Post-crisis Communication Research Articles

Post Crisis Communication Strategies Used in Crises Preparedness in the Tourism and Hospitality Industry in Naivasha Sub-County

Purpose: This study sought to evaluate the post-crisis communication strategies used in crises preparedness in the tourism and hospitality industry in Naivasha Sub-County in Nakuru County of Kenya. Methodology: Mixed research methodology was used in the study, particularly the dominant-less dominant parallel/simultaneous (QUAL + quan) design. A quantitative sample of 362 and a qualitative sample of the key informants was drawn from a population of 1092 employees using the multi-stage and purposive sampling techniques, respectively. The instruments of data collection were questionnaires for survey of the 362 respondents and interview guides for the key informant interviews. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze quantitative data and were subjected to regression analysis using SPSS software whereas qualitative data was analyzed thematically. Findings: The study found that various post-crisis communication strategies were used in crises preparedness in tourism and hospitality industry on Naivasha subcounty. A communication strategy that emphasizes protection of the reputation of the organization was popular among a larger portion of the respondents 60% (n=177). The study also revealed that as a post-crisis communication strategy, the management in the hotels was keen to give information that focuses on coping psychologically with a crisis situation. The hotels also ensured that keeping the image of the hotels through communication strategies would enhance crises preparedness. The findings in post-crisis communication strategies included the messaging that focuses more on rebuilding of the organization’s profitability. This was found to be strongly and positively associated with restoration of the hotel’s image (r=.610). Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: The situational crisis communication theory guided the study. The study recommends that the Cabinet secretary in the Ministry of Tourism develop policies that spell and guide crisis management plans that acknowledge effective crisis communication strategies in hotels in the country. This study findings will inform academia and be a base for scholars in mass communication in carrying out further studies in communicative strategies used in crises preparedness. The study will also inform the hotel and hospitality management on the importance of allocating adequate resources on communicative strategies to be prepared for crises.

MEDIA MANAGEMENT AND CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS: THE IMPORTANCE OF IMPLEMENTING KEY PROVISIONS OF THE MEDIA IN THE RESPONSE METHODOLOGY

<p><em>With new environmental changes and terrorism creating opportunities for crisis situations, and the proliferation and development of mass media increasing vulnerability to crises, organizations are placing greater importance on crisis management. Vital to successful crisis management are strategic and effective crisis communications. Without it, the health and safety of stakeholders and the reputation of the organization are at risk.</em></p><p><strong><em>The purpose of the study </em></strong><em>is to analyze the existing tools of media management and crisis communications in the context of overcoming the current challenges of information warfare.</em><em></em></p><p><strong><em>Research methods.</em></strong><em> The study used the following methods: bibliographic (to analyze the current best practices of crisis media management); graphical (to visualize the damage caused by information cyberattacks); analysis (to identify the specifics of interaction between private media organizations and government agencies).</em></p><p><strong><em>Results. </em></strong><em>The author proves that unlike risk communications, which aim to help people understand the facts that really affect their lives so that they can make informed decisions about risks, crisis communications are more aimed at managing the consequences, impact and public perception of the crisis. Crisis communications is also seen as an action-based perspective, where they shape the fundamental meaning of crisis events. In this sense, crisis communicators have the possibility to influence how the crisis and the organization are perceived by the public.</em></p><p><strong><em>Novelty. </em></strong><em>It is proved that it is advisable to study crisis communications not as situational phenomena, but as a permanent process that should not be reduced to the stage of post-crisis communication. </em></p><p><strong><em>The practical significance </em></strong><em>of the results obtained is to identify the need for further development of cooperation between government agencies and representatives of the media community, including private ownership, in counteracting the consequences of a full-scale and information war in Ukraine.</em></p><p><strong><em>Key words:</em></strong><em> media management, crisis communications, social marketing, public-private partnership, media.</em></p>

The Impact of Religion in Situational Crisis Communication Theory: An Examination of Religious Rhetoric and Religiosity

ABSTRACT Crisis communication scholars have not fully explored crises within religious organizations, including the impact of religious rhetoric in crisis responses or stakeholder’s religiosity. This study conducted a survey-experiment to examine recommended crisis response strategies, based on the Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), with and without religious rhetoric to explore the impact of religious rhetoric and religiosity on stakeholder’s skepticism, attitudes, trust, and supportive intentions. Results provide support for SCCT strategies and suggest that no religious rhetoric in post-crisis communication resulted in more supportive attitudes toward the organization. This study advances crisis communication theorizing by arguing that stakeholder identity – including religiosity – should be considered when responding to crises with a religious component, or crises within religious organizations.

