals: Returning to the prior equilibrium, creating a new equilibrium with new processes and policies, or a combination of the two. Theories of resilience and renewal address these responses. Resilience has been applied in a diverse set of academic fields as well as in public policy discussions and in popular culture. This broad application, however, has resulted in conceptual confusion and conflicting interpretations. We explore the origins of resilience and its characteristics. We then review two discipline‐specific postcrisis theories, The Communication Theory of Resilience and Discourse of Renewal. We ask, how can these theories enrich understanding of postcrisis adaptive processes and create for a more comprehensive picture of how individuals and organizations respond to crises? Taken together, they provide a broader framework for understanding the role of postcrisis discourse and informing practitioners in the enactment of responses.

Native advertising in Vale’s reparation process after the dam collapse in Brumadinho

On 25th January 2019, the mining company Vale’s B1 tailings dam collapsed in the city of Brumadinho (Minas Gerais), becoming Brazil’s largest labour accident in terms of number of fatalities, as well as a socio-environmental disaster that affected 26 municipalities along the Paraopeba river basin. Its consequences are still felt by the communities, three victims are missing and there are transnational litigations against the involved corporate companies. This research aims to understand how Vale’s institutional communication occurs in the reparation process of the damages caused by the dam collapse, with a focus on the discourse of renewal adopted by the company in five native advertising pieces published on Estado de Minas newspaper’s portal between 2020 and 2022. Through a qualitative content analysis, it was possible to observe its strategy when using brand journalism to communicate with its audiences. It was not possible to see an ethical communication nor an effective organisational rhetoric. Future research could question Vale’s communication officers the option for native ads instead of traditional advertising or press office work, as well as ask Estado de Minas’ editors about the risks and opportunities of producing and/or publishing this type of sponsored content.

A Discourse of Renewal: Higher Education Leadership and Crisis Communication during Black Lives Matter

This case study examines ethical leadership responses and crisis communications at a public institution of higher education in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, which occur concurrently with the COVID-19 pandemic and institutional financial crises. The Discourse of Renewal framework requires a focus on what is best for the entirety of the community, rather than simply being a strategic response that only benefits a few. The framework provides a structure for conceptualizing and considering an optimistic discourse in response to crises. A rhetorical analysis of leadership discourse examined four renewal characteristics: overall organizational learning, ethical communication, prospective visioning, and effective organizational rhetoric. Surveys and subsequent analyses of faculty, students, and staff responses provide a feedback mechanism from institutional stakeholders. Subsequent discussions explore issues of navigating stacked crises and how an ethical leadership response can help build beyond crises for the future of the organization.

Images of Place, Secularity and Gentrification: On Urban Religious Belonging in an Inner City Neighbourhood in Oslo

Through extensive fieldwork conducted in an inner city neighbourhood in Oslo, Norway, the authors found that a variation of actors and settings evoked different religious and secular images of place. In what ways is the urban experience shaping or challenging the religious sense of spatial belonging, and why is a secular discourse dominating the scene? In order to obtain such images and sense of place in the context of a recently established area based initiative, we interviewed representatives for the religious communities localized in the neighbourhoods of Tøyen and Grønland. Here we encountered no religiously infused language despite a sizeable spatial religious presence. In the sciences of religion, the view of a separation between the secular and the religious as a social fact and a social norm in modern societies dominates. We argue that there is a privatization of religion (Casanova 1994) within the larger discourse of urban renewal and gentrification. Simultaneously we find the reverse of Taylor’s (2007) proposal of the emptying of religion in social space: namely a filling up of religion in social spaces, that we label ‘urban religious belonging’. This article provides further empirically based knowledge into the connection of religion, secularism and the urban sphere, the difference between belief and representations or discourses, as well as a methodological approach for studying these connections and fractures.

