The case study ”Är det H&M eller luvtröjan?” intends to analyze the crisis communication that took place during H&Ms crisis in early 2018. The crisis situation stems from a controversial choice of letting a dark-skinned child wear the hoodie with the print “Coolest monkey in the jungle”. H&M was quickly criticized by the media for making racial remarks. To address the situation H&M published an official press release on their website and several public statements on their social media channels. With the main purpose of the case study being to analyze H&Ms official statements about the crisis situation, we intend to identify which strategies were applied to reduce eventual reputational damage to H&M. The case study focused on answering the different questions based on the crisis that occurred. The questions are “Which rhetorical appeals were used in the official statements published by H&M?”, “Which identifiable strategies from SCCT and IRT were used in the official statements published by H&M”, and “Which actions were implemented by H&M after the crisis situation, and what effect does that have on the brand?”. A rhetorical analysis was used to identify which rhetorical appeals including Ethos, Logos, and Pathos were used in the official statements by H&M, and furthermore, understand what the usage of certain appeals means to the crisis situation and its communicational part. The theories within crisis communication that were used are situational crisis communication theory and image restoration theory. These theories present strategies to use in cases of crisis. To answer the second question, the official statements were analyzed and categorized after which strategi they could identify as. The last question was not based on theories, and was answered by following research about H&Ms actions after the crisis. The results shows that H&M mostly used pathos to persuade the organization's stakeholders to show regret about the situation, and that pattern can be found in all the official statements that were analyzed. Furthermore, the theories that were most identified in the official statements were sympathy, regret, and apologetic, which overall shows regret from theorganization. To answer the last question about reputational damage. H&M has since the crisis followed by hiring a global head of diversity and inclusion, to prevent similar events from occurring.

Big organisations and companies in game development and distribution have in recent years become involved in public-relations crises. In the past you could see that dissatisfied consumers have an impact on the image for organisations. To find out how an organisation can stop or mitigate a bad image, an analysis was conducted of Activision Blizzard’s communication to the public during their Public-relations crises, with a connection to strategic communications theories. The method used in the study was a Content analysis with a deductive approach to critically analyse the messages that was communicated during the public-relations crises the organisation had. The results of the analysis gave information for both Successful communication and communication that could have been improved with the strategic communications theories. With this information there is another source for crisis managers to construct messages during a crisis to either stop or mitigate a bad image. The study also gives an example on how to analyse an organisations crisis communication critically.

I början av 2020 drabbade Covid-19-pandemin Sverige. Lokala aktörer blev offer för krisen och drabbades hårt av restriktioner. Följder av restriktionerna innebar färre besökare och minskad lönsamhet hos de fysiska butikerna, vilket resulterade i konkursansökningar.  I studien ska fem lokala butiker inom Jönköpings detaljhandel studeras.  Fokus ligger på hur butikerna använde kommunikation på sociala medier, Instagram, för att nå ut till kunder och följare under Covid-19-pandemin. Kriskommunikationens process och dess betydelse för samhällsaktörer i en kris är centralt för studien.  Följande studie utförs med en kvalitativ metod. Genom intervjuer och en språklig analys av text, ska butikernas innehåll på sociala medier undersökas, samt den kontext dessa verkar i och processen bakom arbetet. Uppsatsen grundas på Situational Crisis Communication Theory. Teorin är testad på större organisationer. I detta fall ska mindre företag i Sverige studeras, vilket inte kan liknas med tidigare forskning. I studien framkommer att butikerna kommunicerade som en indirekt följd av myndigheternas uttalanden. Texterna är personliga och gestaltar ansvar, lösningar och tacksamhet.  Det framkommer också hur butikscheferna upplevde sitt arbete med kommunikation i en kriskontext. De vittnar också om det upplevda värdet av information och kundrelation i en svår tid. / At the beginning of 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic hit Sweden. Local actors were deeply affected by the restrictions. The restrictions led to fewer visitors and decreasing profitability for physical stores, which resulted in bankruptcy filings. In this study, five local retail stores in Jönköping are being studied. The aim is to understand how the stores used communication on social media, Instagram, to reach out to customers and followers during the pandemic. Furthermore, the study aims to increase knowledge about the crisis communication process and its significance for local actors in a crisis.   The following study is carried out using a qualitative method. The stores’ content on social media, its context, and the process behind it are examined through linguistic text analysis as well as interviews. The study uses Situational Crisis Communication Theory. Unlike previous research, smaller businesses in Sweden are objects of study. The study shows that the store employees communicated as an indirect consequence of the statements from authorities. The texts are personal and portray responsibility, solutions, and gratitude. The thesis elucidates how the store managers experienced working with communication in a crisis context. It also explains the perceived effects of communication and customer relation in a hard time.

