To Örebro University

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to extend the image repair theory by focusing on the largely ignored context of the face-to-face communication. The paper offers an exploratory study of how image repair work is carried out in interviews with politicians in the context of press conferences.

Design/methodology/approach - The paper combines theoretical reflections with two qualitative case studies of press conferences of Swedish politicians. These press conferences were held to manage the challenge posed to the politicians’ public image by the media criticism. The analytical frame employed in this study is Conversation Analysis (CA).

Findings - The way journalists act during interviews and how they pose questions have noticeable consequences for the accused actor´s image repair work. Image repair strategies like "apologizing" and "mortification" during the speech section of a press conference tend to be more effective as they give the accused greater opportunities to take control of the interaction.

Research limitations/implications - Due to the exploratory nature of this interactional approach and the fact that the analysis involves only two cases, the findings must be seen as provisional.

Practical implications - The knowledge of how journalists construct question is of high relevance for crisis communication and image repair work, and therefore of high value of public relations practitioners.

Originality/value - The interactional approach to image repair offers a new theoretical frame for the understanding of crisis management in interview situations. The approach especially highlights the importance of journalists' questions in image repair work. 

This chapter introduces a mixed-motive model for the practice of risk communication for preparedness in a pre-crisis and pre-disaster phase. Rather than describing how research is done or presenting research results from a single study, this chapter focuses on how communication practitioners can integrate the extensive, but not always congruent, body of existing communication-related risk and preparedness research, in order to understand and reflect on their risk communication practice. The model especially aims to support practitioners in creating a holistic understanding of their own ongoing or future “communication practice” with the goal of increasing society’s level of crisis preparedness and resilience.

In a mobile communication environment, people’s interactions with public emergency assistance organizations become transformed. Sociologists argue that we live in an age when fear and anxiety are increasingly evident in public discourse; this paper explores Swedish conceptions of emergency calls, in light of this trend. A qualitative study examined eight focus groups, each containing 36 Swedish citizens aged 16–71 years, concerning various uses of mobile telephony. The paper concludes that citizen mobile telephony use places great demands on the public safety answering point (PSAP). Consumer expectations are dominated by increased necessity for trustworthy and helpful interaction with PSAP operators.

In the network landscape, ICT and social media have become an increasingly important tool in the strategic crisis communicator’s toolbox. Through the possibilities presented by communication technology, new work methods for and approaches to crisis communication are also being developed (Eriksson 2009, 2011). The modern strategic crisis manager and communicator are told to look to the work models within improvisational theater for the ideal logic (see, e.g., Finch and Welker 2004). Without direction, the theater ensemble often solves a challenging task and then takes the stage with success:

”Improvisation expands participants’ abilities to perceive and reduces the need for intense and specific scripted preparation” (2004:192).  The idea is that the organization’s and the crisis communicator’s ability to improvise and to take action in a crisis can be trained much like the abilities of a theater ensemble – all in the name of finding the best work methods for a particular situation rather than following the rules, directions and plans that characterized the classic crisis communication logic. Here, instead, prevails a greater need to dare to abandon controlling plans and understand the need for a crisis organization and communication that develops in symbiosis with the particular crisis at hand (see e.g. Czarniavska 2009; Gilpin & Murphy 2006, 2008; Holder 2004; McConnell & Drennan 2006).  

Due to this development, the significance of the concept of strategy can be expected to undergo certain changes within the field of crisis communication. Perhaps strategy as a tool has even played out its role? Or is the meaning of concept simply changing? Via social media, many organizations today communicate with their surroundings in an undirected, improvisation- and situation-oriented way through which the perception of a crisis is developed in interaction with the user. Watchwords like control and steering have tended to become passé, or are at least changing. The question is how communicators’ attitudes toward previously developed crisis management plans and strategies change in such situations. What happens to the strategy logic – with its roots in the military sphere – that has so long characterized the field of crisis management when the communicator is forced to improvise to an ever-increasing degree?

The aim of this chapter is to examine the role of strategy in a digital landscape of crisis communication, where all too rigid plans and guidelines are said to risk tying the hands of the communicator. The concept of strategy and as well as its meaning are discussed (see, e.g., Gilbert et al. 1988; Liddell Hart 1967), followed by a discussion of theories concerning the phenomenon of improvisation within crisis management and communication (e.g., Carniavska 2009; Gilpin & Murphy 2006, 2008; Weick 1988, 1993; Weick & Sutcliff 2007). The study’s empirical material is from qualitative interviews with 12-16 public relations officers, marketing managers and other strategic communicators who have worked with social media in their crisis communication. The study’s main research questions are: (1) How do the fields’ communicators combine today’s possibilities for improvisation (via social media) in relation to drilled strategies, tactics, action patterns and routines? (2) How can we understand the concept of strategy in this crisis communication context?