KONSEP PEMIKIRAN SEKULARISASI NURCHOLISH MADJID SEBUAH FENOMENOLOGI AGAMA

This research tries to explore the thought of Nurkholish Madjid as a dynamic phenomenology of religion in secularization discourse, this article wants to discuss the discourse offered by Nurcholish Madjid about Secularization, looking at the cultural localities of Indonesia and socio-politics, then of course there are many ways of looking at Muslim ideas in responding to the discourse of renewal. in Islamic thought Nurkholish Madjid.
 Keywords: Secularism and Phenomenology of Religion.

Stakeholder-Formed Organizations and Crisis Communication: Analyzing Discourse of Renewal with a Non-Offending Organization

Scholars have examined the ways organizations practice post-crisis communication strategies, including deny, diminish, and rebuild. The current study explores the extent to which a stakeholder-formed organization utilizes post-crisis discourse of renewal to rebuild, recover, and renew the Catholic Church after allegations of sexual abuse of minors publicly surfaced in the United States. Open-ended semi-structured interviews with founders and executive committee members of Leadership Roundtable revealed stakeholders practiced discourse of renewal to help the Catholic Church, an offending organization, recover from a crisis. This study also assessed the extent to which God and religion motivated stakeholders’ responses. Results suggest religion is a critical motivating factor in stakeholders’ responses to a crisis.

Passing the test: Lessons from a school district’s discourse of renewal before, during and after Hurricane Harvey

AbstractThis case study tests the frameworks of the discourse of renewal theory and social legitimacy theory through an examination of the Fort Bend Independent School District's (Texas) communication strategies and tactics before, during and after Hurricane Harvey struck the Houston area in 2017. A focus of this case study is one characteristic of the discourse of renewal theory: the showcasing of leaders as “instrumental forces for renewal and overcoming crises” (Ulmer, Seeger & Sellnow, 2007, pp. 131–132), especially related to messages by the district's superintendent. Both the superintendent's and Fort Bend ISD’s communication efforts aligned with the tenets of renewal discourse and social legitimacy theory, with empathy an ingredient in many messages. Another important finding of this study is that the district used a discourse of renewal before, during, and after the storm, and not simply as a post‐crisis strategy. Overall, this strategy may have played a role in the district's organizational resilience—as shown through its sustained enrolment and continuing leadership team—after the second‐costliest hurricane in U.S. history.

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.

Enhancing post-crisis communication through memorials: the case of the bonfire crisis at Texas A&M

PurposeThere is a small amount of research that examines the post-crisis communication efforts of organizations (Coombs, 2012). The discourse of renewal has a focus on learning and positive views of the future. However, there have been some efforts to link it with memorials (Veil et al., 2011). More can be done so that memorials and remembering enhance our understanding of the effects of post-crisis communication. This paper analyzes the Texas A&M Bonfire tragedy as an example of how remembrance, through the shared experience of grief and memorializing, communicates renewal and how the narrative of the crisis has been successfully institutionalized within the organization.Design/methodology/approachThe study relies on 12 qualitative interviews with undergraduate students attending Texas A&M.FindingsThe findings indicate that memorials are important facilitators of renewal as they carry multiple messages. The results from the study indicated that the narrative of the Bonfire crisis has been embedded within the organizational culture of A&M through a memorialization process facilitated by renewal discourse. Additionally, renewal was found to influence stakeholder perceptions of crises and to be an underlying force of learning and change following organizational crisis.Originality/valueThe paper explores how an organization presents a past crisis to new stakeholders. This paper explores how stakeholders experience and interpret that post-crisis communication. Additionally, the memorial creates a remembering-forgetting tension as organizations want stakeholders to forget the negatives from a crisis.

Paradoxical Timelines in Wells Fargo’s Crisis Discourse: Expanding the Discourse of Renewal Theory

We detail the ways in which Wells Fargo used the tenets of the discourse of renewal and resilience communication to respond to its financial crises. To do so, we completed a thematic analysis of Well Fargo’s website and commercials. Specifically, we found that Wells Fargo relied on its organizational history to communicate renewal. In doing, so Wells Fargo (1) created a paradoxical timeline of events that puts alternative logic to work and (2) drew on established identity anchors. We therefore conclude that discourse of renewal can integrate past-orientation and address organizational identity work with theoretical basis. By combining these two frameworks and applying them to a real-world crisis context, we make important contributions to the continued development of both the discourse of renewal and resilience communication.