Ability or social responsibility? Highlighting the effects of precrisis attitudinal foundations and certainty in product harm crises

AbstractCurrent corporate crisis literature is split on whether a good corporate reputation before a product harm crisis hurts or helps a company after the crisis. We argue that the current views on this issue miss two crucial elements: (1) the primary domain where the company's precrisis reputation lies in: corporate social responsibility contributions or corporate ability in providing quality products and services; and (2) consumers' attitude certainty developed from such precrisis reputation. Through an online experiment, our study not only provides a way to reconcile the current division in the literature but also provides insights for organizations to capitalize on their precrisis reputation when responding to the product harm crisis. Our results show that companies' precrisis reputation and consumer certainty developed from such a reputation matter more than companies' postcrisis communication in restoring consumer evaluations.

Ceding to their fears: a taxonomic analysis of the heterogeneity in COVID-19 associated perceived risk and intended travel behaviour

ABSTRACT Research into the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on tourists’ psyche represents a new and growing discourse within contemporary tourism. This study established and segmented post-COVID-19 pandemic tourists based on three psychographic factors of perceived risk. Data were generated from a self-administered online survey of 323 respondents. Exploratory factor analysis identified a triad of perceived risk factors associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Hierarchical cluster analysis supported a three cluster solution to comprise dogmatic, sceptical and apprehensive tourists, respectively. The findings show that there are discernable and statistically significant differences across the tourist typologies concerning the influence of media profile on tourist decision-making, the perceived safety of travel and tourism activities, and tourists’ behaviour (travel intentions) after the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, implying that psychographic profiling will be critical in market segmentation and tourists’ targeting with post-crisis communication and marketing promotion in line with their predilections. As a primer to future COVID-19-related behavioural studies, this explorative research contributes critical data driven behavioural insights to enhance the extent of the tourism literature and support tourism practitioners’ tourism marketing decision-making.

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.

Serena, Inc.: Using Instagram to build brand equity after a crisis

Serena Williams is one of the most successful athletes of all time. In addition to dominating the professional tennis circuit for decades, she has also built a massive business empire while becoming a first-time mother and wife. During this time of transition, Williams experienced a significant crisis moment during the 2018 US Open. Williams did not publicly acknowledge or apologise for the crisis and instead focused on a new sense of direction after living through the experience, much of which is documented and promoted on her Instagram account. This exploratory case study focuses on Serena Williams’s use of Instagram as a crisis communication strategy to repair her reputation and protect the value of her brand. The study centres on reputation repair in post-crisis communication, in particular on the rhetoric of renewal, which concentrates on the positive view of an organisation’s future instead of ongoing discussions about crisis and responsibility. An analysis of 421 of Williams’s Instagram posts over a two-year time span revealed that Williams used Instagram primarily to share private family moments, remind audiences about her legacy, and to build a business empire. The six themes that emerged suggest useful lessons for practitioners looking to use Instagram not only to mitigate a crisis but to build brand equity at the same time.

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.

An Examination of Antecedents to Perceived Community Resilience in Disaster Postcrisis Communication

Through an online survey of residents in areas affected by Hurricane Matthew ( n = 596), this study examines antecedents that lead to perceived community resilience (PCR) in a disaster crisis. Crisis efficacy, community identification, positive and negative emotions, and social media engagement are identified as factors contributing to PCR. Social media engagement was defined as coping behaviors such as, information seeking, social support seeking, and giving behaviors on social media during and in the aftermath of crisis. The results of this study provide implications for postcrisis rebuilding processes, and how government and organizational communicators can utilize social media communication to foster PCR.