Kommunikatörer har idag tillgång till ett allt frodigare utbud av webb, sociala medier, appar, e-tjänster och andra digitala kontaktytor som skapar nya möjligheter men också utmaningar i kriskommunikationen. Sedan tidigare finns vedertagna logiker för effektiv kriskommunikation – den ska vara snabb, korrekt, öppen, lättförståelig, samstämmig och empatisk. I denna skrift får vi följa samspelet mellan nya digitala verktyg och de vedertagna logikerna för kriskommunikation vid en kraftig explosion i ett bostadsområde i Linköping, Kriminalvårdens hantering av häktningen av artisten ASAP-Rocky, bakterier i dricksvatten i Vretstorp i Hallsbergs kommun samt coronavirus i Örebro kommun. I skriften presenteras även en arbetsmetodik för digitala kriskommunikatörer före, under och efter kriser. 

This thesis discusses the external risk communication of industrial companies. Such risk communication is here viewed as a division of the companies’ PR operations. There are some central weak points in current risk communication research. Up to now, this research has been dominated by a psychometric perspective and is to a great degree perception-oriented and lacking in a wider organisational perspective. A means for reaching a deeper understanding of the importance of organisational aspects in risk communication is to seek theoretical influences outside the traditional risk communication research. In this study, the two adjacent research areas of risk communication and public relations are thus cross-fertilised for the purpose of making such a knowledge contribution.

The aim of the study is to examine the importance of the organisational conditions for the management of risk communication as well as to study how risk communication is developed over time. This is effected in the form of a critical analysis by the productivity of Grunig’s PR theory for the risk communication field, applied on empirical findings collected from four companies in the risk management industry (Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Co., Rohm and Haas Nordiska, Preem Raffinaderi and Skandinaviska Raffinaderi). The study uses qualitative and comparative case studies, where the empirical data has been collected through interviews and document studies.

To summerise the result of the different case studies, I make the following conclusion: (1) The internal-organisational conditions are of great importance to the way in which PR and risk communication is managed and developed. (2) A more mechanical structure and authoritarian attitude towards employees and the public give primarily asymmetrical techniques, methods and strategies (3) A more organic structure and egalitarian attitude give both asymmetrical and symmetrical communication in the proactive work. (4) When development of PR and risk communication is underway, messages are changed longitudinally from being based on facts and positive arguments to more obvious offers of exchange, ethical appeals and invitations to dialogue. (5) When PR and risk communication make for higher levels on the risk communication ladder, prevailing notions and structures in the organisation are also renegotiated.

The thesis concludes that Grunig’s theory in some way is productive for risk communication, but it also points out several weak things in Grunig’s concept. Among other things, these concern the fact that the causal thinking about the link between the organisational conditions and the communicative strategies to a high degree appear as circular reasoning. The theory’s division between authoritarian and egalitarian oriented cultures is also debateable as it to a great degree only focuses on instrumental values in the organisation. Even the distinction between asymmetrical and symmetrical communication can be criticised, among other things due to vague operationalisation and its one-dimensional character.

In order to develop the organisational dimension of risk communication, a more symbolistic perspective is proposed. The symbolistic perspective signifies, among other things, a more distinct integration of the internal and the external as well as the informal (imaginary) and formal (physical) within the organisations. In addition, the symbolistic perspective reduces the importance of the causal thinking in the Grunig theory and its central distinction between asymmetry and symmetry becomes less important. Instead, the focus is increasingly on the rhetoric and symbolism with leaders, communicators and in information material etc.

This study investigated the role of social media in crisis management and crisis communication in an age where late modern, crisis management approaches argue that crisis managers have to improve their ability to improvise. A qualitative case study of Scandinavian Airlines’ use of social media highlights (1) important tensions between the classical and new approaches for the understanding and practice of crisis management and crisis communication in that context; (2) the need for new metaphors for the understanding and practice of future crisis communication within social media; (3) the need to redefine the concepts strategy in digital crisis management and crisis communication. The study suggests that the digital age, crisis manager can, metaphorically speaking, be described as an improvising real-time director. Another concluding suggestion is that effective strategy in today’s digital crisis communication landscape is more about crafting strategy, than implementing strategy.

I denna studie undersöks kommunala kommunikatörers föreställningar om sociala medier som ett verktyg i kriskommunikation. Undersökningen genomfördes med hjälp av en webbenkät som distribuerades via e-post till samtliga svenska kommuners informations- och kommunikationsansvariga i januari 2012. Enkäten innehöll 32 frågor varav 18 hade en 5 punkts s.k. linkert-skala med olika påståenden att ta ställning till rörande kriskommunikation och sociala medier. Undersökningens svarsfrekvens var 58 procent (n=169).

Studiens resultat visar att beredskapen för kriskommunikation via sociala medier bland de svenska kommunala kommunikatörerna är under stark utveckling. De sociala medierna är dock inte ännu inarbetade i majoriteten av kommunernas krisberedskaps- och kriskommunikationsplaner, men diskussionerna om en framtida eventuell användning är intensiv bland kommunikatörerna. Resultaten visar även att det är de större kommunerna som främst har arbetat in de sociala medierna i sina kriskommunikationsplaner. Trots att de sociala medierna vanligtvis betraktas som ett potentiellt dialogverktyg så ser stora delar av kommunikatörerna dem främst som ett verktyg för enkelriktad snabb spridning av krisinformation, likt ett massmedium. Tilltron till sociala medier som verktyg i kriskommunikation bland kommunikatörerna skiljer sig dock relativt tydligt åt beroende på kön och ålder. Störst tilltro till mediets potential i krissammanhang har de kvinnliga kommunikatörerna i åldern 40-50 år. Den största problematiken med att kriskommunicera via sociala medier upplevs vara det stora behovet av personalresurser.