Starbucks’ Racial-Bias Crisis: Toward a Rhetoric of Renewal

ABSTRACTThis paper seeks to reframe crises as moments of organizational opportunity instead of moments of organizational threat. The predominant crisis communication approach involves defensive posturing, image restoration and corporate apologia strategies to protect and defend organizations in crisis. Some organizations, however, engage in crisis discourse that focuses on evolution and growth instead of issues like blame and liability. This paper employs Robert Ulmer, Timothy Sellnow and Matthew Seeger’s discourse of renewal to examine Starbucks’ crisis response to the April 12, 2018, arrests of two black men waiting for a friend in one of the coffee chain’s Philadelphia locations. While Starbucks has not characterized it as such, the organization demonstrated a renewing response. Through the Starbucks case, this paper illustrates how crises challenge organizational practices and offer platforms for organizational rebirth, development and long-term survival. Through Kantian ethics, this paper suggests duty-driven responsibilities for enacting renewal discourse and practical implications.

#VegasStrong: Sport, Public Memorialization, and the Golden Knights

This article examines the response to the 1 October, 2017, mass shooting in Las Vegas by both the city and its National Hockey League team, the Golden Knights. In analyzing these responses, we argue that the Golden Knights’ memorialization efforts, while operating within a familiar public relations script of the sporting commercialization of memorial, productively turned T-Mobile Arena into a space, however sanitized, for the enactment of rituals and a discourse of renewal. This space was otherwise absent from the rest of the tourist-oriented confines of the Strip. Further, the rhetorical conjoining of the hashtags #VegasStrong, which emerged shortly after the shooting, and #VegasBorn, which was originally used to market the team, operated as simultaneous symbols for both the team and its community. This allowed the sporting franchise to move between commercial and civic uses, operating as both branding for the team and as an embodied act of remembrance for local residents.

Mitigating Reputational Risk Through Image Repair Strategies

This article examines rhetorical strategies as well as the linguistic construction of those strategies in press releases put out by Cadbury Malaysia in response to accusations that it has failed to comply with halal certification standards. Drawing on image repair theory and the concept of the ideological square, six press releases were analysed to identify the rhetorical strategies as well as semantic structures that were used to repair the organization’s image and minimize reputational risk. The analysis reveals how the organization moved beyond denial to also employ the rhetorical strategies of attacking one’s accuser and bolstering. Despite early media reports naming government agencies as the accusers, the press releases put out by Cadbury Malaysia determined the source of accusations as unnamed individuals within the agencies, thereby avoiding confrontations with the relevant authorities. The analysis shows how language is used in press releases to construct the positive self and negative other as Cadbury Malaysia promoted a discourse of renewal to reassert its position within a highly lucrative halal market. This article provides novel insights into understanding how language works within rhetorical strategies of image repair.

Extending Discourse of Renewal to Preparedness: Construct and Scale Development of Readiness for Renewal

This study developed the construct of readiness for renewal in organizations and evaluated its underlying psychometric properties. We drew on Discourse of Renewal theory to develop, pilot, and refine a scale through three studies with full-time employees whose organizations recently experienced crises. Study 1 established a two-factor structure that included ethical communication and effective organizational rhetoric. Using confirmatory factor analysis in Study 2, we replicated the two-factor solution. Because of a high correlation between factors, we modified the model to include a higher order factor predicting the two lower order factors. Study 3 translated the questionnaire and replicated findings from Study 2 with full-time employees in Mexico. The resulting 15-item instrument in English and Spanish can be used by researchers and practitioners interested in assessing precrisis readiness through the Discourse of Renewal.

