Aalborg University
Culture, Communication and Globalization
When it is crucial to act
Managing information flow during a crisis
Tinna Lárusdóttir and Rikke Vejlebo
8th Semester Project,
CCG Organization and Leadership
Aalborg University, May 2012
112.337 Characters
When it is crucial to act
Managing information flow during a crisis
___________________________
Tinna Lárusdóttir
___________________________
Rikke Vejlebo
___________________________
Peter Hervik
CCG Supervisor
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................ 5
2. Problem area .......................................................................................................................... 5
2.1. Problem formulation ....................................................................................................... 7
2.2. Selection of case ............................................................................................................. 7
3. Methodology .......................................................................................................................... 8
3.1. Research design and paradigm........................................................................................ 9
3.2. Methods......................................................................................................................... 12
3.2.1. Data ........................................................................................................................ 12
2.2.2. Methods of analysis ............................................................................................... 13
3.2. Delimitation and ethics ................................................................................................. 13
3.3. Role of the authors ........................................................................................................ 14
4. Definition: Crisis communication........................................................................................ 14
5. Cases, theories and analysis................................................................................................. 16
5.1. Ford Firestone case ....................................................................................................... 16
5.1.1. Crisis management model...................................................................................... 18
5.1.1.1. Analysis........................................................................................................... 18
5.1.2. Anticipatory model ................................................................................................ 21
5.1.2.1. Analysis........................................................................................................... 22
5.1.3. Ford Firestone analysis summary .......................................................................... 23
5.2. SAS turnaround case..................................................................................................... 24
5.2.1. Crisis Management Model..................................................................................... 25
5.2.1.1. Analysis........................................................................................................... 25
5.2.2. Narrative theory ..................................................................................................... 27
5.2.2.1. Analysis........................................................................................................... 28
5.2.3. SAS turnaround analysis summary........................................................................ 29
5.3. Rwanda genocide .......................................................................................................... 30
5.3.1. Responsible parties ................................................................................................ 31
5.3.2. Rwanda and the media ........................................................................................... 32
5.3.1. Mediatization ......................................................................................................... 33
5.3.1.1. Analysis........................................................................................................... 34
5.3.2. Agenda setting ....................................................................................................... 34
5.3.2.1. Analysis........................................................................................................... 35
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5.3.3. Compassion fatigue................................................................................................ 39
5.3.3.1. Analysis........................................................................................................... 40
5.3.4. Rwanda analysis summary..................................................................................... 41
6. Discussion ............................................................................................................................ 41
7. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 44
8. Perspective ........................................................................................................................... 47
9. Bibliography ........................................................................................................................ 49
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1. Introduction 1. Introduction
When it comes to crisis communication, a good relationship with the media is important
(Heath and Millar, 2004, p. 93). In most crisis management plans there is a part concerning
the media; how to communicate with it, and how to provide it with information. Most crisis
communication literature emphasizes that the truth must always be told, and that it is a good
idea to have connections with the media in order to get the best coverage. The bottom-line is
that the media is the one that can influence how a crisis is portrayed and which side is chosen.
The media does reporting but it writes stories (Polányi, 1989, p.16), and that can be a crucial
thing to bear in mind, because when people hear a story they create a meaning from that. The
media possesses great power; in crisis communication the ultimate result of how a crisis turns
out can depend on how the media portrays the crisis.
1. Introduction 2. Problem area
Most crisis plans include a part concerning the media. There is though a difference between
old media and new media. Generally, old media refers to media communication before the
Internet came to existence and hence new media refers to the media communication after the
Internet came to be.
When an organizational crisis occurs, crisis plans usually encourage companies to
communicate its message to the public as quickly as possible, for example in forms of press
releases and media packets. By providing information first hand to the media, the companies
or parties involved in a crisis can prevent the media from digging up information themselves,
and by that possibly report the crisis in an incorrect manner (Heath and Millar, 2004, p. 124).
When it comes to public relations, a rule of thumb is that the corporate spokesperson of the
company, or a special crisis management team, should be the first to reach the media, and
then the information given should be true and accurate. The company might think it will get
away with only exposing bits and bits of the crisis, but conventional wisdom has shown that
the media will uncover the whole story no matter what information they are provided with, if
they care to do so. If the media is the one searching for information, the coverage will most
likely end up dragging the crisis out further and have bad impact on the company or the
parties involved (Heath and Millar, 2004, pp. 126-127). When non-organizational crises
occur, there are often no crisis plans. In those cases, it becomes even more up to the media to
provide the public with stories of the cases. The media can have great impact on what is said
and what is not. They basically can decide whether a crisis like that is important enough to be
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covered, and then influence how important is becomes to the public based on how much they
cover it.
From this, it is possible to gather that the media has great power in providing the
public with news stories with accurate information. In the modern society, people have
become more dependant on, and even submitted to, the media and the logic they provide. As a
consequence of that, a large part of social interaction takes place via the media (Hjarvard,
2008, p. 113). But it is not only the company or the parties involved in a crisis that need to be
portrayed properly, the media is also in need of people watching and reading the news they
provide. The media is most often the one deciding what information the public gets and what
it does not. If the media does not think some news will interest the people or give them profit
they will not run them, or as Susan D. Moeller (1999) explains it: “The media try to anticipate
the wishes of their audience. Since the media is driven by the profit motive and they cover
what the editors think that their audience is interested in. And they don’t cover what they
think their audience will be bored by” (p. 311). The media needs people in order to run the
business and keep the company going. Something to bear in mind also is that even though the
media has a lot of power and can be influential, it can be controlled as well. The media does
not write something if there are no sources and the fact is that politicians and their
communication departments are very powerful and can often control the media’s agency and
even deflect attention. In this project, the part that focuses on the media being controlled will
not be in connection to politics, but it will be in connection to when a company is good at
crisis communication. By that, it can influence the media into exposing the company well and
avoid bad things getting out, the media is then basically tricked in a way to cover the
company’s crisis in a nice way. The main point of departure in this project is really how the
media can have an impact on how a crisis turns out.
Inspired by this, the focus point of this project is how information flow can be
controlled during and around a crisis. Three different cases within the area of crisis
communication will be taken a look at in order to show when information flow during a crisis
is managed well, when it is managed poorly, and when the media is the one setting the
agenda. Crisis will be displayed in a broad sense in order to get the big picture of how
communication generally works in crises situations. Crisis communication will also be looked
at in respect to a crisis management model to determine how close to that the communication
in the cases chosen was. The hope is then to see to what extent the crisis communication of
the three crises had an effect on the success or failure of them. The goal with this research is
to explain information flow in crisis situations in a broader perspective than how it usually is
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portrayed. Also, to see if it is possible to use experiences from different cases, both
organizational and non-organizational, in order to understand information flow management,
during and around a crisis, better. An attempt will be made to incorporate knowledge from
these different cases to try to learn something new about how information flow during and
around a crisis are managed.
2.1. Problem formulation
How are the crucial moments in crisis communication identified, how can information flow
during and around a crisis be managed and how can that have an impact on the result of the
crisis?
2.2. Selection of case
The focus point of this project is how information flow can be controlled, during and around a
crisis, and how the crucial moments in crisis communication are identified. A light will be
shed on the media part of crisis communication. The problem area and the problem
formulation itself have already been exposed. The next chapter will describe the methodology
used in the research, the research design and strategies and criticism about them. It will
describe how the research was carried out, which approaches were used and what kind of data
was used. It also includes the authors’ role in the project. The following chapter will be a
definition chapter where crisis communication will be described. The next chapter includes
descriptions of the chosen cases, theories and analysis. The three cases chosen for this
research will be explained and then theories concerning crisis management, crisis
communication, the anticipatory model, narratives, mediatization, agenda setting and
compassion fatigue will be defined and explained to the extent needed for the analysis to be
made. The selected theories will be applied in the analysis with respect to the problem
formulation. The communication to the media and from the media will be analysed. In the end
there will be a discussion where important points will be discussed and made sense of.
Finally, there is a conclusion where the most important information and results from the
research will be summarized, and underlying themes will be drawn to the surface.
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3. Methodology
This chapter will explain how to answer the problem formulation. The point of departure was
from A: How was the crisis communication managed in the three cases chosen, and what
effect did it have on the cases? To B: How can the crisis communication management have an
impact on the result of the crisis?
Figure 1, Main elements of knowledge production and work
process (vidensprduktionens hovedelementer og arbejdsgang)
To secure a read thread
throughout the project, and to
answer the problem formulation
Ques/on/
problem formula/on properly, a model called Enderud
Vidensproduktionens
hovedelementer og arbejdsgang
Theory Analysis/ Interpreta/on Data (main elements of knowledge
production and work process) was
used. That was done to ensure
cohesiveness between the
Conclusion/ answer problem formulation, the theory,
the qualitative data, the analysis
Source: Andersen, 1998, p. 25
and the conclusion. The model
allowed the project to revise itself
continuously, by having a dynamic relationship with the different variables making sure that
if one variable changes the other will also change. The model was created for problem based
project work. We used it in a circular process where new theories were incorporated and the
problem formulation reversed if needed (Andersen, 1998, p. 25).
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3.1. Research design and paradigm
In this part the research design will be discussed as well as the ontological and
epistemological considerations.
Bryman explains research strategy by the following model1:
Figure 2, Influences on social research
The first variables of Bryman’s figure that were
considered were the epistemological and
Practical
considerations
ontological positions. Then, the practical
considerations were explained and lastly, the values
were discussed. The structure of the methodology
Values
Social
research
Epistemology
chapter is based on this model, guiding the reader
through the project.
The research design of the project is qualitative,
Ontology
Source: Bryman, 2008, p. 24
Bryman (2008) explains that qualitative research:
“usually emphasizes words rather than
quantification in the collection and analysis of data.
As a research strategy it is inductivist,
constructionist, and interpretivist, but qualitative researchers do not always subscribe to all
three features” (p. 697). Qualitative data was used in the research process; the qualitative
research strategy supports the hermeneutical approach that was used (Bryman, 2008, p. 22).
In the implementation process of the project, the qualitative data was also used to write an
article about the findings, which was then published online on www.nordjyske.dk.
We decided only to use secondary data in the form of cases in the project, both
because it fits well with the hermeneutical approach and due to time limitations. This way the
focus was on good analysis instead of data processing (Bryman, 2008, p. 500). Doing thick
descriptions from first hand data is very time consuming and that is why the time constrains
were mentioned.
Case studies are not always considered good sources. Flyvbjerg (2006) writes that
there are general oppositions toward casework, but he justifies the usage of them (p. 224). For
example, relevant to this project, the criticism about using one, or in this case three cases, as
generalization he answers:
1
The model has been altered; theory that was the fifth variable has been removed because it is irrelevant in this
context.
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“One can often generalize on the basis of a single case, and the case study
may be central to scientific development via generalization as supplement or
alternative to other methods. But formal generalization is overvalued as a
source of scientific development, whereas “the force of example” is
underestimated.” (P. 228)
In the project, the force of example will be used to understand how different forms of media
interactions during different crises situations can help to understand how information flow
during a crisis and how to learn from the different experiences.