COMUNICAÇÃO EMPRESARIAL E A TRAGÉDIA DA SAMARCO

Este estudo buscou verificar as práticas de comunicação institucional, adotadas pela Samarco (empresa de mineração, subsidiária da Vale), no episódio do rompimento da barragem de rejeitos, em Mariana, MG. Para tanto, buscou-se observar, primeiramente, a relação da empresa com seus stakeholders, incluindo autoridades, comunidade, fornecedores, clientes, imprensa e a sociedade em geral. Foram observados também os designativos da organização como missão, visão e valores e confrontados com as práticas comunicacionais do dia-a-dia da Samarco. O material utilizado na pesquisa incluiu o site da empresa, notícias publicadas na imprensa e dados disponibilizados em documentos de órgãos oficiais. As conclusões indicam que no decorrer da gestão de comunicação de crise e pós-crise, o material de comunicação veiculado pela mineradora Samarco buscou e tem buscado filtrar informações de modo a liberar a empresa de suas responsabilidades com o ocorrido, negligenciando os compromissos descritos em sua missão, embotando com isso a sua transparência.

Exploring Effects of CSR Initiatives in Strategic Postcrisis Communication Among Millennials in China and South Korea

ABSTRACTThis study explored what types of postcrisis CSR activities can make corporate crisis management effective and why. Eighty-one in-depth interviews with Chinese and South Korean millennials showed that they perceived postcrisis CSR positively even when they perceived an underlying self-serving motive. The interview data also revealed that postcrisis CSR initiatives relevant to the company’s business (CSR fit) and to the crisis at hand were more effective in both countries than the other CSR initiatives. Millennials in both countries valued CSR’s impact (benefiting the society as a whole), continuity (being long-term planned and sustainable), uniqueness (with few precedents), and transparency (fully disclosing detailed information) when evaluating various postcrisis CSR initiatives. Controllability (CSR being under full control of a company) was a significant criterion for South Korean millennials only. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

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.

The Effectiveness of Crisis Communication Strategies on Sina Weibo in Relation to Chinese Publics’ Acceptance of These Strategies

With their timely, interactive nature and wide public access, social media have provided a new platform that empowers stakeholders and corporations to interact in crisis communication. This study investigates crisis communication strategies and stakeholders’ emotions in response to a real corporate crisis—the crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 214—in order to enhance our understanding of socially mediated crisis communication. The authors examine 8,530 responses from Chinese stakeholders to crisis communication on the Chinese microblogging Web site Sina Weibo. Their findings suggest that the integrated use of accommodative and defensive communication strategies in the early stage of postcrisis communication prevented escalation of the crisis.

Appeals to Ethos and Pathos in Post-Crisis Communication: A Case Study of Press Conferences Handling Tianjin Blasts

<p>This study focuses on the rhetorical appeals in post-crisis communication, and analyzes the influence of dynamically changing context on the speakers’ choice of rhetorical means. Aristotle’s three important rhetorical appeals-ethos, pathos and logos are investigated in the transcript of 14 press conferences handling Tianjin blasts. The changes in speakers’ rhetorical appeals are explored in relation to the changing context in the evolving crisis. In post-crisis press conferences, the speakers most frequently used appeals to ethos and pathos to persuade. Specifically, when appealing to ethos, the speakers usually manipulated discursive resources to construct their credibility, expertise, and similarity with the audience; when appealing to pathos, such emotions of the public as the feelings of depression, need for appreciation, and expectation for a thorough investigation of the blasts were addressed. In addition, as the crisis unfolded, the context for communication was dynamically changing. There was a tendency for speakers to adapt their rhetorical appeals to the dynamically changing context.</p>

Company Post-Crisis Communication Strategies and the Psychological Mechanism Underlying Consumer Reactions

A theoretical framework is developed to explain the mechanisms that underlie the effectiveness of matching postcrisis communication strategies to the crisis types on relevant consumer reactions. Two studies are conducted regarding an actual crisis case: the Costa Concordia shipwreck on 2012. Study 1 provides evidence of more favorable consumer reactions to a company when confession strategy and preventable crisis are matched. The results verify that consumers’ emotions of anger and sympathy play a mediating role. Study 2 demonstrates corporate reputation's moderating role on the link between postcrisis communication strategy and sympathy and, through it, on consumers’ attitudinal and behavioral responses.