From Hoax as Crisis to Crisis as Hoax: Fake News and Information Disorder as Disruptions to the Discourse of Renewal

Hoaxes have long been a reputational threat to organizations. For example, false claims that syringes had been found in bottles of Pepsi-Cola products, that a portion of a fi nger had been found in Wendy’s chili, and that Domino’s employees had intentionally served contaminated food to customers have topped the media’s agenda. More recently, the hoax phenomenon has been tactically reversed. Heavily trafficked Internet sites and controversial television personalities frequently argue that well-documented crises themselves are hoaxes. The potential for claims of crisis as hoax to disrupt the discourse of crisis renewal is examined through an analysis of three cases. We argue that overcoming such disruptions requires corporate social responsibility, a focus on the issues rather than the hoaxers, and continued eff orts to improve media literacy for all audiences.

Social media crisis communication: Enhancing a discourse of renewal through dialogic content

This qualitative study investigates through a case study how dialogic content, which is shared on social media, facilitates stakeholder support and builds relationships to advance a discourse of renewal. Prior research on crisis communication in social media thoroughly investigated crisis response theories relating to reputation management and image restoration. To date, however, a paucity of research has considered how content could facilitate stakeholder support and relationships in crisis communication.The findings show that when an organization commits to transparent, interactive dialogue during a social media crisis on a social media platform, stakeholders are pulled to authentic content because they are interested and actively seeking for relevant information. Dialogic content may also boost stakeholder support and encourage relationship building to help move the organization forward after the crisis with dialogic communication. The insights gained from this study create value for wider audiences in terms of how dialogic content can be used for social media crisis communication, to move beyond reputation and image repair to become meaningful to stakeholders.

From the “Ayotte Evasion” to Rejecting Trump: Senator Kelly Ayotte’s Post-Crisis Discourse of Renewal

This analysis examines the separation strategies and post-crisis discourse of renewal efforts of Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte during the 2016 election. Ayotte initially used a separation strategy to suggest that she “supported” the Republican nominee but did not “endorse” Donald Trump. After she disavowed Trump following the Access Hollywood scandal, Ayotte focused her renewal efforts on mitigating the damage from previously supporting Trump while creating a positive image for voters as an independent voice in the Senate. While Ayotte was ultimately unsuccessful in retaining her Senate seat, this article argues Ayotte’s renewal discourse was effective. During her debate performances, Ayotte effectively linked her opponent to Hillary Clinton and visualized her future as a U.S. senator that would stand up for New Hampshire citizens. Implications are drawn concerning how political candidates can adopt renewal discourse when attempting to mitigate the damage from a crisis by visualizing a positive future.

Discourse of renewal: Developing multiple-item measurement and analyzing effects on relationships

Emphasis on protecting an organization’s image and reputation has dominated crisis communication research. A crisis is assumed to only bring negative impacts because it tarnishes an organization’s reputation. Priority is placed upon whether an organization can come up with response strategies that mitigate this harm, rather than on rebuilding relationships. Challenging these untested assumptions, discourse of renewal is complementary to the image- and reputation-centered perspectives and theorizes crises as opportunities to reflect, grow, and therefore renew to a better state. To further discourse of renewal, the current study first establishes a valid and reliable measure of discourse of renewal, and investigates how discourse of renewal influences publics’ relationship with an organization. Results of the study indicate that engagement, prospective foci, communication efficiency, and emphasis on organizational culture and core values are four dimensions of discourse of renewal, and that discourse of renewal positively influences publics’ relationship with an organization.

The complexities of place in crisis renewal discourse: A case study of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting

The discourse of renewal is an established strategy for crisis recovery. The current analysis examines the role that place plays in postcrisis communication, in general, and the discourse of renewal, specifically. We describe the extent to which place‐bound crises affect the ability of an organization to enact a discourse of renewal. We propose a modification of renewal discourse to include place as a condition that may make the successful enactment of renewal rhetoric more likely. Specifically, we argue that the place of the crisis can be a decisive element in whether or how renewal is enacted. We analyse the case of the Sandy Hook School shooting to explicate the opportunities and challenges of dealing with a place‐bound crisis.