Retelling the past crisis: Crisis memory and its influences on organizational reputation and public responses

Abstract

Past crises are often collectively retold, recalled, and reconstructed on social media when a new crisis occurs, resulting in a special form of collective memory in crisis communication contexts: crisis memory. Through the lens of social constructionism, this study explores the crisis memory of SARS co-created on Chinese social media during COVID-19. First, based on a content analysis of 5677 Weibo posts, seven types of crisis memory narratives are identified (nationalism, heroism, identity, trauma, criticism, historical reference, and personal experience), and their differential usages by multiple users are analyzed. Second, with an online survey of 785 Chinese netizens, the influences of these crisis memory narratives on various perceptions (perceived organizational reputation, perceived threats, and perceived self-efficacy) and behaviors (protective behaviors) in the unfolding public health crisis are examined. Overall, this study provides a new perspective for crisis communication research that moves beyond the strategic communication of current crises to involve constructed narratives of past crises.