The reliability of the study in this project is neither directly repeatable nor transparent.
That is due to the usage of discourse analysis and given the hermeneutical view explained
below, it would not give the same research results because it depends on the researcher’s
history how the topics are interpreted. The analysis was reviewed and corrected by both of us,
we gave our point of view and that created more internal reliability (Bryman, 2008, p. 31).
The hermeneutical stance brings the personal analysis in focus where an altering of our
original cognitions leads to a bigger historical knowledge, which again leads to a better
understanding of it (Bryman, 2008, p. 533). To increase the external validity, the study has
been made about three different cases. The research has been made in different scenarios and
can thereby only be used directly linked to these cases. Generalizing the study to other
companies and crises would require a new research with focus on those companies and crises,
because every company has different cultural heritage and stories that come into play when
they are analysed. The internal validation of the research is heightened by the information
coming from peer-reviewed texts (Bryman, 2008, p. 32).
The epistemological stance of this project is interpretivist, and the hermeneutical
stance is a subcategory of this stance (Bryman, 2008, p. 532). The hermeneutical approach
takes departure in a topic and this project does that in three cases. This made the foundation
for a thorough analysis of how to identify the crucial moments in crisis communication and
how information flow are managed in times of crises. Hermeneutics is about evolving
cognitions by having a pre-understanding of a topic, analysing that topic, getting new
understandings, analysing the same topic in a different setting, gaining new knowledge and a
new understanding, and continue this until the topic has been elaborated sufficiently
according to the person analysing it (Bryman, 2008, p. 533). Figure 2 shows how this process
works, starting at the bottom. Hermeneutics are good to use when a certain meaning is to be
drawn from qualitative data, to understand what people are saying and why they are saying it.
It helps interpret a topic and to understand what a particular topic means to one self. In
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hermeneutics there is a focus on who we are and what history we have, also what that history
contributes to the analysis (Wachterhauser, 1986, p. 7).
Figure 3, hermeneutics in this project
The hermeneutic approach was used by learning about the
three cases, analysing them and to
Review, discussion
New understanding
Analysis case 3 New understanding
Analysis case 2
New understanding
Analysis case 1
New understanding
gain a new understanding (Lee et
al, 1997, pp. 281-282). We, as
human beings, always have a preunderstanding and that plays a big
role in the analysis process; a text
will always be interpreted.
Hermeneutics are about analysing
pieces of a topic, finding patterns
Pre understanding
and making them fit into a new
context (Bryman, 2008, p. 533).
Finding new patterns that had not
Source: The author’s interpretation of Bryman, 2006, pp. 532-533
been discovered before helped in
the analysis of the three cases
chosen. Being two conducting the research ensured a better outcome, because the preunderstandings did not lead to misunderstandings in the analysis (Bryman, 2008, p. 32).
When interpreting a case it takes on a life on its own, we, as human beings, understand our
selves through analysis. This allowed us to play with our prejudices and gain a broader
horizon (Bryman, 2008, p. 17).
The ontological considerations in this project are constructivist relativist. That stance
fits well together with using a hermeneutical approach, because the approach to the research
is very subjective (Bryman, 2008, pp. 15-16). The three cases were analysed by using our preunderstandings, this alone made the research subjective. The constructivist approach is about
seeing the world as something people construct by using language (Bryman, 2008, p. 20).
As mentioned earlier, a qualitative research strategy often fosters inductive thinking,
generating a new theory, seeking a deeper truth by looking for patterns. By taking departure
in hermeneutics where the cases are the starting point, the inductive approach fits well
because it also requires looking at the observations/findings first and then applying the theory.
That is why this approach has been chosen in the project (Bryman, 2008, p. 11).
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3.2. Methods
In this chapter collection and analysis of data will be discussed and justified.
3.2.1. Data
We chose three different cases for this research. The first case is about the SAS turnaround
from deficit to ‘Airline of the year’. There, the media was handled effectively, and SAS did a
really good job with the crisis communication. The next case is the Ford Firestone incidence
where both companies attacked each other in the media, creating an even bigger crisis than
the one that started the debate. And the third case is the Rwanda genocide where the media
basically set the agenda. All three cases were analysed and then the results were discussed to
see how the media plays an important role when it comes to crisis communication. Flyvbjerg
(2006) says that case studies are good to use when answers to ‘how’ or ‘why’ questions are to
be found. Thereby, indirectly, he is saying that case studies are good to use when taking a
constructivist approach because, that stance relates to the ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions that are
good to ask when doing in-depth research (pp. 241-242).
The case selection strategy was based on Yin’s differentiation between the types of
cases. An example could be a case where the investigator, unlike others, had an opportunity to
do fieldwork; he calls these kinds of cases ‘the revelatory cases’. Another example is the
‘critical cases,’ which are cases based on well-developed theory. The case type chosen for this
project was ‘the extreme or unique cases’ (Bryman, 2008, pp. 55-56). The cases presented are
not only chosen because they are unique, even though that is a good argument in itself, they
were chosen because they are three extreme cases, the media had a big impact on the
companies and parties involved and how the crises turned out. The three cases have been
investigated in a lot of different settings, the way this project differs from the other
investigations is the hermeneutical discussion about the contents of the communication from
the cases. Because the cases have been well investigated before it allowed this project to get a
starting point further into the discussion, which supports the in-depth analysis in the
constructivist stance (Bryman, 2008, p. 19).
More cases could have been chosen so that familiar situations could have been
presented and thereby give a more generalizable profile to the project and to have kind of a
focus group testing the results found. In this project, a focus on the thick description and the
interpretive approach was chosen as the best way of doing the research, and we agreed that
the three cases, in different settings, would be enough to contribute to a discussion about the
topic as aimed for.
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2.2.2. Methods of analysis
There are many different ways of analysing data, but when only using secondary data the
options are narrowed down. Content analysis and discourse analysis are both methods of
analysing documents and cases. It was decided to use discourse analysis in this project
because it is good when processing qualitative data and can be used with almost every kind of
data. We wanted to present a result that could be a part of the discussion about crisis
communication and the media. The discourse analysis presents the results qualitative, which
is the best method to work with when creating a thick description about a topic and presenting
an overlooked part of the topic in an article (Bryman, 2008, p. 500). Content analysis presents
the results more quantitative, which in many cases is very useful, but it would have created a
different outcome than we strived for. An objective analysis of data can also be a problem
when using a constructivist approach as used in this project (Bryman, 2008, pp. 276). The
cooperation of the methods is a force, by doing in-depth research and analysing the data the
same way makes a strong cohesive project.
A downside to the discourse analysis is that it is criticized for not being transparent
and thereby not easy to replicate. We used a subjective approach in this project so we were
able to give our viewpoint of the topic. Discourse analysis and hermeneutical approach work
well together because they both take point of departure in a topic, and when analysing how
information flow during crises is managed, the discourse in different cases is a good way to
go. The discourse of the media interaction in the three cases gives a new angle towards the
topic because it is subjective. Subjectivity is impossible to replicate (Bryman, 2008, pp. 288289).
3.2. Delimitation and ethics
The main focus point of this project is how information flow can be managed during and
around a crisis, and how the crucial moments in crisis communication are identified. A focus
on public relations (PR) will not be displayed in this project.
We only used second hand data in this project. Using first hand data would have
presented a much-pressured timeframe, and we agreed that conducting interviews and coding
them would not have done properly within the timeframe of the project. To make it an action
research, an article about the findings was published online in on www.nordjyske.dk and that
was also done to live up to the hermeneutic angle. This made it easy for other people to
comment on the results and made the project hermeneutic. By this we are also able to learn
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continuously about the topic and other people’s opinions of it after the process with the
project was done.
The methodology and the paradigm chosen for this project were doable within the
timeframe and pages available. As mentioned above, a lot of other ways of doing the research
would have been possible, but that would have meant using another paradigm.
Using someone else’s data can present an ethical problem. When other people’s first
hand data was used the source was looked into and made sure it was proper to use it within
this research. The primary source was not replicated but the analysis in this project differed
from the original analysis (Bryman, 2008, pp. 118).
3.3. Role of the authors
Neither of us had any connection to any of the companies or parties involved in the cases, that
made them easier to look at from the outside. Communication about the cases, which will be
elaborated later, only tells one side of the story. With this in mind, different sources for each
of the cases were used to gain a broader perspective for the analysis.
We wrote every part together. That was considered the best way to incorporate both of
our opinions. This made it possible for us to work with each other’s weaknesses and
strengths, and to be critical toward each other. Although everything was written together, the
areas of responsibility have been divided into the following parts:
•
Case – SAS turnaround – Rikke
•
Case – Ford Firestone – Rikke
•
Case – Rwanda genocide – Tinna
•
Discussion - Tinna
4. Definition: Crisis communication
Crisis communication can be described in many ways and the topic is very debateable. When
discussing it, questions like: is a crisis necessary, is it avoidable and then how, come up.
These are only few of many questions concerned with crisis communication. When a crisis
occurs it can be hard to know what to do and who should do what. (Heath and Millar, 2004, p.
119)
In this project, the focus will be on the media part of crisis communication and not the
whole crisis management plan, but to give the reader an overview, the whole crisis
management plan process is defined in the figure below. There are many opinions in crisis
management literature about how to manage a crisis, but the one thing most theoretics agree
14
on is that a crisis plan is necessary. These opinions are summed up in the following crisis
management model:
Figure 4, Crisis Management Model
I. Before the crisis
PREPARE
Create a Crisis Management Team
Gain management support for a
crisis plan
Identify cooperative vulnerabilities
PLAN
Create a Message Action Plan
(MAP)
Define target audience
Establish techniques needed to
communicate the message
PUT IT TO TEST
Test the plan
-
Train employees
Assign responsibility
-
Complete pre-crisis preparations
-
-
GATHER
PACKAGE
DELIVER
Do background research
Disclose all information
Get your message out quickly
Designate a spokesperson
Tell the truth
Be Assertive with the media
Define short - & long – term
Put yourself in the other party’s
problems
shoes
-
Show Concern
-
EVALUATE
CONGRATULATE
CONTINUE TO CONTROL
Evaluate the Crisis Management
Congratulate employees within the
Prepare for continuing media
Campaign
organization
coverage
II. During the Crisis
-
III. After the Crisis
Source: Heath and Millar, 2004, p. 120
It is important for companies to prepare for a crisis, not a specific crisis, but having the
information systems ready for a crisis to occur is necessary. An example of that is to have an
alternative webpage and phone system in times of crisis to handle the situation sufficiently.
The Crisis Management Model emphasis how important it is to give different groups of
people different messages. The media and the employees should not necessarily receive the
same messages during times of crisis (Heath and Millar, 2004, pp. 120-121).
It is important to communicate quickly when communicating with the media so the
side of the story the company wants to be portrayed is the one most likely to be portrayed in
the media (Heath and Millar, 2004, p. 129). Telling the truth is important, if a company is
caught in a lie it can make the situation even worse than it is (Heath and Millar, 2004, p. 128).
