Crisis Situations, Communication Strategies, and Media Coverage: A Multicase Study Revisiting the Communicative Response Model

In: Communication research, Band 33, Heft 3, S. 180-205

Abstract

This study focuses on the relationships among crisis situations, crisis response strategies, and media coverage. The author examines four political crisis situations and the strategies used to manage them; adopts a comparative, multicase, holistic research design; uses typical content analysis procedures for data analysis; and applies pattern-matching logic to compare the data against a theoretical model, the corporate communicative response model. More than 1,220 news articles covering four political figures'crises are examined. Results indicate that the use of denial in a commission situation, justification in a standards situation, and concession in an agreement situation increased positive media coverage. The results also suggest that for all but the agreement situation, a combination of crisis communication strategies was the most effective strategy to employ. This study has theoretical and practical implications for the symbolic approach in general and for crisis communicative responses in particular.