Situational crisis communication theory (SCCT), experimentally created by W. Timothy Coombs in 2007, is designed to help crisis managers evaluate a crisis situation and craft an effective response strategy based on the organization's crisis history, the crisis type, and prior reputation with stakeholders.This thesis examined the November 2015 controversial handbook policy update from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which ruled same-sex marriage as grounds for excommunication. Exploring the policy change as a crisis in the context of SCCT and comparing the Church's crisis response strategies with the recommended strategies of SCCT exposes a gap in current SCCT literature—the theory does not lend itself well to crises where an organization's values or guiding morals are under attack. In these scenarios, the organization is unlikely to apologize for or acknowledge the crisis. The study results demonstrate substantial shifts in stakeholder attitudes following certain strategic statements from the Church even though the Church did not strictly adhere to SCCT's guidelines. According to SCCT's guidelines, because the stakeholder groups framed the handbook change as a crisis of organizational misdeed with injuries the majority of the time, the Church should have responded with third-tier strategies that bolstered its reputation and apologized or compensated those harmed by the policy. Instead, the Church has never apologized for the policy change and specifically reminded stakeholders of its past policies regarding same-sex marriage. Although the Church used the same strategies throughout the entire crisis, the Church's relatively larger use of crisis basics, justification, and protection in its second wave of statements on November 13, 2015 shifted the crisis framing and sentiment of bloggers and John Dehlin from negative sentiment with frames of high-level crisis responsibility to neutral and positive sentiment with a majority of blogs and social media posts not framing the policy change as a crisis.

In a crisis managers are confronted with a dilemma between an ethical responsibility to respond to victims and their fiduciary responsibility to protect shareholder’s wealth. This study provides empirical evidence that a company apology made during a crisis can have a positive or negative effect on stock price depending on the level of responsibility for a crisis born by the firm. We use Coombs’ (2007) Situational Crisis Communication Theory to classify crises and appropriate re-sponse type for 235 unique crises between 1983 and 2013. We use event study methodology to study the effect of an apology on returns. The results show that managers apologizing to those affected for a victim or accidental crisis jeopardize shareholder wealth; however offering an apology for a preventable crisis offsets this negative effect.

In line with Schwarz’s (2008) suggestion of extending Situational CrisisCommunication Theory (SCCT) with Kelley’s covariation principle, the presentresearch aims to further examine the applicability of integrating a covariation-basedapproach to crisis responsibility assessment into the SCCT framework. Specifically, acontent analysis was conducted to verify the basic assumptions for applying acovariation-based approach in crisis communication context. A follow-upexperimental study was exercised to test the effect of consensus information – themissing variable in SCCT – on crisis responsibility attributions. The researchsuggested that a covariation-based approach of crisis responsiblilty assessment couldbe legitimately applied in the SCCT framework, and that crisis responsibilityassessment in the SCCT framework could be improved, at least in some particularsituations, by more consistently and systematically taking into account the threeinformation dimensions in covariation principle as integrated information patternsrather than separately considering the effect of one single information dimensionalone.Keywords:

Master of Science - Agricultural Education and Communication / Department of Communications and Agricultural Education / Jason D. Ellis / The Situational Crisis Communications Theory (SCCT) states that what organizations say to various publics during a crisis should influence the extent of the reputational and financial damage a crisis can inflict on the organization's image. Past research has focused on distinguishing types of crises and what crisis-communication strategies should be used with traditional media. Research exists, but looks at social media and its effects on brand reputation during a crisis via case studies or is an experimental design focused on the information source. There is a lack of controlled experimental studies that investigate the role of social media in crisis-communications strategies. Guided by Coombs’ Situational Crisis Communications Theory, this controlled experimental design employed a 2x2 factorial design. The independent variables were (a) type of crisis (preventable, accidental) and (b) type of response (rebuild, diminish) used on Twitter. The dependent variable was organizational brand reputation. Survey participants were recruited through a paid Qualtrics panel who were millennials that live in Midwestern states. Specific research questions were RQ 1: Will all participants begin with the same pre-test score; RQ 2: Is there a time effect on brand reputation; RQ 3: Does an accidental crisis change brand reputation; RQ 4: Does a preventable crisis change brand reputation; RQ 5: Does brand reputation change vary by crisis type? Based on findings in previous research, hypotheses developed were: H1: Brand reputation will be consistent from pre-brand to post-brand test for matched crisis responses; H2: Post-brand tests for unmatched accidental responses will be consistent with or better than pre-brand tests; H3: Post-brand tests for unmatched preventable responses will be lower than pre-brand tests. The findings from this study give insight to how SCCT translates to Twitter. In this study, matched responses did not maintain reputation as the SCCT literature suggests. In addition, the accidental unmatched condition did not perform better than the matched condition. However, unmatched preventable did have a bigger decline in brand reputation than matched, suggesting it could be better to have no response than the wrong response in some situations. This study confirms the need for practitioners to understand the crisis type prior to responding and understand the role of social media in communication. Throughout the study, it was found that using an unmatched response could cause a decrease in brand reputation. This is especially true when using a low-attribution response for a high-attribution situation, as the response will fall short of what the crisis requires.