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The purpose of this study is to discover and explain the influences of media coverage of organizational crises on crisis communication, and vice versa. The study also shows how mediated crises develop, and how media framing and news sources affect this development. Carried out as a case study of three Swedish mediated crises, the methods used are quantitative and qualitative content analysis of media content from four Swedish newspapers and four organizations' press releases from the studied crises. Mediated crises develop through their specific pattern regardless of, but not independent from, the organizations' crisis communication. The crisis communication is used as an elite source in media reporting from the crises, but it can not control the mediated crises. However, it influences framing, and the possibilities to influence media reporting are better in the pre-crisis phase and the culmination.

Kommunikationsdirektör vid Sundsvalls kommun önskade undersöka hur man på bästa sätt kommunicerar vid kris med personer som inte talar svenska. Detta eftersom att Sundsvalls kommun ansåg att man saknade tillräckliga språkkunskaper för att hantera kriser. Enligt forskningen är det just personer av annat ursprung än landet det bor i som är mer utsatta vid kris (Olofsson, 2007:7), varför det är viktigt att anpassa kommunikationen så att den når ut till och kan hjälpa alla medborgare. Jag fann det därför intressant att undersöka Sundsvalls kommun och dess kriskommunikativa anpassning genom att intervjua de som inom kommunen är ansvariga för kriskommunikationen samt undersöka hur det ser ut i landet i stort. Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka om Sveriges kommuner anpassar sin kriskommunikation för medborgare med utländsk bakgrund med huvudfokus på hur Sundsvalls kommun arbetar strategiskt med sin kriskommunikation.   Metod och material: Kvalitativ samtalsintervju med Camilla Nilzén och Ulf Wallin vid Sundsvalls kommun med kompletterande kvantitativ webbenkät till 121 svenska kommuner. Huvudresultat: Sundsvalls kommun är inte anpassade i sin kriskommunikation till medborgare med utländskbakgrund vilket även antas gälla en större del av landets kommuner. Däremot visar resultatet på att kunskapen om att kommunicera på ett anpassat sätt finns varför Sundsvalls kommun och de av landets kommuner som inte är anpassade på ett enkelt sätt kan bli bättre på att anpassa sin

Chaos theory holds that systems act in unpredictable nonlinear ways and that their behavior can only be observed, never predicted. This is an informative model for an organization in crisis. The West Virginia water contamination crisis, which began on January 9, 2014, fits the criteria of a system in chaos. Given the lack of appropriate response from the established organizations involved, many emergent organizations formed to help fill unmet informational and physical needs of the affected population. Crisis researchers have observed these ephemeral organizations for decades, but the recent proliferation of information communication technologies (ICT’s) have made their activities more widespread and observable. In West Virginia, their activities were indispensable to the affected population and helped restore a sense of normalcy. In this chaotic system, the emergent organizations functioned as strange attractors, helping move the system away from bifurcation and towards normalcy. This dissertation uses a qualitative approach to study the emergent organizations and how their presence and efforts were the mechanism that spurred the self-organization process.