Selecting one or few spokespersons is a good idea, it makes it easier to control what is said
15
publicly and done during the crisis (Heath and Millar, 2004, p. 126). Showing concern when
talking about the people who to some degree were victims of a crisis is also very important, it
can make the company look very bad not to do so (Heath and Millar, 2004, p. 129). Having a
close eye on what the media is displaying is also very important, and trying to make sure that
the ‘right’ side of the story is the one being displayed is a good idea. Lastly, after the crisis it
is still important to feed the media with information, making sure that the positive or negative
outcome of the crisis is displayed in the best possible way and that all the success stories are
told (Heath and Millar, 2004, pp. 129-130).
5. Cases, theories and analysis
In this chapter the three cases chosen for this research will be described, discussed and
analysed with respect to the problem formulation of how are the crucial moments in crisis
communication identified, how can information flow during and around a crisis be managed
and how can that have an impact on the result of the crisis. Selected theories concerning crisis
management, crisis communication, the anticipatory model, narratives, mediatization, agenda
setting and compassion fatigue will be explained to the extent needed for the analysis to be
made, and then they will be applied in analysis to answer the problem formulation.
5.1. Ford Firestone case
This case has been called many names, Greenwald (2001) calls it: “The Ford/Firestone fight”,
Heath and Millar (2004) call it: “The Ford Firestone Fiasco” (p. 84), and a simple search on
YouTube gives a lot of similar titles. This indicates that something, at one point, went terribly
wrong.
Henry Ford founded Ford Motor Company in 1903 and worked as chief engineer and
vice director (Ford Motor Company, 2012, para 1). In 1913 he started mass-producing, he
wanted to provide simply designed cars at an affordable price and today Ford is a well-known
brand all over the world (Masseproduktionsteknikkens udvikling, 2012, para 1). Harvey S.
Firestone began producing tires in 1900 in Akron, Ohio. The business did well and after just
six years sales surpassed 1 million $. The city got the nickname rubber capital of the world,
because of the Firestone company (Timeline, 2012).
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The picture here on the left shows Thomas Edison, Harvey
S. Firestone, Henry Ford and John Burroughs, who were
good friends and all known as great inventors. These four
men went camping together on a regular basis to escape
the urban life, starting in 1916. Thomas Edison was the
inventor in the group, Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone
the creators, and John Burroughs was the environmentalist. During these trips they got ideas
that changed the car industry. Ford contributed with ideas of renewable energy forms, for
example Hydroelectricity, Edison contributed with complex theories of chemistry, Burroughs
contributed with ideas about preserving the environment, and Firestone contributed with
business theories. These ideas that were shared on the camping trips are said to have created
jobs for millions of people in the car industry (Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, Henry Ford,
and John Burrows, 2012).
Nowadays, when searching on the Internet for the words ‘Ford Firestone’ the words
‘crisis’, ‘fight’, and ‘fiasco’ come up, the companies’ success is pushed to the background. In
August 2000, 6,5 million Firestone tires were recalled because they were said related to 88
deaths. Another 1,4 million tires were recalled a month later linked to another 29 deaths. In
August 2000, a total of 151 deaths were reported linked to the Firestone tires, 525 injuries and
4.300 complaints were reported by October 2000. The incidents were described as tires
blowing up because of tread separation from the tires (Heath and Millar, 2004, pp. 84-85).
After 95 years of cooperation, CEO John Lampe from Firestone, blamed the Ford
Explorer, emphasizing that he had significant concerns about the safety of that vehicle. The
day after, Ford announced that 13 million Firestone Wilderness AT tires would be replaced.
Firestone then admitted that the tires were not good, but declared that the rest of the tires on
the market were completely safe. Jacques Nasser, director of Ford, then declared: “We simply
do not have enough confidence in the future performance of these tires keeping our customers
safe”. Firestone saw this declaration as an attempt to put the entire blame on them (Heath and
Millar, 2004, p. 89).
In 2002, a big trial started. It was revealed that Firestone had been related to a big tire
recall before in the 1970’s where millions of the Firestone 500 steel-belted radials tires were
recalled. At that time, Firestone had to pay half a million dollar fine for knowingly marketing
tires that would fail governmental test. Ford was accused of increasing the damage by roll
over after the tire separation on the Ford Explorer and congressional investigators agreed with
this accusation. In court it was presented that Ford already in 1998 had received a letter about
17
the tire separation on a Ford Explorer. Ford at one point, accused replacement workers at
Firestone during a strike to have caused the incident. The blame continuously shifted during
the trial, damaged material was dough up again and again. In the end it was clear to everyone
that someone could have prevented the accidents, but what was not communicated was that
there was a major problem and both Ford and Firestone were doing everything they could to
address this problem. Both companies suffered after the crisis, but in the end, Firestone was
the bigger loser because the company had had a similar incident before (Heath and Millar,
2004, pp. 89-90).
5.1.1. Crisis management model
Both Ford and Firestone could have benefitted a lot from having a crisis management plan,
especially in relation to the external communication. In this chapter not all the variables of the
Crisis Management Model (defined in chapter 4) will be described fully, but an emphasis will
be on the parts that are important for the case. An analysis was made where the Crisis
Management Model was applied to the Ford Firestone case.
5.1.1.1. Analysis
When a crisis brakes out it is very important to do something in the crucial moments at the
beginning of the crisis. The braking point for Ford and Firestone was that neither one of them
acted when the crisis broke out. This seemed to lead to a paralysation throughout the crisis
where the rule of action seemed to be not to communicate about the crisis. Even when the two
companies were recalling the cars and the tires, they fought about how and when to do it
(Heath and Millar, 2004, p. 89). Both Ford and Firestone waited 3 years from the first
accidents to begin to investigate the cause of the tire separation and the vehicle roll over.
When this window of opportunity at the beginning of the crisis was not used, both companies
ruined their chances of getting out of the crisis nicely. When companies do not do anything
about their crisis consumers tend to make emotional judgement that they have not accepted
responsibility for the problem, and neither Ford nor Firestone seemed to have accepted any
kind of responsibility for what had happened (Heath and Millar, 2004, p. 92). This sent a bad
signal to the surrounding world. Before the Ford Firestone crisis, it would have been a good
idea for both companies to set up a crisis management team to keep up with information
about the organization and they should have made a crisis management plan. Should they
have done that then they would be the managers of internal and external communication in
times of crises (Sellnow and Ulmer, 1995, para 59). We do not know for a fact whether they
18
had a crisis management team and a crisis management plan, but their actions show that if
they had that they did not use them.
It is important to figure out what different messages the companies should give the
target audience, and deciding how to divide the target audience. In the Ford Firestone case, it
would have been important to get to the media, the employees, the stock market analysts, and
the costumers, maybe even some politicians, but the division of the target groups has to be
divided even more than that. Some of the costumers died during the crisis, their relatives had
to be handled differently than the ones who owned a Ford Explorer where no roll over
occurred or owned some Firestone tires that were not damaged. These overall considerations
have to be made before a crisis occurs, this information can be made thoroughly without
knowing who will be affected by the crisis, but making preparation about how to
communicate can make a big difference in the actual situation (Heath and Millar, 2004, p.
89). Ford and Firestone missed their window of opportunity and that made the general public
want to know more about what was happening. Internet chartrooms were filled with opinions
and rumours about the crisis. Neither Ford nor Firestone seemed media prone, especially not
to the new media (Heath and Millar, 2004, p. 93). The chartrooms seemed to be filled with
self announced experts who were combating each other to tell the most horrendous stories.
This and the fact that Ford and Firestone were pointing fingers at each other made both
companies lose control completely (Heath and Millar, 2004, p. 92). Ford made a nice attempt
to use the media to establish trust again but far too late. Ford did not come clean about what
had happened so even though the attempt was good it was too late and did not have what it
should have contained. Firestone, on the other hand, held all information to themselves.
Because of that, a former employee started selling rumours to the media; he made a story
about disregard for safety at the Firestone plant. Neither company had a media strategy and
that allowed the media to make a strategy for them, which is of course a very bad idea (Heath
and Millar, 2004, p. 94).
Having a crisis management team could have helped both Ford and Firestone. The
team should know about the corporate vulnerabilities, also described in the anticipatory model
later. They should have access to someone who can help in the crisis situation, and have the
contact information for these people ready in a crisis. If Ford and Firestone would have had a
crisis management team that would have been able to control the information flow and the
discourse from the company, the crisis could likely have turned out differently.
The communication during the crisis came from the CEO of both companies, who
clearly got their emotions attached when they were attacked by each other (Heath and Millar,
19
2004, p. 89). The target groups were not communicated with until too late, as described
earlier, and most of the media coverage was based on information from the public and the
trials (Heath and Millar, 2004, p. 92). A special spokesperson did not seem to be appointed to
deal with the crisis. The CEO became the spokesperson, as in many cases when a crisis
occurs. Having the CEO as a spokesperson is not wrong, but someone has to be able to take
over in his absence. The Ford Firestone crisis lasted three years, having one spokesperson
during that whole time was a bad choice, because it meant that there was no one to replace
that person during a long period of time (Heath and Millar, 2004, p. 124).
During a crisis it is important to disclose all information as quickly as possible. In this
case, information did not get out until an official investigation pointed out who was to be
blamed. It is also important to tell the truth, a company caught in a lie can do a lot of damage,
but keeping information back can also be bad. This happened a lot during the Ford Firestone
crisis. Ford and Firestone were the last to tell the audience what had happened. Most of the
information that got out about the accidents were bits and pieces that were made into a story,
which made both Ford and Firestone look guilty. Silence about a case is a discourse in itself,
telling the audience that the company is afraid to put everything on the table. In the Ford
Firestone case, as mentioned earlier, the customers seemed to be forgotten in the heat of the
moment, and making each other look bad seemed to matter more for Ford and Firestone, both
companies simply did not put themselves in the other parties’ shoes. This made both
companies look like they did not care about the victims, to show concern for the victims is not
just important for the victims and their families, but also for the image of the companies.
There is a lot of goodwill to gain being the big company caring for the little person; it makes
the company easier to relate to (Heath and Millar, 2004, p. 92).
The communication and the recalls from both companies should have occurred
sooner, preferably right after the first accidents. If the two companies would have cooperated
with each other, things might have turned out differently. Details about the two companies
smothering each other in court might not have came out if they would have dealt with the
crisis in the right manner. Both companies lost a lot of credibility during and around the
crisis, but have succeeded in altering their image after the big accident, Ford better than
Firestone because Firestone has had a similar accident with their tires before. The main reason
for the bad outcome was that the companies were accused of being more interested in settling
lawsuits in private than in admitting the real problem and the real dangers in public (Heath
and Millar, 2004, p. 90).
