Our world is increasingly complex. Companies and organizations are larger than ever and are tightly connected by complex and changing technologies and long supply chains. Daunting and complicated issues like climate change, population shifts and migration, and global political instability create very rapid and widespread change. Many critical resources such as water and energy are in increasingly short supply. Social, political, environmental, and economic conditions seem unstable and unpredictable. Ways of operating, doing business, making a living, interacting with others, and communicating are constantly evolving. The high level of complexity and change is matched by an escalating number and severity of emergencies, disasters, and crises.
Bad things are happening all the time, all around us. It seems like social media and old or legacy media are constantly reporting on a new threat, crisis, or disaster. Severe weather (e.g., hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, floods, heat waves, and droughts) occurs throughout the United States and around the world. Most climate scientists predict more extreme weather because of global climate change. Spills of toxic materials (e.g., oil, industrial chemicals, sewage, and even radiological material) are increasingly common. Earthquakes are regular events in some parts of the world and are among the deadliest naturally occurring crises. In addition, they can lead to secondary crises, such as tsunamis, toxic spills, and industrial disasters, as was the case with the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011. Mass shooting and workplace violence, sadly, appear to be happening more often. The 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., killed 20 children and 6 adult staff members. The Parkland, Fla., shootings claimed 17 lives. Transportation accidents, terrorist events, defective products, plant explosions, criminal activity, infectious diseases, and sudden economic downturns all can be considered crises (Sellnow & Seeger, 2013).
Because our society is more complex, technologically sophisticated, dynamic, and interdependent than ever before, these crises can be very disruptive and destructive. Contamination of a basic food product, such as peanut paste, may have consequences for hundreds of consumer products, including cookies, crackers, cakes, cereals, candy, and other snack foods. The 2008 Salmonella contamination at Peanut Corporation of America led to the recall of almost 4,000 separate products that contained the company's peanut paste. A relatively small defect in a safety device may end up in thousands of cars, prompting industry‐wide recalls. Takata Corporation's defective airbags were installed in dozens of automotive models. At least 12 companies and over 19 million cars were involved in the recall that likely cost the company at least $5 billion. An outbreak of an infectious disease in a remote part of the world can slow and limit air travel, cost billions in medical preparation, and create global fear. The 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa dominated media coverage for weeks and became a significant political issue in the United States because of fears the disease could jump to other parts of the world.
The ways we prepare for, respond to, and understand these and other crisis events are influenced by our communication. Risk communication, the process of informing people about potential hazards, is a central activity in helping people prepare for a crisis. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for example, has created a Ready.Gov website and a series of “Preparing Makes Sense” public service announcements to communicate risk information (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2015). Crisis communication is essential to emergency management. Alerts such as tornado warnings or fire alarms signal that we need to take immediate action in response to a risk. A tornado warning means there is an immediate risk of severe weather and people should take cover. A fire alarm signals a fire has been detected and people should leave the building. Communication helps us learn about risks and how to avoid them. Communication gives us information so we understand what to do in a crisis. After a crisis is over, communication is the process that helps us determine who to blame for what happened, what we can learn, and how to move beyond the destruction and loss.
What Is a Crisis?
Think for a moment about a traumatic event you experienced. Perhaps it involved severe weather, a fire, a transportation accident, or a flood. Maybe it's something a family member went through or an event you watched develop through the media. What were the event's primary features that made you think of this as a crisis? How did you feel? Were you confused and afraid? What did you do? Did you seek out information and ask others for help? Were you instructed to take some specific action, such as seek shelter or evacuate? What harms occurred as a consequence of the crisis?
We perceive an event as a crisis based on several characteristics and not everyone will see the same event as a crisis. In some regions, a major snowstorm is a routine event and would not be seen as a crisis. In fact, the lack of snow in these regions might be seen as a disruptive and threatening development because people depend on winter tourism. Contamination of a municipal water supply and a boil water advisory might be seen as an annoyance for the first few hours or even the first day, but it will soon develop into a crisis.
Typically, a crisis is seen as a threatening event. Some high‐priority goals, such as personal safety, health, or financial stability, are at risk. Sometimes the threat is to the safety of family, friends, pets, property, or community. In other cases, the threat is to reputation, career, or job or economic security. Almost always there is a feeling and a fear that something you value, something very important to you, might be harmed or lost. This threat to something that is highly valued is one of the defining characteristics of a crisis.