Abstrakt Titel: ”Från djupet av mitt hjärta… Förlåt, förlåt oss och förlåt mig - Från djupet av mitt hjärta.” - En studie av hur ett fackförbund hanterar en medialiserad skandal. Författare: Viktor Birlev och Ebba Rosell. Syfte: Syftet är att bidra till ökad kunskap om och förståelse för organisationers kommunikationsstrategiska arbete för att hantera förtroendekriser, som får stor medial uppmärksamhet. Teori och material: Textanalys med hjälp av dialogisk- och retorisk analys av fyra inslag i etermedia och texter publicerade på fackförbundets Kommunals webbsida och deras pressmeddelanden under tidsintervallet 12 januari till 13 februari. Teoretiska utgångspunkter har varit image repair theory, situational crisis communication theory och de retoriska begreppen konnotation och kroppsspråk. Huvudslutsatser: Den vanligaste huvudstrategin i den planerade kommunikationen var tillrättaläggande. I nyhetsjournalistiken var det också tillrättaläggande tillsammans med strategin bortförklara som var vanligast. Gesterna och blicken användes mest hos de ledande representanterna i inslagen i etermedia. Universitet: Medie- och Kommunikationsvetenskap, Linnéuniversitetet, Växjö Termin: Vårtermin 2016 Handledare: Håkan Sandström Examinator: Göran Palm Nyckelord: Förtroendekris, skandal, fackförbund, Kommunal, image repair theory, situational crisis communication theory, retorik, konnotation, kroppsspråk.

Master of Science / Department of Industrial & Manufacturing Systems Engineering / Jessica L. Heier Stamm / Communication is an integral part of emergency response, and improving the information dissemination network for crisis communication can save time, resources, and lives. This thesis focuses specifically on emergency response to a foreign animal disease (FAD) outbreak, an incident in which an animal disease that is not active domestically is introduced and being spreading in the U.S. In a FAD outbreak, timeliness of detection and response are critical. An outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, a particularly significant FAD, could cripple the agriculture economy and every hour of poor communication could result in the loss of thousands of animals. Improving this and other such crisis communication networks is of high importance. There is a comparatively large amount of prior research that critiques past catastrophic events but very little that aims to quantitatively improve such networks. This research uses communication data from a FAD response exercise in Kansas to develop a reliable network model, contributing a general method for creating an information dissemination network from empirical communication data. The thesis then introduces a simulated annealing heuristic to alter the network structure, reducing the overall information transmission time by almost 90%. Both the application of simulated annealing in network design and the use of discrete event simulation to calculate the heuristic objective function are new contributions to the field of crisis communication and emergency response. This work begins by extracting data from communication logs, grouping the large numbers of stakeholders into more manageable clusters, and developing a simulation model framework that accurately depicts the flow of information in the actual network. Then a simulated annealing heuristic is used to alter the network structure. The goal is to identify an alternative network structure in which the time for information to reach all response participants is minimized. The resultant network structures are analyzed to reveal observations and recommendations for FAD response communication. This research finds that not only can such a network be improved significantly, but the quantitative results support the qualitative observations from early in the data extraction process. This paper adds original methods to the literature and opens the door for future quantitative work in the area of crisis communication and emergency response.

This paper examines the mechanisms of “successful” communication in matters of political leaders’ability to gain public trust and credibility during large scale crises. Even though political actors andother stakeholders tend to be very proactive to promote their views, news media also play an activeand important role in framing public policy issues and crises.1 Thus, this thesis involves both politicalactors and media in the context of framing and crisis communication. Their interrelation and itsimportance for explaining successful crisis communication is demonstrated by producing a case studyof the Norwegian government’s communication efforts during and after the terrorist attack in Osloand the island of Utöya 22/7 2011. This paper argues and demonstrates that the active use ofpositive frames, that are cultural congruent and resonate with the media shaping, is a necessity tocreate a favorable context for winning praise and support in times of crisis. In line with previousresearch, framing strategies in crisis communication is demonstrated to be central to the crisisresponse and determines whether a responsible stakeholder is able to create momentum, maintainand even gain increased public support or not.