20
When looking at the crisis management plan, the biggest mistake both companies
made was not to communicate enough and at the right time in the crisis. A lot of bad stories
about the two companies were continually shown in the media, but looking at the crisis from
the media’s point of view, it was not easy to report about the positive aspects because they
were not communicated to the media or anyone else. It seemed like surviving the crisis
became more important than managing it, and thereby also managing the information to the
media (Heath and Millar, 2004, pp. 130-131).
5.1.2. Anticipatory model
When communicating a crisis, it is necessary to know to what extent the company believes its
technology can fail, especially when it is a company with big production. People rely much
on technology and trust that it works. In daily life, people are not worried about whether the
elevator crashes, whether the building they sit in collapses, or if their car is unsafe to drive.
The anticipatory model recognizes our need to rely on and create technology. The model
helps crisis managers to recognize that technology can fail, and makes them seek for signs for
potential disasters in effort to prevent an escalation of a crisis. Sandra C. Duhè (2007)
explains the anticipatory model like this:
The anticipatory model encourages public relations and crisis management
professionals to engage a systematic review of all crisis concerns, develop
response scenarios, and maintain relationships with key stakeholders who will
assist the organization in responding to a crisis. […] This understanding
suggests a thorough familiarity with elements of the organization and how the
organization interacts with its stakeholders and environment. The greater the
level of understanding, the greater control crisis management can employ in
responding to a crisis.” (P. 400)
She emphasises that in the communication process it is important to communicate about
topics that seem like basic knowledge for the company. Information about technical details
may seem unimportant, but when a crisis escalates it is important to give the environment and
the stakeholders a thorough understanding of what has happened and paint a broad picture. It
is important because when people do not know enough about something they want to know
about, they have to guess what it is about in order to get to know what it is about (Duhè, 2007,
p. 400).
21
When looking at the majority of the senior management officials in the Fortune 1002
companies, it will take a major disaster to get them to prepare for crisis. In the Ford Firestone
crisis, Firestone estimated the loss for lawsuits and replacements to 900 million $. Both
companies lost a lot of reliability and sales because of the crisis. The costs of the crisis
exceeded by far the costs of controlling the crisis by making a thorough crisis management
plan, which could have helped both companies to a better outcome (Heath and Millar, 2004,
p. 90).
5.1.2.1. Analysis
In the Ford Firestone case, a lot of accusations came from both companies, their surroundings
and stakeholders; this was very damaging for both companies. Looking back at the crisis, it is
easy to say that the companies reacted in the wrong way especially during the brake out of the
crisis but also during and after the crisis. The lack of communication made the situation worse
than it was for both companies, but when going through a crisis situation it can be very
difficult to know what to do. During the crisis the craving for information was enormous, and
as in every other crisis the situation shifted every time a new accusation was made, because
the stakeholders had to adapt to the new bad information about either of the two companies.
There is no doubt that Ford and Firestone communicated too little with each other, the media
and their costumers during the crisis, but the question is then, what should they have
communicated?
The discourse in the action of first recalling tires and cars 3 years after the first
incident and after an official investigation is very bad. It made the victims and bystanders
think that nobody wanted to take on the expenses, even though it was clear that at least one of
the companies was at fault. The two companies did not show concern for the people involved
in the accidents. Firestone denied handing in data voluntarily about the tires to the court, this
emphasised a disregard for the case and it made the company look guilty, whether it was or
not. The companies’ reactions to the crisis and to the questions deduced from the crisis were
answered too slowly (Larsen, 2006, p. 87). Perhaps the companies were waiting for the other
company to respond so that if the first company was to blame the other, it could put the blame
back again. In late September 2000, Ford notified owners of the Ford Explorer of what had
happened, but most of them knew about the case at that point because it had been reported on
2
The 100 economelly best equiped companies USA
22
thoroughly in the media, and as Millar and Heath (2004) put it: “a couple of years and a
hundred lives too late” (p. 89).
The reason for using the anticipatory model here is because in the Ford Firestone
crisis it was very unclear what had happened. The media was able to report on the thread
separation of the tires because they had head it from the victims, but because Ford and
Firestone tried to blame each other for the accidents it seemed very unclear what caused them,
whether it was the car or the tires. Many technical details were used to explain why the other
company’s product was to be blamed for the gravity of the damages. The people involved in
the accidents and the relatives of the people who died in the accidents were not contacted until
after the trial, three years after the first accident (Heath and Millar, 2004, p. 87). According to
the anticipatory model, the greater level of understanding from the stakeholders and the
companies’ surroundings, the greater control they have to respond to the crisis. In this case, it
was hard for anyone to understand which item had caused the damage and how to avoid
further damage. As Duhè predicted, this led to an impossible situation to control for both
companies. It seemed that both companies used the media to damage each other, rather than
to keep a good relationship with the key stakeholders and each other (Heath and Millar, 2004,
p. 87). The people who died from driving their cars had no idea that it was dangerous to drive
them, they relied on the technology to be safe because the companies never told them
differently. The last deaths could have been avoided by recalling the cars and the tires sooner
or by informing the car owners about the risk. In this case, the car owners seemed to not
matter as much as not loosing face and money for Ford and for Firestone.
Ford and Firestone looked like two heartless companies who did not care about the
deaths of their costumers as much as the well being of their companies. A good relationship
with the media and each other before, during and after the crisis could have helped them
minimize the damages. The media reported about the fight between the two companies and
not about what was done to research the damages and preventions of them in the future. This
was possibly because the media did not get access to that side of the story. A close connection
to the media can be beneficial in many ways, especially in times of crises when a company
wants to portray the story from their point of view (Heath and Millar, 2004, pp. 93-94).
5.1.3. Ford Firestone analysis summary
In this case, the companies involved apparently did not know well enough how to handle a
crisis. Their reaction to what happened were not good and not in accordance to what a crisis
management plan would have suggested for them to do. Things turned out quite badly for
23
both the companies, which lost a lot of money and respect during this time. It is very
important to do something in the crucial moments at the beginning of the crisis. Had they
reacted differently, and with knowledge of how to respond to a crisis of this kind, things
would most definitely have turned out differently. They should have had a crisis management
plan and a crisis management team that would have been able to react properly to the crisis.
They should have stuck together and faced the reality as it was. The companies did not handle
the media well and that stabbed them in the back. The media portrayed the companies poorly
to the public because they basically had no reason not to. Neither Ford nor Firestone provided
the media with information, which made it more up to the media how they were portrayed.
With little as no information the media had to fill the gaps and make a story that would
interest the people, regardless to what the companies thought. By not communicating with the
media, the two companies lost a lot. They came out very badly to the public and did not do
many things to fix it at the time. Acting like small children, fighting with each other, instead
of taking matters in their own hands, got them nowhere. Had they handled the media properly
and reacted as adults, the companies would most likely have come better out of the crisis than
they did.
5.2. SAS turnaround case
SAS (Scandinavian Airlines) was founded in 1946 when the three national airlines of
Denmark, Norway and Sweden were joined. SAS was run as one company until 2003, but
after that the airline was divided into three parts, SAS Danmark A/S, SAS Norge ASA and
SAS Sverige AB. Today, SAS is not only an airline company but also owner of hotels, both
inside and outside Scandinavia (Historie, 2012, para 1). SAS had a safe market position 30
years ago, if the company had financial trouble they either got financial help from the
government or allowed tariff to increase. This reality altered when more airlines entered the
field and up until Jan Calzon was hired as CEO in 1981. SAS turned surplus to deficit, and
the customers began to require more service, comfort and precision, which was not on the
agenda then (Larsen, 2006, p. 10).
24
Jan Carlzon (shown on the picture to the left) was hired to
change SAS and to prepare the company for a better future.
Jan Carlzon was CEO of the travel company Ving before
becoming CEO at SAS. He changed the customer focus to
business travellers and made a strategy that focused on
service, comfort and precision, as the customers required. It
was important for Jan Carlzon to make the personnel policy
reflect the strategy and communicate it to all employees in
all levels of the company. In 1983 SAS was named the
‘Airline of the year’, and Jan Carlzon made sure that as many people as possible knew about
that by putting giant stickers on the airplanes with the text ‘SAS - Airline of the year’, the
award was given to SAS because of they were considered the most service-minded and
punctual airline (Larsen, 2006, pp. 10-11).
Jan Carlzon had a known motto when he was CEO at SAS, it was: “Managing, to me,
means taking the lead and showing the direction, the direction can never be to stand still, even
though the place is nice” (Larsen, 2006, p. 11)3. He emphasized the importance of involving
his employees in the strategy process and the implementation of it (Larsen, 2006, p. 12).
5.2.1. Crisis Management Model
In the analysis below, the Crisis Management Model from chapter 4 will be applied to the
SAS case.
5.2.1.1. Analysis
SAS was in a very difficult position when Jan Carlzon was hired; he was chosen to turn
around the deficit in SAS. At that time he was known as an innovative thinking person and a
good leader from his former position (Larsen, 2006, p. 11).
The SAS crisis was a crisis that was avoided where the turnaround was successful. As
explained earlier, during a crisis it is important to communicate well and Jan Carlzon was
known to be a good communicator and not only that, he made SAS a media prone company,
something Ford and Firestone were not. All in all, SAS acted very well in the beginning of the
crisis, which Ford and Firestone neglected to do. Internally, every single employee in SAS
knew about the strategy and also the passengers and the media, they were invited to hear
3
Translated from Danish to English
25
about the strategy and also to help creating it (Larsen, 2006, p. 12). Externally, SAS became
good at knowing what was going on and adapting the media. SAS had a really good
relationship with the media and when SAS became the airline of the year it got a lot of
positive media attention. Jan Carlzon was known for telling the truth, no matter whether good
or bad, and he was good at getting the message out quickly. An example of that are the
stickers on all the SAS airplanes after the airline was named ‘Airline of the year’. When
negotiating salaries SAS did it openly with the employees, he also let the media know what
was happening. Jan Carlzon talked about the employees as organizational citizens within a
democracy having the rights to interfere with the decisions made in the organization. He
wanted people to be proud of working in the organization and feel responsible for it; he knew
that being open was the only way to achieve this goal. He might have communicated a bit too
much to the media, but people seemed to like him for his openness (Larsen, 2006, p. 11). Jan
Carlzon was known for saying: “An individual without information cannot take
responsibility, and individual who is given information cannot help but take responsibility”
(Larsen, 2006, p. 12). This was not only about the employees but also about the passengers
and the media. Nothing was sacred and the strategy worked (Larsen, 2006, p. 11).
In the Crisis Management Model companies are encouraged to do what Jan Carlzon
did in SAS, he did not see a reason for having secrets, and he wanted the public to know what
was happening in SAS. Being a good communicator means you also have to live up to many
aspects of the Crisis Management Model: showing concern, congratulating and being
empathetic are also a big part. The rest is having a crisis management plan and a team to carry
it out. Jan Carlzon had a positive discourse when talking about his employees and, as
mentioned, he talked about them being responsible for SAS and being a big part of SAS. Jan
Carlzon had a vision of openness to the media and during his time in SAS the company got a
lot of really good media coverage (Larsen, 2006, p. 11). His successor, Jørgen Lindegaard,
did not share his idea about openness and was constantly fighting bad headlines and with the
media. It cannot be concluded whether the communication to the media was the only reason
for Jan Calzon’s good publicity and Jørgen Lidegaard’s bad publicity, and in this project it
will not be looked into (Larsen, 2006, p. 13). However, it is possible to conclude that Jan
Carlzon worked well with the media, according to the Crisis Management Model, and that he
and SAS got a lot of positive media coverage during his managing period.