A crisis is also associated with uncertainty. Uncertainty is related to an inability to predict an outcome, anticipate what will happen next, or simply to deal with how little is known about what is happening and what might happen. Usually a crisis is not expected and is very surprising and shocking. For example, earthquakes typically occur with very little warning, even though there is good information about where earthquakes happen most frequently. Transportation accidents, fires, and terrorist events are also usually surprising. In other cases, crises are more predictable and less surprising. Hurricanes and tornadoes tend to occur in somewhat predictable locations at the same time of year and, although they may be surprising, are not unexpected. Some crises, such as infectious disease outbreaks or environmental contaminations, are slow moving and may last for months or even years. Predicting their onset is possible even if avoiding them is not. The annual influenza (flu) season regularly claims several thousand lives and typically does not escalate to the level of a serious epidemic. Even in cases where a crisis is predictable, there is still a great deal of uncertainty about what will happen as a consequence of the crisis.
One way a crisis creates uncertainty is by disrupting our sense of what is normal. The flu season is a normal, regular event and most of us know specific steps, such as getting a flu shot, washing hands, and covering coughs and sneezes, can limit the risk of getting sick. In some cases, flu can become a very serious threat to public health, such as the 1918 so‐called Spanish flu, which killed between 50 and 100 million people worldwide (Taubenberger & Morens, 2006). When a crisis disrupts our sense of what is normal, we no longer have a clear sense of what to do, how to avoid risks, and what will happen next. In some recent cases of serious flu outbreaks, large public events were reduced or canceled to reduce the spread of the disease.
A final aspect of crisis many people experience is the need to take some action to reduce uncertainty or to contain and offset the harm. This may involve collecting information about what is happening, evacuating neighborhoods, boiling water, or helping victims. Generally, these actions must happen quickly to limit the harm. During tornadoes, for example, public warnings tell people to take cover immediately to save lives. When water supplies are contaminated with bacteria, the more quickly people stop drinking or treat the water through actions such as boiling, the lower the risk that large numbers of people will get sick. Any delay in issuing a boil water advisory can increase the level of harm.
Perceived threat, high levels of uncertainty, and short response time are three defining characteristics of most crises we experience. You probably observed all three conditions in the crisis you experienced and recognized the circumstances were not normal. Most, but not all, crises have all three elements; however, in general, a crisis is an event or series of events that are threatening, create high levels of uncertainty, and require some immediate response (Sellnow & Seeger, 2013). Crises are also disruptive to our sense of security and normalcy; generate high levels of confusion and uncertainty; result in anxiety, fear, and apprehension; and create a need to communicate. Communication is necessary to manage this crisis, reduce uncertainty, and limit the harm.
What Do We Mean by Crisis Communication?
Crisis communication is the process of planning, developing, and disseminating informational and persuasive messages for avoiding, containing, and managing harm from risky, threatening, and uncertain conditions. Crisis communication has many of the same features of other forms of communication, including senders, receivers, messages, and channels. Senders include the government agencies that oversee emergency responses or the organizations and agencies that have caused a crisis. During a crisis, senders are also those who are affected by the crisis or the media organizations reporting on the crisis. In most major crises, there are many senders and this sometimes creates confusing and conflicting messages.
We view receivers from an inclusive perspective. Rather than using terms such as the public or general public, we refer to receivers as publics. We choose this plural term because of the tremendous diversity of relevant audiences and their varying needs, values, backgrounds, and perspectives. Publics are communities and stakeholders with direct or indirect connections to an organization, an issue, or an event (Leitch & Motion, 2010). In a crisis, publics may include employees, customers, suppliers, neighbors, government, response agencies, media, and family members, as well as those individuals or groups directly affected by the event. Each of these groups may include members from diverse cultures, backgrounds, ethnicities, ages, income levels, and education. Considerable research in crisis and emergency communication shows that a failure to account for the cultural, ethnic, and social diversity of receivers as separate publics, for example, leads to failures in communication (Littlefield, 2013). Sensitivity to diversity is essential in the application of each of the best practices we describe in this book. In fact, some agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) disseminate messages in many languages to ensure diverse communities have access to critical information during a crisis.
As with other forms of communication, crisis messages are disseminated through channels. Channels are what carry the message. During a crisis, one of the most important factors is how quickly...
