The kidnapping and murder of Steven Sotloff is one of the most horrific examples of brutality against a journalist in memory. Sotloff was captured in 2013, ending up in the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. After remaining in captivity for over a year, Sotloff was executed in September 2014 by beheading a month after another captured journalist, James Foley, was also beheaded. Since Steven Sotloff’s loss, his parents have supported Hostile Environments and Emergency First Aid Training (HEFAT) for young aspiring journalists not unlike their son. The original presentation of this keynote was enhanced by two videos, one describing the HEFAT training, and the other interviewing a recent GJS/2Lives Memorial Scholarship training graduate explaining how he used the skills he learned to survive an attack by drug traffickers in northern Mexico, including applying first aid to his wounded producer who survived.

Presented as a response to the keynote speaker at ICRC 2020, this essay considers the communication ethics implications to crisis communication informed by the work of philosopher Hannah Arendt and communication scholar Ronald C. Arnett.

Public admissions of personal or professional misdeeds, followed by apologies by high profile individuals and organizations are strategies and tactics of image restoration when a reputation is damaged. Although the ritual of an apology is an expected societal norm sometimes, they can make matters worse. Apology is effective depending on the offense, the place, time, language, tone of apology and if the recipient of the apology is willing to accept it. Another important element is the cultural factor. Apology that does not adhere to perceived cultural norms may not be received positively; thereby worsening the crisis situation. In 2018 and 2019, three incidents, the arrest of two young black men in a Philadelphia Starbucks, the off-duty police killing of Dallas resident Botham Jean and the police killing of Atatiana Jefferson of Fort Worth, captured national and international attention and had all the elements of the use of apology rhetoric. This essay examines, based on media reports, why the rhetoric of apology was acceptable in one case, somewhat acceptable in another and not at all acceptable in the other.

Understanding and trust are major goals of the internal communication in general. In a crisis situation with its inherent uncertainty and lack of time their importance is elevated to a new level. The crisis communication theory lacks a cultural contextualization and a long-standing tradition for including the influence of organizational culture. The purpose of this study is to enhance the understanding of corporate culture as a key factor for internal crisis communication and its effectiveness. It investigates how the visible and less visible levels of culture manifest themselves in the internal crisis communication practice and identifies organizational culture patterns that support or impede understanding and trust.

This research task examines crisis communication strategies of police organizations acting as spokespersons, subsequent negative public perceptions of police organizations, while attempting to understand how external and some internal variables, particularly, human processes of emotions and behaviors of police officers, victims of violence and minority groups, might contribute to negative crisis outcomes, as described in the regenerative crisis model, as the crisis becomes more prevalent and persuasive through media framing.

Data security breaches are an increasingly common problem for organizations, yet there are critical gaps in our understanding of how different stakeholders understand and evaluate organizations that have experienced these kinds of security breaches. While organizations have developed relatively standard approaches to responding to security breaches that: (1) acknowledge the situation; (2) highlight how much they value their stakeholders’ privacy and private information; and (3) focus on correcting and preventing the problem in the future, the effectiveness of this response strategy and factors influencing it have not been adequately explored. This experiment focuses on a 2 (type of organization) x 2 (prior knowledge of breach risk) with a control group design. Findings suggest that perceptions of competence is the most important factor influencing outcome variables like behavioral intention and social responsibility evaluations.

Three years after Hurricane Maria, rural municipalities of Puerto Rico find themselves as vulnerable as before the category 4 storm dwindled the Island’s resources. The town of Aguas Buenas is among the rural municipalities struggling to prepare for the next natural disaster. This pilot study provides a plan for activating the community with the purpose of forming the first community emergency management team (CEMT) in coordination with local officials. Through in-depth interviews with the people living in Aguas Buenas, the study presents a situation analysis followed by recommendations on how to train the community leaders and turn the crisis into an opportunity for collaborative engagement.

This research analyzed the messages that both the Government of Uganda and the National organization of persons living with Hepatitis B use to communicate to at-risk populations in order to enable them take up the vaccination against Hepatitis B. Content analysis was carried out on two electronic fliers circulated from the ministry of health’s program in charge of Hepatitis control and treatment, and one hard copy flier from the National organization of persons living with Hepatitis B. The study assessed how the publications made use of the IDEA concepts of internalization, distribution, explanation and action in getting the audience to take up the vaccination against Hepatitis B. The findings are relevant to information, education and communication message initiators in the health sector, as they underline the importance of clear messages, distributed in various channels and available in many languages.

Much of the early research in crisis management and crisis communication centered on the core competencies of crisis response: why do we need to plan for crises; what are the stages of effective crisis planning; what theoretical perspectives are helpful to scholars and practitioners; and what are the steps of an up-to-date crisis plan. Delineation of these core competencies goes on. Among these competencies, the crisis stage meriting the least attention arguably is post-crisis, the critical days and weeks immediately following the formal resolution of the crisis. Research attention has often focused on recovery and learning, positioning the organization for the future. Another critical component of effective crisis response merits further study. In these days of black swan crises that take a huge toll on organizations and their communities, more focus is needed on building individual, organizational, and community resilience to destructive crises. While resilience can be best measured in the post-crisis phase, this assessment should lead to new efforts to educate and prepare individuals, organizations, and communities for the new threats to come. This research proposes strategies for building resilience to strengthen organizational and community response when confronted by major crisis events.

Risk communication includes safety messages to reduce the likelihood of hazard and increase the likelihood of reliability. Hunter’s education in the state of Texas uses safety messages to reduce fatal or injurious incidents and to promote a positive image of hunting as a safe, leisure sport. Analysis of Texas’ hunters education training materials and messages related to safety reveals that safety messages construct an image of hunters as practicing safety first, conservationists, ethical, law abiding, and other-oriented. Given Texas safety record, much is to be learned about safety messaging that adopts a positive or ideal image that the trainee identifies.

Reducing hospital acquired or associated infections (HAIs) is a national public health priority. HAIs pose risks to patients, visitors, and medical personnel. To better understand how to communicatively manage safety in medical isolation, data was collected with nursing students simulating medical isolation in a high-fidelity simulation with a medical mannequin with C. difficile. Observations of nursing students and faculty revealed four distinct communication practices: social support, patient education, humor, and storytelling. Conclusions include recommendations to intentionally design these communication practices into high-fidelity medial isolation simulations and scale up these communication practices in routines of safety.

Controversial ad campaigns from companies such as Nike have suggested that “any publicity is good publicity.” This case study of a controversial 2019 advertising campaign by Peloton, where one its ad not only was critically panned, but resulted in Peloton losing nearly $1 billion in market value. The case shows that not only was Peloton tone deaf about the message the company is putting out there, it defended itself by insulting its consumer base.