26
5.2.2. Narrative theory
The main reason for why SAS succeeded in turning the company from crisis to success was
good communication. To shed a light on how SAS communicated to the media and to try to
explain how SAS succeeded in the media relation, theories about narratives were used.
According to Millar and Heath (2004), a narrative approach to crisis communication is about
telling a story, they describe it like this:
A crisis event constitutes a rhetorical exigency that requires one or more
responsible parties to enact control in the face of uncertainty in an effort to win
key publics’ confidence and meet their ethical standards. (P. 167)
This is to act a certain way and to gain the public’s confidence, in this case control is an
important variable. If a leader of a project were not showing that he has control over it, he
would not be able to get the people to follow and support him, but that is necessary in order to
succeed. People want order in times of crises; predictability rather leads to a positive outcome
of a crisis situation than a negative one.
Stories during a crisis can be presented from different angles; media reporters,
politicians, activists, or other publics can be eager to present different stories than the
company itself (Heath and Millar, 2004, p. 168). The ones who make sure to bring the story
home, whether it is the media, the public or the company, get the story printed and thereby get
the advantage of presenting their side of the story. Heath and Millar (2004) explain the need
for narratives like this: “Story is basic to human existence, we are challenged to explain the
role of story in public relations, in this case – crisis response” (p. 170). They continue by
telling how important storytelling is to people: “Life is narrative and humans can best be
characterized as storytellers who think and live in terms of the stories they tell” (p. 171). This
tells us that when a company wants to communicate with the public, hard facts are not the
best way to present the message. Nicklas Luhmann describes humans as being unable to
understand every detail in the world, and that we make up our own cognitions of how the
world functions, and when gaining new knowledge our cognitions will expand. This means
that we need stories to understand an event, whether we make the story up ourselves from
sparse information or the story is presented to us. Many people combine telling a story with
altering the truth or telling some fairytale that turns the world upside down. This thought
would collide with the Crisis Management Model variable of always telling the truth, but
luckily the world is not only black and white. In a crisis situation not all information is needed
and not all information should be handed out. The human mind cannot hope to be able to
conceive everything, and giving out too much information can confuse people by presenting a
27
picture they will not make their own. Making a simpler model of a story can make people
adapt to the story easier (Rasmussen, 2006, p. 127). It is important to remember that a crisis is
very real and important for the people standing right in the middle of it, but for the people
who are only listening to the news with half an ear, it is something different. Trying to get
these people to understand everything in and around the crisis would be impossible, but again
too little information can also be damaging because people will then try to fill in the gaps
themselves. Balancing the right amount of information flow and serving it the right way is a
true art in itself.
5.2.2.1. Analysis
When Jan Carlzon came to SAS he became a figure of
Figure 5, Information flow
control; he seemed to know exactly what he was
doing. Jan Carlzon communicated a lot to the public
through the media and that emphasizes the discourse
of control. The figure on the right suggests that
information flow and control are major contributors to
the impact of a crisis. If the information flow inside
and outside the organization is not managed properly,
it can result in the crisis having a bigger impact on the
organization.
Source: The authors’ own interpretation
It is impossible to be in control at all times, and it would be hard to go through a
turnaround, as Jan Carlzon did, and not feel insecure at some point. Keeping up appearances
was important, if Jan Carlzon had been insecure about what he was doing there is no doubt
that the rest of his audience would have been insecure as well (Larsen, 2006, p. 11). The
question whether Jan Carlzon became a successful communicator because the public really
wanted him to succeed is interesting. Jan Carlzon’s leadership in SAS was not only positive,
but he became the superhero turning SAS around; he succeeded in delivering a very good
story to his audience. People do not want to hear about a company that is managing okay, or a
manager who is doing okay, hearing about the villains and the heroes seems much more
appealing to people. So the story about the man who single-handed turned a big company
around because of his leadership skills and communication abilities is much more fun to tell
and watch (Heath and Millar, 2004, p. 12).
On SAS’ homepage, the company still referrers to itself as the most punctual airline in
Europe (Always with SAS, 2012, para. 4). In an interview in the Danish newspaper
28
‘Berlinske Tidende’ in 2005, Jan Carlzon talks about the lack of openness and a wrong focus
in the new strategy of SAS, and that the company has lost focus on its costumers (SAS, 2004,
p. 57). The story Jan Carlzon built up about SAS as the punctual airline that listens to
people’s views about how to do better has, in Jan Carlzon’s opinion, turned around again and
not in a good way. As hard as it is to make people think of a company in a good way, it is also
very easy is it to make them think of it in a bad way again. If disappointed passengers
complain, their voices can be very loud and sometimes as loud as the voices of a CEO (Heath
and Millar, 2004, p. 11).
Jan Carlzon had a good recipe of making people listen to his narratives, and he had a
really good relationship with the media. Throughout the SAS turnaround, Jan Carlzon was the
only real spokesperson, and according to the literature that is a bad idea. Either way, it
seemed to work in this case, being good at communicating inside and outside the organization
benefited the company a lot. SAS and Jan Carlzon made some mistakes according to the crisis
management literature, but the result could not have been much better. Communication is
crucial for organizations especially during a crisis; a good relationship with the media, the
employees and the public can really help in the turnaround of a crisis.
5.2.3. SAS turnaround analysis summary
Under the leadership of Jan Carlzon, SAS handled the crisis in a very good way. The
company had good connections to the media, it knew what information to provide it with and
how. This made a huge difference for the company when handling the situation. In the
turnaround, Jan Carlzon wanted the people to know what was going on and he communicated
well with them. He did a good job as the company’s spokesperson, even though he was the
only one. Following much of what the Crisis Management Model suggests was a good idea
and keeping a positive discourse helped a lot. The media covered the situation within SAS in
a nice manner; the company came out very well and things turned out nicely for SAS in the
end. Good publicity is important in a crisis situation, and the fact that SAS managed to keep
up appearances was important. The company stayed open to the media, let them know how
things were going and fed them with information. This led to very good media coverage,
which was exactly what the company needed at that time. Communication is crucial and
during a crisis situation it is so important for companies to keep a good relationship with
everyone around them, especially the media, but also employees so that no one is tempted to
sell stories to the press, like happened in the Ford Firestone case. If the company had not
handled the situation so well, this good coverage would probably not have been a possibility.
29
It is quite certain that the way the media portrayed the company to the public had an effect on
the success of the turnaround in SAS.
5.3. Rwanda genocide
The Rwandan genocide was a mass murder that lasted approximately 100 days, from April to
July of 1994. Around 800.000 people, almost 20% of the total population of Rwanda, were
killed in the genocide.
In 1994, Rwanda’s population was composed of
three ethnic groups called Hutu (85%), Tutsi (14%)
and Twa (1%). Around 1990, the country was
going through increased social, economic, and
political pressures. Hutu extremists who were
involved with the political elite blamed the Tutsi
minority for these pressures (Genocide in Rwanda,
2012, para. 1). On October 1 1990, a Tutsi-dominated rebel group called the Rwandan
Patriotic Front (RPF) attacked Rwanda. Juvenal Habyarimana, then president of Rwanda and
a Hutu, was loosing popularity and decided along his colleagues to use this attack as a way to
get dissident Hutu to support him again. He began to portray Tutsi inside Rwanda as RPF
collaborators. The next three and a half years the political elite worked to redefine Rwanda’s
population into two groups: those who supported the president and those who did not. Those
who did not were the Tutsi minority and also the Hutu that opposed him (Leave none to tell
the story: Genocide in Rwanda, 1999, p. 21). This division was increased through the use of
propaganda and constant political manoeuvring in the country.
After the RPF invasion in October 1990, the Rwandan media began spewing forth
attacks on the RPF and on Tutsi. Newspapers, journals and radio stations were very effective
in spreading the message of hate to a wide audience. Before the genocide began, the
government even distributed free radios to local authorities so that everyone had access to
listening to the national radio where false information, especially about the war, was often
broadcasted. The government was able to use propaganda through the radio and direct
people’s attention to where they needed it to be. Few people had access to independent
sources of information to verify the claims of the national radio (Leave none to tell the story:
Genocide in Rwanda, 1999, p. 420). The government was planning on exterminating the ones
that were opposed to them.
30
By late March 1994, Hutu power leaders had soldiers and militaries all set to attack.
They were determined to slaughter Tutsi and also Hutu that were opposed to Habyarimana.
On April 6 the same year, Habyarimana was killed when a plane he was on was shot down.
Almost immediately after that, a small group of his close associates decided to go ahead with
the planned extermination (Leave none to tell the story: Genocide in Rwanda, 1999, p. 21).
Everyone who might have been able to take charge of the situation was killed right at the
beginning, and then the people that had been planned to kill were killed in massive numbers
(Genocide in Rwanda, 2012, para. 2).
Foreign policymakers knew what was going on in Rwanda at this time, but treated the
massacre as a tragic by-product of the war that had been going on there. They sought to
maintain neutral and promote a dialogue between the groups. This however did not change
the situation in any way (Leave none to tell the story: Genocide in Rwanda, 1999, p. 133). In
only a few weeks, it was estimated that around 800.000 people were killed in the genocide.
The killing did not end until the RPF defeated the Hutu perpetrator regime and Paul Kagame
took over as president.
5.3.1. Responsible parties
Before the Rwandan genocide began, the UN was involved in the conflict management
process there. Humanitarian agencies provided much aid during that time as well. The UN
had a formal mandate to monitor and pronounce upon human rights violations, although in
Rwanda this was done in a very limited fashion (Adelman, Suhrke, Jones, 1995, p. 22). When
it came to the crisis management of the UN, several factors were at work that made it more
difficult to comprehend the crisis, or as Adelman et al (1995) explain it: “Information from
the past had not been accumulated, analyzed and structured to prepare policy options either
for preemptive action or for crisis management, so important given the general inability of
bureaucracy to innovate during crisis” (p. 33). The Secretariat and the Security Council both
saw Rwanda as a failed state where rouge troops and spontaneous mobs were killing
(Adelman et al, 1995, p. 33). The UN may be called the Rwandan crisis manager, but there
are many others that may be called that as well. There are also more than those who can be
called it that should be able to be called it, because way too many organizations and people
stood by without doing anything to improve the horrible situation there.
When it comes to ownership of the Rwanda crisis, many can be called responsible.