Contaminated Communication: TEPCO and Organizational Renewal at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant

This case study examines the postcrisis discourse of Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and its executives following the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant crisis of Spring 2011. Using organizational renewal as a framework, we argue TEPCO communicated a desire to rebuild its reputation by being prospective and focusing on the future, emphasizing rebuilding and growth, providing an optimistic message, and communicating information through its leaders. Although TEPCO's postcrisis communication adhered to the tenets of renewal, stakeholders remained skeptical of the organization—likely the result of an inability to foster a strong precrisis relationship with the Japanese public and its government. This study shows how a company can fail to establish renewal among its stakeholders when renewal discourse is not framed successfully.

The Role of Prior Expectancies and Relational Satisfaction in Crisis

This study empirically tests (1) expectancy violations theory’s applicability to the setting of organization–public relationships and explores (2) the effectiveness of post-crisis communication in the post-crisis stage by employing a real crisis. The findings suggest that stakeholders’ relational satisfaction and predictive and prescriptive expectancies are significant predictors, determining negative valence, uncertainty level, and other negative responses toward the organization in crises. Finally, the study also suggests that actively communicating crisis-related information, even during the post-crisis stage, is more effective in protecting positive corporate reputation than a no-message or a justification strategy.

Effective Crisis Communication Strategies in Egypt

This study will review two strategies of post-crisis communication: namely situational crisis communication — theory (SCCT) and discourse of renewal as widely used approaches of crisis management and restoration of reputation in crisis communication literature. The empirical focus of this study will investigate the application of the two strategies in Egypt for two different business organizations in crisis after the 25th of January revolution, 2011 to explore the possibilities of application and degree of success. The importance of this study is embedded in the recurrent crisis situations in Egypt after the revolution, the growing need for effective crisis management strategies and approaches. In addition to a scientific value as the review of literature in this field revealed that while foreign studies focused on the analysis of crisis communication strategies in organizational units, Arabic studies were interested in the effects and consequences of utilized communication programs.

The Virginia Tech Shootings: Implications for Crisis Communication in Educational Settings

By examining Virginia Tech’s crisis communication during and after the shootings on April 16, 2007, valuable insights were gained that may be applied to current crisis communication models. This article addresses the unique characteristics of educational institutions and the need for comprehensive emergency communication strategies and onsite crisis communication that may conflict with the interests of media and the public. The findings reveal a failure of crisis recognition and inadequate crisis incident management. Virginia Tech exercised effective crisis leadership in its postcrisis communication with media and the university community but was less successful in communicating with the victims’ families.

Predicting Psychological Ripple Effects: The Role of Cultural Identity, In‐Group/Out‐Group Identification, and Attributions of Blame in Crisis Communication

Incidents of intentional food contamination can produce ripple effects in consumers such as reduced trust and increased anxiety. In their postcrisis communication, food companies often direct the blame at the perpetrator in an effort to mitigate potential losses and regain consumer trust. The attempt to placate consumers may, in itself, potentially create psychological ripple effects in message readers. This study examined the interacting influence of two message characteristics: identity of the perpetrator of the crime (in-group/out-group membership), and the attribution of blame (reason why the perpetrator committed the crime), with message receiver characteristic (cultural identity) on psychological ripple effects such as blame, trust, anxiety, and future purchase intention. Results indicated that although group membership of the perpetrator was not significant in predicting outcomes for the organization, the attribution communicated in the message was. American message receivers blamed the organization more and trusted it less when personal dispositional attributions were made about the perpetrator. Asian message receivers blamed the organization more and trusted it less when situational attributions were made about the perpetrator. Lowered trust in the company and increased anxiety correlated with lower purchase intent for both American and Asian message receivers. Implications for crisis message design are discussed.