Responding to Campus Shootings: Two Studies Exploring the Effects of Sex and Placement Strategy on Knowledge Acquisition and Organizational Reputation

Abstract

Two separate studies used quasi-experimental procedures to examine how college students learn about campus shootings from press releases, television news, or exposure to both. The first study found that women tend to report higher levels of learning than men and that participants generally learn the most when exposed to messages delivered through multiple media. The second study extended the findings to include consideration of the impact of learning on organizational reputation. Taken together, the results of both studies offer further evidence that knowledge acquisition can help mitigate against the formation of negative impressions of an organization in crisis. They also offer that the relationship between learning and attitude formation may be mediated by sex. The results are discussed in terms of message placement strategy and sex differences in mediated learning processes. Implications for the relationship between these learning processes and organizational reputation are addressed.

The Tensions of Strategic Communication Decision-Making: An Exploratory Examination of Theory and Practice

“…Previous research in risk and crisis communication has retrospectively provided researchers and practitioners the opportunity to identify emerging best practices and to evaluate their effectiveness in preventing, mitigating, or renewing after crisis situations (e.g., Lachlan et al, 2018;Stewart & Young, 2018;Ulmer et al, 2018). In contrast, the utility of recognizing the tensions confronting decision-makers prior to the selection of particular best practices helps scholars to explore new aspects of risk and crisis communication as the prioritization of tensions shifts during crisis, producing interaction that may or may not make the adoption of particular best practices an option for future decision-makers.…”