Obviously, the Rwandan government at that time decided on the actions and can therefore be
called the primary owner of the genocide, but by doing little as nothing about the situation
31
there, many other can be called responsible as well. Almost immediately after Habyarimana’s
plane crashed and the killing began, western governments closed their embassies in Rwanda
and withdrew their nationals from the country. The people that were evacuated from Rwanda
were diplomats, aid workers and their families; people that would perhaps have been very
influential witnesses. Those governments knew about the killings, they for example had
satellite pictures, but did nothing with them, even refused to supple them to the UN
peacekeeping force. Another responsible party is the UN. At the UN Security Council the
discourse of ‘genocide’ was avoided, the focus was on civil war and not on a massacre. Also,
deliberations about the situation in Rwanda were held in secret to prevent an examination of
government actions. And last but not least, the international news media. There is a reason for
why the media is often referred to as the fourth estate, it possesses enormous power in
delivering information to the public, but as they say: “with power comes great responsibility.”
Media coverage about the genocide was very little, and with this little coverage the media did
not play its role in disseminating information to the public (Martin, B., 2009). All the parties
mentioned here above can be called responsible, either directly or indirectly, for the crisis in
Rwanda. In one way or another, those parties failed to recognize the gravity of the crisis and
thereby failed the Rwandan population and the public in other places of the world.
It is very hard to put the Rwandan crisis up against the Crisis Management Model. In
organizational crisis it is understandable that the model is good to use as a guideline for crisis
management, but in non-organizational crisis things are more complicated. Someone has to be
behind a crisis management plan and in the case of the Rwandan crisis, who should have
taken on that role? The UN, or even other international organizations working in the field of
peace, security and human rights, might have been able to be prepared for such a crisis to
occur and thereby have used many of the factors mentioned in the Crisis Management Model.
But in those kinds of crisis it is difficult to point to some one party and expect them to take it
to their own hands of managing the crisis. Those kinds of crises are bigger than most
organizational crises, both in relation to the number of people involved and the power
invested in those in control in the country the crisis takes place. Therefore, it is very hard to
decide who should be the one managing it and hence making a crisis management plan.
5.3.2. Rwanda and the media
This project focuses on the media part of crisis communication and therefore the media’s
responsibility will be taken a closer look at in the following sections. Many from the western
population blamed the media for not having covered the genocide enough, and other blame
32
the public for not having acted on it earlier on. Those two are quite intertwined and therefore
only natural to speak of the two together in relation to how the crisis in Rwanda turned out. In
the next sections, information flow during the Rwandan genocide will be covered, how the
media failed the public with limited coverage of it and did not display the genocide as it was
to the people. Also, how then the public perhaps did not realize at an earlier stage what was
actually going on in Rwanda, which maybe would have enabled people to help the population
there.
5.3.1. Mediatization
Mediatization is a concept that is very central to an understanding of the importance of media
to culture and society. Mediatization has been used in many different contexts to explain the
influence the media has on many phenomenas (Hjarvard, 2008, p. 106). In this chapter,
mediatization of society will be defined.
Stig Hjarvard (2008) defines mediatization of society as:
The process whereby society to an increasing degree is submitted to, or
becomes dependent on, the media and their logic. This process is characterized
by a duality in that the media have become integrated into the operations of
other social institutions, while they also have acquired the status of social
institutions in their own right. As a consequence, social interaction – within the
respective institutions, between institutions, and in society at large – takes
place via the media. (P. 113)
In addition to this definition, Hjarvard distinguishes between direct and an indirect form of
mediatization. In direct form, formerly non-mediated activity is converted to a mediated form,
whereas in indirect form the media and its symbolic forms increasingly influence an existing
activity (Lundby, 2009, p. 5). During meditization, the media appears more increasingly as an
independent institution within society. Hjarvard (2008) says that this duality characterizes
mediatization exactly and that mediatization “intervenes in human interaction in many
different contexts, while it also institutionalizes the media as an autonomous entity with its
own logic” (p. 116).
Mediatization should though not be confused with the concept of mediation.
Mediation is what refers to communication via a medium, it is something that can affect both
the message and the connection between sender and receiver. Or as Hjarvard (2008) explains
it: “Mediation describes the concrete act of communication by means of a medium in a
specific social context.” Whereas he explains mediatization as something that: “refers to a
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more long-lasting process, whereby social and cultural institutions and modes of interaction
are changed as a consequence of the growth of the media’s influence” (p. 114).
5.3.1.1. Analysis
Society has become very dependant on and submitted to the media, which possesses
enormous power in mediating information in stories. An institution like the media should not
only cover what they think is of relevance to the people and what will give them profit. They
should cover what is going on in the world, no matter whether it is good or bad. What the
media has to do is to bring the story home, make it of relevance to the people and direct their
power for the good of mankind, as in the case of Rwanda. News coverage should not only be
comfortable, sometimes it is necessary to step out of the box, even though it can be
unpleasant. The media has to have the guts to say certain words that will get people’s
attention and challenge their discourse. An institution like the media is expected to provide
information with certain logic and by not covering the genocide properly the institution failed
the public. If the people do not want to hear about something, the can not be forced to do so,
but the media can resort to ways that will make the people want to listen, or as Moeller (1999)
said so well: “The solution is for the media business to get back to business of reporting all
the news, all the time” (p. 322). If the media would start doing that, the public discourse
would most likely become more diverse, hence more matters would be on the public’s
agenda.
5.3.2. Agenda setting
The media possesses enormous power and is able to set the agenda for the public’s attention.
The world is largely based on what the media attempts to portray it with. Maxwell McCombs
(2003) said: “The result of this mediated view of the world is that the priorities of the media
strongly influence the priorities of the public. Elements prominent on the media agenda
become prominent in the public mind” (p. 2). Although this seems to be the case, it is
important to remember that the influence of the media agenda is not the only thing that
determines the public agenda. The people are the ones determining the basic relevance of
attributes provided by the media. This basically means that only when citizens perceive news
stories as relevant, the media can set the agenda (McCombs, 2003, p. 2). Agenda setting
specifies that the impact of the media is on people’s cognitions and not on their attitudes. This
media impact attributes those cognitive changes as a result of the media performing a
gatekeeper role. By describing and detailing what is out there the media presents people with
34
what to think and talk about (Shaw, 1979, pp. 96-97). However, it is important to remember
that the media can also be controlled. The media agencies are most of the time driven by a
profit motive and therefore can publish some stories that will provide them with money.
Companies or organizations sometimes pay a lot of money to the agencies for advertisements,
and when those companies or organizations need something from the media, they would not
dare to risk their business. Politicians, with the plain power invested in them, can also
sometimes control the media or at least have an effect on how the media covers some matters.
In a crisis, as the one in Rwanda, there is no hand on crisis plan. When a nonorganizational crisis occurs, e.g. natural crisis or humanitarian crisis, there is usually no
specific spokesperson and therefore it is important that the media takes on that role and
delivers stories about that kind of a crisis. The media has a lot of power; it can direct the
public’s attention, it can focus it on specific events, people and issues. It can determine how
much importance people attach to public matters. What the media includes or excludes from
their content, the people do the same with their cognitions. People are aware of what the
media covers in newspapers and in the television, but not about what the media decides not to
cover. People often tend to assign an importance to matters that are given a lot of emphasis by
the media (Shaw, 1979, p. 96).
5.3.2.1. Analysis
After the Rwandan tragedy, the western media blamed the international community for doing
nothing right away. But perhaps it was not only the people that were to be blamed. The media
did not recognize the extent of the matter as it should have and then mobilizing the world’s
attention to it through agenda setting. It was not until about three weeks into the genocide that
that the media started to report on this nationwide killing campaign. Already then, about
250.000 people had been massacred (Kuperman, 2000, para 1). This discourse from the media
may have had an effect on how the public perceived the crisis in Rwanda. Had the media
covered the crisis properly from day one, people might have seen it as more important than
they did. The public may have wondered why the media prioritized the genocide the way they
did. The genocide did not get the attention is should have gotten. This kind of an event, if an
event can be called, should have been known by the whole world and people ought to have
stuck together in order to figure out ways to help the Rwandan population at an early stage.
There are a couple of factors that might have had an effect of why the genocide got so
little attention when it was happening. One is that the media are businesses. Media companies
are just as other companies, they need money to keep the business going and they want to be
35
profitable. Doing this kind of reporting, as the one from Rwanda, is expensive and might be a
reason for why so few media companies reported on the genocide from Rwanda. Allan
Thompson worked as a journalist in Rwanda at this time and in a book he wrote he says:
“During three months of genocide […], AFP was one of the rare media outlets to speak out.
Sometimes, we were virtually the only international agency on the ground. […] Very few
media were there all the time” (Thompson, 2007, p. 160). The fact that only a few media
outlets stayed in Rwanda shows just how little it seemed to matter to the agencies. Maybe
they were not getting the attention expected of people for a crisis like this one, perhaps they
were afraid to be there, or thought they would not gain enough profit out of it. Another
possible factor was what was going on in other places of the world. In Bosnia, Gorazde was
being bombed, South Africa was celebrating the end of apartheid and holding its first
multiracial elections, the O.J Simpson case received a lot of attentions in the U.S., etc. The
Rwandan genocide, for some reason, did not seem to matter that much.
As Allan Thompson wrote in his book, most journalists are not experts in genocide.
The journalists on the ground perhaps did not realize right away that this was no normal war,
but something a whole lot bigger, he wrote: “We failed to understand that the killing was
something totally new, that this was not a continuity of what had happened before.” He then
added: “In the field, it was easy to be confused and view the massacres as a 'side effect' of the
fighting” (Thompson, 2007, p. 160). The fact that journalists did not realize soon enough that
this was no ordinary war might also have influenced the coverage of the genocide. By not
realizing the gravity of the matter and not reporting on it according to that the discourse
became that the crisis there was of little importance. In an official report of the African Union
it says this about the quantity and the nature of the coverage:
In April, May, and June, coverage was modest in quantity and simplistic in
analysis. In July, it exploded, becoming a media sensation, the lead item on
television news night after night. Throughout August, it steadily receded until
once again it disappeared forever. And of course the July story was not about
the genocide or even the war, except as they provided vague backgrounders to
the starving, suffering, cholera-ridden refugees of eastern Zaire – a perfect
story for the television cameras and for the ill-informed journalists covering it.
In the process, the reality of the genocide as one of the most gruesome events
of our time was virtually lost. (Para. 19.13)
The vast majority of the world never got to know what really happened in Rwanda, the media
somehow decided that these events in Africa were not gripping enough and worth covering
36
(African Union, para. 20.36), possibly because of the journalists’ lack of knowledge about the
matter. In the same official report, the African Union says that the general word of what was
going on in Rwanda was: “nothing more serious than a case of Africans killing other
Africans.” Then it is added that it: “was precisely the line being spun by the genocidaires in a
systematic and sophisticated campaign of disinformation shrewdly designed to disguise the
reality of the genocide” (19.12). The mass media appear to have bought this explanation
without much doubt and that may have had something to do with why the media treated the
crisis the way they did. The situation was made out as inevitable, beyond control, and outside
intervention would be pointless. The discourse of that seems to be that when it is about
Africans killing Africans it is not as important as when perhaps western people kill western
people. That kind of a discourse should not be tolerated from the media. If the media makes
this kind of a discourse the public’s discourse, things cannot be developing in the right
direction.