The existing literature has discussed crisis communication as a tool to minimise reputational damage to a company in the event of a crisis. The Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) provide guidelines for managers in times of crises on how to protect their reputational assets and their corporate image in specific crisis situations with a set of communication strategies. The theory emphasise the importance of stakeholders in a crisis since they could oppose as a threat to companies´ reputation. Despite the realisation of stakeholders’ role in crisis communication, explorative studies aiming at understanding the consumer's perspective and how they prefer to be communicated are limited.   The purpose of this thesis is to understand, from consumers’ perspective, how companies should communicate in a time of crisis. This was done through using the existing Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) as a basis. The purpose was accomplished by conducting focus groups were crisis scenarios and strategies based on the SCCT played a fundamental role in generating results. The findings from the research suggest that there is a cycle explaining preferred crisis communication from consumers’ perspective. The suggested cycle includes three influencers that is: responsibility, communication, and reputation. This cycle suggest how consumers prefer to be communicated, what influences them to making that choice, and how it reflects back on the corporate image. The main finding of the research was the preferred communication in specific situations. The study showed that there is a set of generally applicable strategies, which consumers prefer in all crisis situations whereas additional preferences are added based on attributed responsibility.

I slutet av 2019 verifierades ett nytt coronavirus som kan smitta människor. Viruset identifierades i staden Wuhan, Kina och smittspridningen förmodas komma från ett djur på en marknad som överförts till en människa. Kort därefter visade det sig att viruset hade förmågan att smittas från människa till människa och den 11 mars klassades viruset som en pandemi och viruset fick namnet Covid-19. Spridningen spred sig snabbt och snart hade hela världen påverkats av virusets framfart. För att hantera virusets spridning och lindra effekterna av coronapandemin är kommunikationen A och O och det finns uppmaningar att följa myndigheters råd och rekommendationer som omfattas av Folkhälsomyndigheten, Krisinformation och 1177. Det krävs däremot insatser, stöd och information om viruset på en mer lokal och regional nivå ur ett medborgarperspektiv.   Syftet med studien är att granska hur olika regioner kommunicerar en pandemi i sina digitala kanaler.

When the coronavirus disease COVID-19 spread through the world’s countries in early 2020 and dominated the news media, a contrast between how Sweden was combatting the virus compared to other countries who used stricter restrictions quickly became apparent and frequently discussed in media. Through a comparative content analysis, this study aims to investigate how narratives concerning the coronavirus have been presented in Swedish public news medium SVT compared to its Danish equivalent, DR. Any differences in such news reporting could indicate the possibility of media influence behind why one country implemented and adhered to stricter restrictions than the other did.Utilizing a quantitative as well as a quantitative approach, 245 articles from Danish and Swedish sources were coded and analysed through theory grounded in situational crisis communication (SCCT). The findings however revealed similar results, identifying the same four key SCCT-narratives in both countries: anxiety, blame, flattery and care. The theoretical contribution of this study is centred on the reflection of how these similar results may relate to one another on a societal and sensemaking level. The study ultimately also emphasises the flexibility of SCCT strategies as useful narrative tools for further research.

Problemformulering och syfte: Det övergripande syftet är att undersöka en organisations kriskommunikation på sociala medier i samband med en pågående kris. Studien syftar även till att undersöka allmänhetens attityd till organisationen under krisen. Ämnet är relevant ur ett forskningsperspektiv eftersom att organisationer är vana att använda sig av traditionell kriskommunikation men i dagens samhälle krävs det mer än så. Sociala medier har förändrat dagens samhälle på många plan, däribland hur en organisation bör använda sig av kriskommunikation samt hur en organisation väljer att ta sig an allmänhetens åsikter. Metod och material: För att uppnå studiens syfte har två frågeställningar formulerats och besvarats på genom två kvalitativa metoder. En kvalitativ textanalys utifrån djurparkens sociala medier och en kvalitativ intervjustudie i form av fokusgrupper. Huvudresultat: Resultatet i denna studie visar utifrån det teoretiska ramverket att Furuvikskris kommunikation på sociala medier gällande schimpansincidenten är bristfällig och att den inte håller måttet i förhållande till de strategier som kriskommunikationen föreslår vid hanteringen av en kris. Allmänhetens attityd mot det som har hänt är skeptisk men resultatet visar på att det inte är Furuviks kriskommunikation som ligger till grund för detta, utan hur organisationen har hanterat händelsen i stort. Studiens teoretiska ramverk påvisar att det är allmänheten som bestämmer hur mycket ansvar som läggs på Furuvik angående händelsen, och utifrån detta tyder resultatet på att Furuviks kriskommunikation har varit tillräcklig i förhållande till allmänhetens krav på organisationen.

Abstract In January 2020 the TV-program, Uppdrag granskning, was aired on channel SVT in Sweden and it was about the company Arla and their animal husbandry. Today's consumers place higher demands on food and which products they choose to buy, which shows that more and more people are making more conscious choices. The purpose of this study is to see how Arla handles their communication during a crisis on social media in the aftermath of the TV-program airing. Within the theoretical framework, situational crisis communication, image repair theory and crisis communication will be presented for this study. There are different types of qualitative content analysis and this study intends to start from a targeted qualitative content analysis. The critical rhetorical analysis will be based on ethos, logos and pathos in this study, which will be a complement to the other selected method.  The result from Arlas's crisis communication is supported by the predefined questions that were based on critical rhetorical analysis and Image repair theory. Furthermore, it is possible to interpret the results using a thematic division based on the appendices with an approach from the study's question. The conclusion is that Arla has used several different strategies in its crisis communication. It can be discerned both in their response comments on Facebook, but also in their press release and Facebook posts. However, the recurrence of certain responses implies a reliance on specific phrases to deflect responsibility.

No description available.