Theorizing Crisis Communication. Timothy L. Sellnow

communities, and agencies to co-create frameworks for understanding and action even within the highly uncertain, demanding, and threatening context of a crisis. These events shatter the fundamental sense of normalcy, stability, and predictability we all count on in living our daily lives. They are disruptive, confusing, shocking, and intense events and making sense of them and reestablishing some new normal requires communication. Crisis communication processes are also made significantly more complex by the diversity of audiences, cultures, backgrounds, experiences, new technologies, and forms of crises. In addition, effective communication in these cases can literally be a life and death matter. Understanding the role of communication in these events, therefore, is critical.

The effort to do so has been driven by dramatic crisis events and has involved several research traditions. In its earliest iteration, crisis communication practice was a subfield of public relations and was directed toward identifying strategies to protect organizations facing accusations of wrongdoing. One of the first professional practitioners of public relations, Ivy Lee, helped manage press coverage of the 1906 Pennsylvania Railroad disaster involving a passenger train derailing on a bridge in Atlantic City. The disaster caused more than 50 deaths (Hallahan, 2002; Heibert, 1966). The principles of crisis communication were drawn largely from anecdotal insights, “war stories,” and later more formalized case studies (Coombs, 2010, p. 23). Although these early principles of crisis communication were anecdotal and did not draw on any established theory, they laid the groundwork for subsequent investigations, which began to develop in the 1980s. More systematic case studies and the application of rhetorical theory added to the earlier principles of practice and a coherent field of crisis communication began to emerge (Lachlan et al., in press). Erikson’s (1976) examination of the Buffalo Creek disaster, Fink’s (1986) analysis of the Three Mile Island Disaster, Seeger’s (1986) analysis of the Challenger Disaster, and Snyder’s (1983) and Benson’s (1988) investigation of the Tylenol poisoning and subsequent responses helped developed the case study approach to crisis. Much of the work was still descriptive and critical and depended largely on descriptive and rhetorical methods (Benoit, 1995).

      As the field developed coherence, investigators began employing empirical methods to study crisis communication. This included both field studies of crises and disasters using survey questionnaires and laboratory investigations. Investigations of Hurricane Katrina (Spence et al., 2007), the terrorist attacks of 9/11 (Lachlan et al., 2009) as well as investigations of organizational responses to crisis (Coombs & Holliday, 2010) were often grounded in more formal theories, utilizing approaches that could be replicated to confirm results.

      Other fields, including management, sociology, political science, anthropology, and public health also explored questions of crisis and communication. Of these, the work of Quarantelli (1988), Mileti and O’Brien (1992), and Wenger (1985) was especially relevant, focusing on questions of communication, coordination, warning messages, and media coverage. Disaster sociology in particular has developed a comprehensive body of work in communication. Investigators in management and organizational behavior approached crisis as an issue of strategic management responses. This included Shirvastava’s (1984) case study of the Bhopal Union Carbide Disaster, Perrow’s (1984) analysis of Three Mile Island, and Weick’s (1993) examination of the Mann Gulch disaster. Finally, the field of political science has explored government response to crisis. This includes Birkland’s (1997) work on disasters and the subsequent development of public policy agendas and Comfort’s (1994) examination of the Northridge earthquake resilience and coordination. Other fields, such as anthropology, public health, nursing, chemistry, tourism, agriculture, geology, and engineering have their own niche interests in crisis communication.

Today, crisis communication is a robust, interdisciplinary field with important areas for the application of research and theory. Crisis managers make use of the result of research and use theory to inform their decisions. Response agencies commission studies to answer specific questions. Researchers employ a wide range of methods and approaches to explore the preparation and planning, risk recognition, response, and recovery. An important part of this process has been the development of theories of crisis communication. Theory helps researchers organize and make sense of observations and provides focus to investigations. Theory can help expand our understanding and conceptualization of crisis communication. Practitioners can use theory to help predict and control what is often a very uncertain crisis condition. Finally, theories can challenge assumptions about crisis and the role communication plays.

      Plan for This Book

      The following chapters present, describe, and critique a wide range of theories that have utility in explaining how communication functions before, during, and after a crisis. We include explanations of various communication channels, audience behavior and responses, agency coordination, image and reputational repair, and crisis management. This body of theory is highly diverse and interdisciplinary, taking many forms and coming from many disciplinary perspectives. Some are grounded in more general qualitative and social constructivist assumptions, while others are more specific and related to logical positivist epistemologies. This effort to represent a broad sampling of theory allows for a much more comprehensive understanding of the role of communication in crisis and also provides the researcher and the practitioner a broader array of tools. In addition, these theories comment on one another, providing and demonstrating how theory has developed within one particular area of focus. We have grouped these theories into nine chapters. Each chapter represents a family of theory in terms of similar focus or structure.

The chapters are presented roughly in a developmental system. We begin with Chapter 2, a discussion of theory. Chapter 3 presents theories of communication and warning as primary processes occurring when a crisis first emerges. Warnings, including evacuations, are central tools in limiting harm with many types of events. Theories of communication and crisis development are presented in Chapter 4. Failures of communication are closely associated with the onset of crisis, and specific communication processes are associated with each stage of crisis development. Theories of communication and crisis outcomes (Chapter 5) and theories of communication and emergency response (Chapter 6) examine efforts to explain, model, and respond to the post-crisis conditions. Communication is generally recognized as an essential tool for agencies and communities seeking to mount an effective response. Theories of communication and crisis (Chapter 7) describe efforts to characterize and explain the role of legacy media. Chapter 8 focuses specifically on theories dedicated to explaining the role of social media in crisis communication. Chapter 9 explores theories of influence, including persuasion and rhetorical approaches to crisis communication. Theories of communication and risk management, covered in Chapter 10, draw on the very well-developed body of scholarship in risk communication. Theories of communication and ethics (Chapter 11) reflect our belief that crisis always involves questions of good and bad, right and wrong, and desirable and undesirable. Finally, in Chapter 12, we explore the ways in which crisis communication theory can be applied and expanded.

      Conclusion

      Crises are powerful forces of individual, organizational, community, and social disruption and change and communication plays an essential role in the ways in which crises emerge, are managed, resolved, and understood. Theory is an important tool for both investigators and practitioners. These events create high levels of uncertainty, confusion, chaos, and harm that theory and research can help explain, predict, and control. Communication is constitutive of the organizations responding to crisis and the organizations emerging from crisis. Moreover, communication is the way we come to understand and make sense of crises. As crises become more frequent and the impacts touch more people, the theories of crisis communication can help in avoiding crisis, mitigating harm, and recovering more quickly and completely.

2 Theorizing about Crisis and Crisis Communication

      In this chapter, we discuss definitions of theory, theory’s role and function, and the various forms theory takes. We also explore the traditional theory-practice divide and the movement to develop practical theories to bridge the divide. A framework for a meta-theory of crisis communication is presented. Our view is that