The Rwanda genocide did not get much attention from the media, at least not to begin
with. Looking back on the crisis, it is possible to argue that the media had quite a lot to do
with how it ended up. There were a few journalists that worked from Rwanda at the time of
the genocide. As written earlier, few journalists are experts in genocides and perhaps did not
realize soon enough that that was actually what was happening. Also, even though the
journalists did their job in reporting the crisis and provided a lot of material, the media
agencies did not necessarily publish or air those reports. A reason for why the crisis in
Rwanda was not referred to as genocide was that news agencies did not want to use the word
without caution, many news agencies have a strong policy of using these kinds of words
(Thompson, 2007, p. 160). The media definitely underestimated the situation in Rwanda. To
begin with, it may be understandable that the news media did not grasp the full extent of the
crisis, but there were plenty of eyewitnesses that were able to give information about the
genocide. For a period of three months, reports were sent directly to home governments from
Rwanda, and international agencies documented the extent of the slaughter. In the official
report of the African Union about the genocide, it said that these agencies: “made it plain that
this was no tribal bloodletting, but the work of hardline political and military leaders.” It also
said that: “the reports spelled how countless people could still be saved, identifying exactly
where they were hiding, and what steps were needed to rescue them” (para. 10.7). Although it
seemed to have been made clear to governments around the word, little as nothing was done
about the crisis in Rwanda.
37
The media set the agenda for Rwanda, although not in the right way. The media did
not portray the Rwanda crisis properly. It decided not to pay much attention and time to the
genocide, but rather to cover other stories, as stated earlier, the focus was more on Bosnia, the
elections in South Africa, etc. This fact probably impacted the public, which did not assign a
lot of importance to the Rwandan crisis. On the 12th of April, though, the main story was the
evacuation of foreigners from Rwanda and the closing of embassies there. The fact that this
was the main story and it received quite some attention may be because with that the story
was closer to the people, the story was brought home, the people may have connected to a
person being evacuated because they had the same nationality or something similar. Although
this was a story from Rwanda, the focus was never really on the genocide itself, but the
foreigners that were being evacuated. Right after this story was aired, the coverage of Rwanda
reduced and the focus went right back to other stories (Thompson, 2007, p. 160).
There are many reasons one can find for why the Rwandan genocide did not receive
the attention it should have gotten, but it is not because there was no material available.
Reporters were in the country, there were pictures available and stories were filed from there.
But as said earlier, the media business is just like any other business; they are run by the profit
motive. They need people to listen and read the news they provide in order to function. If the
people are not ready to listen and pay attention to a matter like the Rwanda crisis, they cannot
be forced to do so. If editors think the people are not interested or willing to hear some story,
they can refuse to publish the reports they get (Thompson, 2007, p. 160). It seems to be quite
apparent that the journalists did their jobs in reporting the situation in Rwanda, but the media
failed. The media set the agenda for not giving Rwanda enough coverage in the news and
thereby an important discourse. The media worked as gatekeepers and a profit machine rather
than information providers.
As said in the beginning of this chapter, the agenda setting theory is about that the
media can be the one that sets the agenda of the public mind. The media is the one presenting
people with certain stories and that presents the people with something to talk and think
about. In cases, such as the genocide in Rwanda, the media is responsible for using its power
of influence in shaping the public agenda and discourse. It should have set the agenda for a
prevention of the genocide, by making it important to the people. It had been known for a
while that something like that was about to happen and with proper media coverage the public
might have woken up and been able to do something then. The limited coverage of the
genocide may have been because of may things, they had not realized at that time the size of
38
the crisis there and the signs of a genocide were ignored. But that may have had the impact on
people that it was not that important and that they were not able to do anything to stop it.
The media ought to have acted on the information they had about the situation there.
They should have started the coverage emphasising the importance of it, shown people the
horrific crimes that were being committed there and made the people care. The coverage
should have been consistent and spoken of as it was: a genocide. If the coverage would have
been as it should have and the media would have set the agenda by making the genocide
important to the public by creating an important discourse, who know what could have
happened.
5.3.3. Compassion fatigue
Compassion fatigue can be explained as “a modern syndrome frequently attributed to media
audiences ostensibly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of reports concerning human
tragedies from around the globe.” The effect of such reports can psychologically numb
audience members into not caring anymore; hence their capacity to get involved is
undermined (Tester, 2001, pp. vii-viii).
One of the main reasons for why the media act as they do is the workings of the
marketplace. The media is driven by a profit motive and therefore it tries to anticipate the
wishes of its audience and do not cover what they think their audience will not be interested
in or bored by (Moeller, 1999, p. 311). But what also has to be remembered is that the media
abdicate great responsibility. They have a lot of access and a lot of information. The media
needs to address the causes of compassion fatigue, because compassion fatigue is a clear
signal that the coverage of what is causing it must change. The media too often cover an
international crisis as any other domestic incident such an arrest, and then the story is dropped
and the public never gets to know how the crisis turned out. The media has made a habit of
stereotyping crisis, which is one thing that leads to compassion fatigue (Moeller, 1999, pp.
313-314). Stereotyping a crisis might be done because it costs less to cover crisis in a similar
way, rather then always researching every bit of different crises independently. Another thing
is ignorance, when people do not know about the place where a crisis is happening or the
company or people involved they tend to care less. The media has responsibility to explain a
crisis in a manner that will attract the attention of their audience, and explain why the
audience ought to know what is being covered (Moeller, 1999, p. 315). Peter Herford, former
CBS news producer and vice president, said that: “You do not have to cover the story all the
time for people to understand it. You have to know when to raise it to the level of concern.
39
We can background the reader or viewer, catch them up on history if we keep a manageable
focus.” He than added: “but by flitting around the world and filling all there great barrels of
news, we create compassion fatigue. It’s just plain fatigue” (Moeller, 1999, p. 315). In order
to prevent people from suffering compassion fatigue, something has to be changed.
Compassion fatigue should not be this prominent and should by no means be allowed to
constrain the collection or the imparting of knowledge (Moeller, 1999, p. 319).
5.3.3.1. Analysis
The media may have failed badly when it came to Rwanda, but one can also argue that the
public is also at fault. When it came to the Rwanda genocide, compassion fatigue seemed to
be quite prominent. People may have been tired of all the bad news and therefore the coverage
of the genocide got little attention and was very little. People also tend to watch less
enlightening programs on the television and that might mean that in the public discourse it is
all right to care more about the less enlightening programs than the news, especially foreign
news. Looking back on the crisis from the media perspective, what they should have done was
to bring the story home. The media should have made the mass murders that were going on in
Rwanda of relevance. They should not have been afraid to use the word genocide, because by
using that word and showing people the human side to the crisis, the public might have been
more ready to act on the matter sooner. The discourse of genocide would have made it more
important. Or as Susan D. Moeller says: “We need nuanced and in-depth coverage of crisis
and we need to hear and see the human side too. The former without the latter is boring, the
latter without the former is sensationalized” (p. 321). The media has to focus both on the short
term and the long term, as they have to focus both on their own interests and the public
interest. Jaap Van Ginneken (1998) said a quite interesting statement, which is: “The rule is:
10,000 deaths on another continent equal 1,000 deaths in another country equal 100 deaths in
an outpost equal ten deaths in the centre of the capital equal one celebrity” (pp. 23-24). This
sounds a bit cynical, but is actually an everyday media reality.
It may be normal that compassion fatigue happens, but it is preventable. Knowing
when to raise concerns and highlighting a problem is important. With all the power invested
in the news media, they need to understand how to use it for the better. It is their
responsibility to provide the public with stories that have accurate information. The agenda
setting theory is good in many ways; it is that theory that should be used to prevent
compassion fatigue from happening. If people become too tired of listening to bad news, the
media has the power to change that. By changing the method of covering the matter, they may
40
be able to change how the people feel and the discourse in the everyday life. Genocide should
not pass anyone; it is of relevance and should be covered accordingly. When covering the
Rwanda genocide, the media could have prevented compassion fatigue and lack of interest.
Should the media have brought the story home, made it of relevance, and made sure that the
world knew what was going on there, it is possible that the public would have acted on the
crisis in time.
5.3.4. Rwanda analysis summary
The media obviously can have an impact on the success or failure of a crisis when it comes to
crisis communication. In the Rwandan crisis, the media mainly controlled the information
flow. The media has become one of the most important places where people seek information
about cases. As written earlier, nowadays society is becoming more and more submitted to,
and even dependent on, the media and the logic they provide. The media can set the agenda
for the public, what the media presents to the people often becomes the thing they think is
important, and think and talk about. If something is displayed as important in the media that
often becomes important to the people. People can also become tired of what the media
present them with and that can create the so-called compassion fatigue. The media has to
make sure to bring the story home and make it of relevance in order to get people’s attention.
In a crisis, such as the one in Rwanda, the media possesses enormous responsibility in
delivering information about it to the people. The media can be the one controlling
information flow in crisis situations, and with that control the media can have an impact on
the final result of the crisis. The fact that the media did not cover the genocide properly, no
matter whether the public was also at fault, may have caused a lot of people their lives, and it
may have prevented people that would have been willing to do something about it from
actually doing something about it. It is safe to say in the case of Rwanda that the media failed
in doing its job. It should have given the genocide better and clearer coverage, more time and
more emphasis. The Rwandan genocide is an example of a crisis where the media set the
agenda and failed to deliver information to the public properly.
6. Discussion
The traditional media is not anymore the only place for original reporting; today many rely on
the so-called new media for news. But what has this change in the media meant for today’s
society? News are being shared to an increasing degree on the Internet, through the word wide
web (www) and social media, such as Facebook and Twitter. Before, journalists had to hand
41
in their reports before a certain deadline; if the deadline was not reached the news would not
be published. With the new media, deadlines do not apply in the same way, everything is
much more rapid. When something new comes up the media agencies publish the news on
their web pages and then update them as new information are gathered. On the social media,
people can share their views and opinions and communicate with each other. There, people
can make a discourse about everything they care to talk about. This also applies to blogging
where people can post stories about matters they are interested in or simply just want to make
a discourse about. With the existence of this new media where deadlines do not apply in the
same way as in the traditional media, stories tend to be published without any review, or as
Rusty Foster said: “The story itself is not the final product, it’s just the starting point, because
ultimately the goal of every story is to start a discussion, to start a lot of people saying what
they think about it” (Bruns, 2008, p. 81). The quality of the story is then checked afterwards
(Green, 2010, p. 123).
