1. Crisis Communication
Muhammad Rawaha Saleem
MS Fall 2018
Department of Media & Communication Studies
Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences
International Islamic University Islamabad

2. What is Crisis?
A crisis is any event that is, or is
expected to lead to an unstable and
dangerous situation affecting an
individual, group, community, or whole
society.
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3. Types of Crisis in
Organization
 Natural Disaster
 Technological Crisis
 Confrontation
 Organizational Misdeeds
 Workplace Violence
 Rumours
 Terrorist Attacks
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4. Threats caused by Crisis
 Damages Public Safety
 Financial Loss to Company
 Company’s Reputation Loss
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5. Causes & Effects of Crises
 Unsafe Conditions, injuries or deaths of a
worker will result in financial and reputation
loss of the company.
 Reputation loss will have a financial impact
on the organization.
 Management’s failure to understand the issue
or public opinion on it.
 Failure to effectively engage the media
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6. Crisis Communication
Crisis communication is a sub-
specialty of the public
relations profession that is designed to
protect and defend an individual,
company or organization who is facing
a public challenge to its reputation.
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7. Stages of Crisis
Communication
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8. Phases of Crisis
Communication
• Tackle a crisis
or disaster in a
calm way.
• The focus has to
shift on
rebuilding, which
can be time-
consuming and
expensive.
• Test the crisis
management
team by creating
mock crises.
• A well-laid-out
plan helps the
management to
minimize any
damage that
may occur.
Prevention Preparedness
ResponseRecovery
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9. 5 C’s of Crisis Communication
 Competence
 Credibility
 Caring
 Capability
 Commitment
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10. Competence
 PR professionals appear unsure and
tentative, since they don’t have facts or
information.
 Competence of PRO based on how they
convey the message during media interviews.
 PRO should prepare confidently to showcase
their competence.
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11. Credibility
The best way to gain credibility is to
concede an obvious point.
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12. Commitment
The PR Professional need to express
the deep commitment to communicate
with the general public, media and
other stake holders.
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13. Caring
 PR professional should demonstrate caring
attitude towards the crisis and the victims of
the crisis.
 The public will be more worried about the
victims of the crisis.
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14. Capability
PRO should be capable of resolving
the situation or solving the problem.
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15. Key Principles of Crisis
Management
 Be sympathetic & apologetic
 Manage information flow
 Manage crisis team to focus on the event
 Assume the worst case scenario
 Have a trained spokesperson
 Resist the aggressive approach
 Understand why the media are here
 Remember all audiences
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16. Nine Steps of Crisis
Response
1
2
3
4 5
6
7
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Response
Cycle
Verify
Situation
Conduct
Notification
Conduct
Assessment
Organize
Assignment
s
Prepare Information
and Obtain
Approvals
Release information to
media, public, partners
through arranged channels
Obtain Feedback and
Conduct Crisis Evaluation
Conduct Public Education
Monitor Events
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17. Theories in Crisis Communication
Research
 Image Repair Theory
 Situational Crisis Communication Theory
 Social Mediated Crisis Communication
Model
 Integrated Crisis Mapping Model
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18. Image Repair Theory
 William established image repair theory (IRT)
based on apologia studies.
 IRT assumes that image is an asset that a
person or an organization attempts to protect
during a crisis.
 When the person or the organization is
attacked, the accused should draft messages
to repair its image.
 Response strategies the accused should
apply during a crisis which include: deny,
evading responsibility, reducing
offensiveness, corrective action, and
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19. Situational Crisis Communication
Theory
 Timothy Coombs started working on SCCT in
1995.
 SCCT assumes that crises are negative
events that stakeholders attempt to attribute
responsibility.
 Coombs believes crisis managers can
employ different crisis strategies according to
different crisis types.
 SCCT is an audience-oriented theory which
focuses on stakeholders’ perceptions of crisis
situations.
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20. Social Mediated Crisis Communication Mode
 SMCC model is introduced to investigate
crisis management in online context.
 The model first explains how the source and
form of information affect response selections
and then proposes crisis response strategies.
 The model argues that five factors influence
an organizational communication during a
crisis: crisis origin, crisis type, infrastructure,
message strategy and message form.
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21. Integrated Crisis Mapping Model
 Jin, Pang and Cameron introduces integrated
crisis mapping model to understand
stakeholders’ varied emotion during a crisis.
 ICM assumes that people keep interpreting
their emotions during a crisis.
 Another line of crisis communication research
focuses on stakeholders’ emotional changes
in times of crises.
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22. Thanks for Listening
Any Question?
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