Although crisis planning (including both prevention and preparation) is well-established as the 'alpha' of crisis management, businesses often find themselves caught off-guard in the face of crises. What impedes business organizations from heeding scholarly advice to engage in crisis planning? Interviews with corporate communication professionals suggest that in a fast-evolving digital landscape characterized by the ambiguity of what ‘qualifies’ as a crisis, the need for an organizational culture of preparedness and balancing structure with agility are the hallmarks of crisis planning. Even when interviewees acknowledge the importance of crisis planning, cultivating a culture of preparedness is contingent on an engaged leadership that recognizes and provides communication professionals a seat at the table, fosters internal coordination, and understands the importance of peacetime relationships with stakeholders. Our paper addresses the complexities and implications of crisis planning that is typically hidden from view.
Public warning failure is an undertheorized concept. A shared definition of public warning failure is needed to help stakeholders assess responsibility in the aftermath of government nonuse, misuse, or misunderstanding of public warning systems, especially mobile device-based systems that have become a critical element of the public warning ecosystem. Although some uncertainty in the disaster information environment is inevitable, a shared definition of public warning failure could help clarify the roles and responsibilities of government officials and agencies across the arc of disaster communication: public preparation, hazard detection, warning message creation, message dissemination, and public response monitoring. In the context of earthquake early warning system performance, warning failure has been defined as false alert, missed alert, inaccurate alert, no alert, and late alert. Building upon this typology, in this essay, we propose an all-hazards definition of public warning failure, illustrate it using a conceptual model, and assess the conceptual model using examples drawn from media reporting.
This study aims to suggest visual strategies for social media response in corporate crisis communication. Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) and Associative Network Theory of Memory (ANT) are applied to investigate the types of visuals (photos) that companies may utilize in Facebook messages. A 3 (message: excuse vs. attack accuser vs. apology) × 4 (photo: no-image vs. product vs. stereotypical CEO vs. CEO reflecting corporate character) between-subject design online experiment was conducted in the United States (N = 296). The results confirmed the effect of message strategies on crisis communication outcomes such as perceived responsibility, anger, and reputation. Preliminary interaction effects showed that the stereotypical CEO image (e.g., wearing a suit at a podium in a conference setting) was effective on reputation in two message strategies: an excuse in an accidental cluster crisis and an apology in a preventable cluster crisis. Based on these findings, the current study offers theoretical and practical implications for corporate crisis communication. Details are discussed in the study.
Persons with disabilities (PwDs) face a disproportionately high risk due to their physical or mental limitations and socioeconomic barriers during emergencies. To better understand and empower PwDs for disaster preparedness, this study used an updated national representative survey (2021 Federal Emergency Management Agency National Household Survey) from the United States to examine the differences between PwDs and their counterparts concerning disaster preparedness with the guidance of the protection motivation theory. The results of the Tobit regression models indicated that being disabled was negatively correlated with the level of preparedness. Furthermore, disability status significantly and negatively modified the relationship between risk perception and disaster preparedness. Likewise, self-efficacy was less strongly correlated with preparedness activities if people self-reported themselves as having a disability. Moreover, for people with disabilities, their beliefs about the effectiveness of preventive behaviours (response efficacy) predicted decreased adoption of preparedness measures. Promoting disaster risk reduction education, strengthening self-efficacy and developing more inclusive and targeted intervention strategies for PwDs can be used to improve their preparedness degree and capacity for disaster prevention.