Effects of attributed responsibility and response strategies on organizational reputation: A meta-analysis of situational crisis communication theory research

Ma, Liang; Zhan, Mengqi

doi:10.1080/1062726x.2016.1166367

Cited by 142 publications

(93 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…In other words, organizational crisis response strategies are 'possible communication strategies' within a narrative response, but alone are not narratives (Venette et al, 2003, p. 219). A meta-analysis found that crisis communication response strategies are weakly associated with how the public assigns blame for crises (Ma & Zhan, 2016), leading to a call for research to look beyond blame as the key crisis communication outcome (Coombs, 2016). This study answers that call and examines how crisis narratives affect people's behavioral responses.…”

Section: Crisis Communication Narrative Typesmentioning

confidence: 93%

Telling the tale: the role of narratives in helping people respond to crises

Liu

Austin

Lee

et al. 2020

Journal of Applied Communication Research

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During public health crises like infectious disease outbreaks, news media and governments are responsible for informing the public about how to protect themselves. A large body of health communication research finds that persuasive narratives motivate protective behaviors, such as intentions to vaccinate. In their seminal book on crisis narratives, Seeger and Sellnow (Narratives of crisis: Telling stories of ruin and renewal. Stanford University) theorized five narrative types: blame, renewal, victim, hero, and memorial. In this study, we tested how the public responds to crisis narratives about a hypothetical infectious disease crisis, modeled after narratives emerging from the 2014-2016 Ebola pandemic, through an online experiment with a U.S. adult sample (N = 1050). Findings showcase which crisis narratives positively affect public protective behaviors as well as emotional responses, assessments of information credibility, and attributions of crisis responsibility.

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Section: Crisis Communication Narrative Typesmentioning

confidence: 93%

Telling the tale: the role of narratives in helping people respond to crises

Liu

Austin

Lee

et al. 2020

Journal of Applied Communication Research

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“…Organizational reputation usually suffers in a crisis, because publics attribute responsibility to the organizations for what happens (Coombs, ; Coombs & Holladay, ; Ma & Zhan, ) and feel negative emotions (Coombs, ) toward the organizations. Anger is a discrete negative emotion that has received much attention in crisis communication research (Choi & Lin, ; Pace, Fediuk, & Botero, ).…”

Section: Crisis and Crisis Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Crisis communication research has changed from a case study approach to a situational approach. Some research focuses on how the crisis features such as severity (Coombs, ) and controllability (McDonald, Sparks, & Glendon, ) affect publics’ appraisal of the crisis, while other research focuses on an organization's attributes and behaviours, including industry (Ritchie, ; Sellnow & Brand, ), core meaning of a brand (Ma, ) and organizational responses (Coombs, ; Ma & Zhan, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

I am one of them: Examining crisis communication from an intergroup communication approach

2018

Contingencies & Crisis Mgmt

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This study took an intergroup communication approach and examined how two types of social identities, namely organizational identity and shared ethnic identity with the victim, affect publics' reactions to a crisis. Data collected via a quasi-experiment showed that organizational identity affects publics' reactions, such that internal publics perceive the organization more positively and have less negative word-ofmouth intention. Internal publics feel guilty even if they are not personally responsible for the crisis. Publics do not react more negatively when their ethnic ingroup members are accidentally victimized. Organizations should mitigate the internal publics' anger and guilt and also clarify that the crisis is nonethnicity-related when the victims happen to be ethnic minorities to avoid any misunderstanding of victims' ethnic ingroup members.

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“…Additionally, this study used fictitious university stories to guard against an issue of the involvement of participants. Although publics’ evaluation towards matching crisis response strategies would not create much difference between the real‐crisis and fictitious‐crisis scenarios (Ma & Zhan, ); however, the use of real university crises could have generated different findings. Thus, the future research might want to use real crisis vignettes in their studies to increase external validity.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring social media use in university crisis communication: An experiment to measure impact on perceived crisis severity and attitudes of key publics

Hong

2018

Contingencies & Crisis Mgmt

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This study seeks to investigate the impact of an exposure to a university's social media on publics' perceptions during a crisis. Data from this study showed that participants (N = 269) expressed more favourable evaluations towards the university and their perceived severity was mitigated after viewing its official statement on university's Facebook posts. The results of this empirical research offer a meaningful suggestion to crisis communication scholars and practitioners interested in assessing the impact of universities' statements in social media by providing ways to understand the importance of the organizational usage of social media during a crisis, why that is important, and why practitioners should make effective social media communication tactics a priority during a crisis.

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Effects of attributed responsibility and response strategies on organizational reputation: A meta-analysis of situational crisis communication theory research

Cited by 142 publications

References 46 publications

Telling the tale: the role of narratives in helping people respond to crises

Telling the tale: the role of narratives in helping people respond to crises

I am one of them: Examining crisis communication from an intergroup communication approach

Exploring social media use in university crisis communication: An experiment to measure impact on perceived crisis severity and attitudes of key publics

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