2. Table of Contents
What is a Crisis
Event?..........................................................................................................3
Crises Choices
………………………………………………………………………………………
…………………….4
Purpose of Your Research
………………………………………………………………………………………..
5
Apply Two Frameworks to Your Search
………………………………………………………………..6
Consider How a Crisis Can Spread
3. What is a Crisis Event?
A crisis event is an unexpected or unplanned situation that leads to
accusations of wrongdoing against a business or organization.
The crisis event you choose for this project will do both of the following:
1. Include an event or action (something that happened) that lead to a
serious crisis for a business or organization.
2. Generate considerable attention in popular media and that was not
handled well by the business or organization.
You will choose your crisis based on the list of crises listed on the next slide.
4. Crises Choices
For your P4 White Paper, choose one of the following crises to research,
analyze, and write about.
• Lululemon Body Shaming (2013)
• Fyre Festival (2017
• Adidas Surviving the Boston Marathon Email (2017)
• Girl Scouts’ Tweet about Amy Coney Barrett’s Confirmation (2020)
• United Airlines Dragging a Passenger Off the Plane (2017)
5. Purpose of Your Research
After you have chosen a crisis event, you will need to conduct research to gather, organize, and analyze
the communication surrounding the event as it unfolded over time.
The purpose of your research will be to write a white paper (type of report). Your audience is public
relations professionals who are interested in your analysis of how the organization or business
communicated about their crisis.
The goal will be to explain the nature of the communication that was generated by the crisis, how it
affected the business or organization, and how ineffectively the business or organization responded to it.
In addition, you will be coding some data you collect (more about that later in this slidedoc).
Because this focus is a rhetorical analysis, your sources, of any type, will be considered primary source
material.
6. Apply Two Frameworks in Your Search
A framework is a method you will use to gather source data and organize it.
• One framework you will need is chronological because a crisis event
unfolds over time.
• The other frame you will need is a scholarly approach. To decide that
frame, go to the scholarly articles in BbLearn, read the “Overview of
Scholarly Articles” and decide which model you will use. You will read your
scholarly article your model is based on later in the Project.
7. Consider How a Crisis Can
Spread
As you conduct this phase of research, consider how a crisis can spread to affect
more than one business, organization, or person. Here are two examples:
• Food Network star Paula Deen’s crisis event led to a cancelation of her popular
cooking show and the loss of jobs and millions of dollars for her business: Paula
Deen Enterprises, Inc.
• When the video of NFL Running Back Ray Rice hitting his fiancé and knocking
her unconscious in an elevator went viral, it led to widespread allegations of
domestic abuse in NFL and the failure of this organization to address the
problem.
8. Gather Excerpts from These Types of
Sources
The business or organization’s response to the crisis event such as news releases, media interviews, apology
videos, etc.
• Articles by journalists reporting on the crisis event and the business or organizations responses in news and
magazine websites - both serious and tabloids.
• Editorial / Opinion Responses to the event found in news and magazine websites, blog posts, and fan or
advocacy sites.
• Depending on the nature of the crisis event, you may need excerpts from government responses it at the
national and/or state level.
• Visual material about the event such as screenshots of tabloid cover pages, cartoons, photographs of the event
(as in an environmental disaster) etc.
• Reader response comments to the above.
9. How Many Sources?
Depending on the nature of the crisis event, you may not find all types of the
sources listed on the previous slide. You want to choose a wide variety that
represents the communication surrounding the crisis event.
Your instructor will give you additional guidance about how much source
material you need throughout the project.