In July 2011, Norway was under a terrorist attack, a car was bombed in front of
government buildings and then 69 people were killed on the island of Utøya (Breivik trial
hears how Norway massacre victims died, 2012). The news media immediately started
covering the case and made assumptions that Muslim extremists were behind the attacks
(Oslo, Norway Attacks 2011: Al-Qaeda, Muslim Extremists Involved?, 2011). Since the
newspapers had a deadline during that day when no clear evidence of who were the ones that
attacked, they published that Muslim extremists were probably the ones. But by the time the
newspapers came out many things had been cleared, such as that a blond, blue eyed,
Norwegian man was the one behind everything (A Killer in Paradise: Inside the Norway
Attacks, 2012). So one can wonder, is the old media out of date? Why still publish
newspapers that perhaps contain old information when new information can be found in the
new media?
Nowadays, the new media is important when it comes to crisis communication. By
using the new media the companies, organizations or parties involved are able to
communicate their message very quickly. Good crisis management, as discussed earlier in
this project, is also being good at communication and in relation to that knowing how the
media works. Companies or others involved in a crisis can use the new media to communicate
their decisions or actions quickly to stakeholders and generate feedback from the public. The
Internet can even help companies and organizations prepare for a crisis, they can search for
information there and create effective management strategies to detect problems before they
turn into crises (Perry, Taylor and Doerfel, 2003, p. 207). Companies and organizations can
42
also use this new media as a strategic and tactical communication tool during a crisis. In a
crisis situation, companies and organizations are often used to using responses like news
releases, news conferences, memos, fact sheets, legal advice, letters to stakeholders, etc., all
these responses can easily be adapted to computer-mediated communication and thereby the
new media. The companies can for instance publish their own already written news releases
on their web pages (Perry et al, 2003, p. 210).
The new media and the social media are not only beneficial tools for companies and
organizations, they are also a powerful tool for the public. People can post whatever they
want on those networks, and therefore it is important for companies to keep a close eye on
what is happening there. By keeping a close eye on the posts made there the companies can be
better prepared for damage control if needed. The new media and the social media can also be
powerful tools when it comes to non-organizational crises. It has already proven itself in the
so-called ‘Arab Spring’ where the public took matters into their own hands to accelerate
social protest. The protesters used Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to disseminate photos and
videos, and to reach more people (Facebook and Twitter are just places revolutionaries go,
2011). This usage of the social media raised the world’s awareness of the situation in the
Middle East, what was done there would likely not have been done without the social media.
So if the Rwandan crisis were happening today, would the coverage have been any different?
Would the people perhaps taken on the new media and social media to get something done?
In crisis management, good communication is the key to a good, or at least a better,
result. Having a good relationship with the media can be very beneficial, but today
companies, organizations or parties involved in a crisis can to a higher degree use the new
media to communicate its message. The technology is evolving and it is good to keep up with
it in order to understand how the world is evolving and more people have the opportunity to
express themselves freely. But what does that really mean for today’s society, this unlimited
access to express opinions and views? And what about the traditional media agencies, what
will happen to them as the new media progresses? Many media agencies are profit driven, is
that ok? Or should the media have more responsibility to educate, as some news agencies
already have?
It is certain that the media can have a lot of influence, and with the new media the
public can have more to say about what is dealt with and how. People should be aware of this
evolution and keep up with new things as they come along, because are new things not only
new for a just short time in the fast growing world?
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7. Conclusion
Both internal and external communication is very important when it comes to crisis
communication. In relation to the external communication, a good relationship with the media
is very important. The media has enormous power and in crisis communication the ultimate
factor of how a crisis turns out can depend on how the media portrays the crisis.
One can say ‘what if’ indefinitely, but most of the time that does not change anything
in the case being wondered about. But looking back to the past, seeing how things turned out
then with what was done or not done can possibly help with current and future cases. Seeing
how the media covered those three cases analysed in this research might be useful to know
when it comes to other cases, even though this research is not directly repeatable. One can
learn many things from how those crises turned out, how the crucial moments in them were
identified and how the information flow during them was managed. Having both
organizational crises and a non-organizational crisis made it very clear how important it is to
focus on information flow management.
From this research, it is obvious that the media can have a lot of influence in how
crises turn out. The media is able to control the information flow to the public and by that
direct people’s attention, either to where they want it or to the only point they can direct it to
in relation to the information they have. In the SAS case, the media was handled well and
controlled properly, which ultimately had a good effect on the company involved. They had a
crisis plan that enabled the company to communicate well with the media, which covered the
crisis in a good way and the company came very well out of the crisis. The company was
prone to the media and good at adapting to it, something Ford and Firestone were not. In the
Ford Firestone case, the media was handled poorly and as if there was no new media, which
ultimately had a bad effect on the companies involved. They did not do what they should have
done in the situation; they did not alter their strategy at all during the whole time and did the
wrong thing continuously, this made the media make the strategy for them, which is not a
good idea. The fact seemed to be that the companies were more interested in paying attention
to fighting with each other rather than communicating with its customers, telling them that
they would do everything in their power to find out what had happened, and making sure they
would be portrayed nicely in the media. That would have been the right way, or at least a
better way, of handling the situation, because by doing that they would have shown concern
for what had happened. They really did not give the media any reason not to handle them the
way they did. The media got their information from the trial and the customers and relatives
of the people that got hurt or died during the crisis, and that information was mainly negative.
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We can only guess that if the old media were the only one at that time with a 24 hour deadline
that Ford and Firestone would have been able to think about what to present to the media, if
they were going to do that at all. Both Ford and Firestone came very poorly out of the media
coverage, but by not communicating with the media they basically gave them no choice. In
the non-organizational crisis, the Rwandan genocide, the media set the agenda. It was a
tragedy that was never to happen, but because only a few people did something about it and
the media failed in doing their job, it turned out very badly. There is no one party that can be
called responsible for this crisis, the Rwandan government obviously started it, but there were
many others that might have been able to do something about the situation there and did not,
for example other foreign governments, international organizations, the media, etc. In these
kinds of crises, there is no one crisis manager and therefore no one spokesperson. The media
could have taken on the role as the crisis’ spokesperson and delivered stories from it. The
media has the ability to decide whether a crisis is important enough to cover, and then
influence its importance based on how much they cover it. The world did not get enough
information about what was going on there. The media was the one that should have been the
one providing the public with accurate information about the situation there, but instead of
doing that the case was much ignored and other cases received the attention. In modern
society, people depend much on the media to provide them with stories about important
things, in this case the media failed the public and the people of Rwanda. The media could
have done so much more, made the people care about the genocide and educate them about it,
that would perhaps activated the public into doing something about it at an earlier stage. But
the case seems to be that Africa does not sell newspapers and therefore many media agencies
might have decided not to cover the crisis in Rwanda; no profit no coverage.
The media has a lot of power when it comes to delivering stories with
information to the public. In crisis situations, the media can have much influence on
how a crisis is portrayed and by that it can have an effect on how a crisis turns out. In
organizational crisis, it is important for companies to do something in the crucial
moments at the start of the crisis, also to know how to deal with the media, have a
good crisis plan, or at least know how to communicate well. In non-organizational
crisis, it can be crucial that the media takes on a role of a spokesperson for what is
going on and provides the public with accurate information about the crisis, because
few other can. Big companies usually have communication experts working for
them, many even have their own journalists to make sure they can gain control when
the media wants to write something about them. Often the companies provide the
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media with written press releases and that often becomes the article the media
publishes, by that the companies can worry less about what the media will present to
the public.
The way that crucial moments in crises are identified, and the responses to
that, can have a great impact on how crises turn out. If they are identified at an early
stage, taken control of and the media is handled well, the odds are that things will
turn out nicely (example: SAS). If they are not identified clearly enough, not taken
control of and the media handled poorly, things will most likely end up badly
(example: Ford Firestone). And if a crisis is ignored and let be for a long time
without any action, things will also most likely end up badly (example: Rwanda).
Looking at these three different cases, it is possible to conclude that the media has
enormous power in providing people with stories with information. The media can
attempt to control what is said and what is not said. The companies can minimize the
crisis damage by having a good crisis management plan or some people that are good
communicators and provide the media with material to publish. When a crisis is dealt
with in a timely and honest manner the damage will be minimized and it will be
easier to regain reputation and the public’s trust. Although many times the media is
provided with information from elsewhere they are the ones that can decide what to
cover and what not. The media can have much influence on how matters are
portrayed, and in crises situations, no matter whether they are organizational or nonorganizational, the media can have an impact on how a crisis turns out, that is, the
result of the crisis.
The media business is an evolving business. Now there is not only traditional
old media, but also new media, that means that editors and journalists are not the
only ones anymore controlling what is published and what is not. The new media has
changed quite a lot in that sense; now most people have Internet access and social
media. There, anyone can publish anything they want and news do not have a certain
deadline anymore but are updated as more information are gathered. This is
important when it comes to crisis communication in modern society, where many
new places exist for a message to be delivered. Companies, organizations and other
parties have to keep up with new things as they come along to be better prepared for
when something “unexpected” happens.
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8. Perspective
A crisis is a predictable event that occurs at an unexpected time and threatens
the well being of stakeholders and stakeseekers (key publics); it challenges the
ability of the organization to enact the narrative of continuity through
constructive change to control the organization’s destiny.”
(Millar and Heath, 2004, p. 167)
In this project we argued that it is possible to minimize the damage after a crisis. We wanted
to be able to look at organizational crises differently and that is why we also chose to draw
the Rwandan case into the equation. We can learn a lot from all the three cases displayed.
Using discourse analysis throughout the project made all the parts come together, the public
discourse is coloured by the media and the media has the responsibility of creating the
discourse, the question is then if they take the responsibility. Organizations gain power over
the public discourse by taking control of the communication. They do that by realizing the
major importance of communication, hiring communication experts and by keeping a good
relationship with the media.
The theories used for this project were used to analyze the media and the crisis
communication, but also to try to give you, the reader, an idea of how important
communication is in crises situations. There can be a downside to having a crisis management
plan if the company relies too much on it and it can also be a bad idea to have a too firm
schedule telling you what to do in crises situations. The Crisis Management Model was used
in all three analyses; we looked at it as a good starting point, doing something is better than
doing nothing, as we learned from the three cases.
We also use Heath and Millar a lot in this project; their work laid the foundation for
much of our work. We decided to use them because they also rely on many different
acknowledged crisis management theoretics. We are very subjective in this project and
choosing these theoretics was subjectively made.
We chose not to have PR as a focus point in this project, but it could have been an
interesting duality portraying how the companies want to benefit from the media and the
media wants to benefit from the companies. This could be a good angle to have on a later
research to evolve the topic.
This project was an action research. We could have done more like involving the
parties written about, waited for their answers and let them contribute to the project while
writing it. This could also have been done by writing the article we published at an earlier
stage, because more opinions might have benefitted our hermeneutic discussion, but the point
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with the article was to make an implementation process for the project. As we see it, this
project is not over when the writing ends, we will continue on discussing the topic and try to
evolve our cognitions. The article and discussion about the article will help us do that. What
we wanted to do was to add to the discussion about crisis communication and the media. We
learned a lot from this project and it has provided us with valuable knowledge.
“Crisis exists when the media are knocking on your door and you would rather they were not”
(Heath and Millar, 2004, p. 2).
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