This study analyzes explicit pieces of advice for effective social media crisis communication given by researchers in various sub-disciplines of strategic communication. The themes are identified by a systematic content analysis of peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers (n = 104) published between 2004 and 2017. Five overall thematic "lessons" are identified and critically discussed. These are that effective social media crisis communication is about: (1) exploiting social media’s potential to create dialogue and to choose the right message, source and timing; (2) performing pre-crisis work and developing an understanding of the social media logic; (3) using social media monitoring; (4) continuing to prioritize traditional media in crisis situations; and finally (5) just using social media in strategic crisis communication. These guidelines mainly emerged from quantitative research conducted in the context of the United Stated and on Twitter. There is need for more research focusing on other platforms and other empirical material. There is also a future need for an in-depth methodological discussion of how to further bridge the gap between research and practice on a global scale, and how to develop more evidence-based recommendations for strategic crisis communication practitioners.

Increasing numbers of people are spending more and more time in digital landscapes, with many still unknown consequences for crisis and emergency management. This exploratory, in-depth, qualitative interview study (N=14) explores conceptions about local and individual crisis and emergency preparedness among a small group of young adults representing the most digitally savvy generation in Sweden. The results show that the respondents exhibit a complex and ambivalent attitude to crisis and emergency preparedness issues. Considering their digital habits and skills, the respondents emphasize their own responsibility, social ties, and expectations of help from the authorities and the local community when describing how they intend to face and manage a crisis in practice. This exploratory study contributes preliminary and tentative theoretical knowledge to a highly limited body of work specifically addressing citizens’ crisis and emergency preparedness in a digitalized world.

This study presents a descriptive model approach (“additional one-way channel,” “platform and hub,” “palpus,” “networks,” “action-nets”) for the understanding and practice of strategic, on-line crisis communication. The proposed models rely on various theoretical approaches such as Gilpin and Murphy’s (2006, 2008, 2010) and Czarniawska’s (2009) theories of “classical” and “new” paradigms for the understanding and practice of crisis management and crisis communication in general. This study’s empirical material, on which the models are based and by which they are illustrated, comprises a series of in-depth interviews conducted between 2005 and 2011 with 24 Swedish strategic communication practitioners, who are experienced in the field of on-line crisis communication. Based on the study’s results and the identified models, it is apparent that strategic on-line crisis communicationis about more than just building relationships with external audiences and practicing issue management in times of crises. Therefore, this study highlights today’s and tomorrow’s interweaving of different logics and practices of strategic on-line crisis communication.

Kunskapsöversikten ger en bred bild av området kommuners riskkommunikation för krisberedskap. Översikten baseras både på den nationella och internationella forskningsarenans kunskap samt på arenan med "grå" litteratur och policydokument. 

This study presents descriptive data from the 2009 Riks-SOM, a national Swedish public opinion survey (n=1501) on trust in the Swedish public safety answering point (PSAP), 112/SOS Alarm. Of special importance in the study is the trust in light of citizens' perception of mobile phones as a "lifeline" in everyday life. The main conclusion is that vulnerable groups like citizens with foreign citizenship, citizens in the largest towns of Sweden (Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo), the elderly and people in poorer health have relatively the lowest levels of trust in 112/SOS Alarm. Another conclusion is that a rather large number of individuals, who believe that a mobile phone increases the security in everyday life to a very high degree, also seem to have very high levels of trust in 112/SOS Alarm. The study appears to be the first main public opinion survey on the issue of trust in PSAP in correlation to the view of the mobile phone as a lifeline.

Under sista åren har samhällets insatser för att informera och motivera invånarna i Sverige till hemberedskap intensifierats. Men vilka medborgare är det som engagerar sig och som väljer att ”lyssna” till de statliga kampanjerna? Resultaten i detta kapitel av den nationella SOM-undersökningen visar att många lyssnar, intresserar och engagerar sig i linje med statens önskningar. Men alla lyder förstås inte myndigheterna blint, åtminstone inte när det kommer till att se om sin fysiska hemberedskap. När det gäller nivån på engagemanget hos olika medborgargrupper kvarstår – eller möjligen förstärks – klassiska klyftor kopplade till social bakgrund, men också beroende på sådant som graden av politiskt engagemang, tillit till andra människor samt exempelvis förtroendet för myndigheter. De individer som ofta bedöms ha bättre förutsättningar i grunden för att möta samhällskriser utan samhällets hjälp, är också de som visar de jämförelsevis högsta engagemangsnivåerna i den statliga hemberedskapsdiskursen, i de oroliga kampanj- och kristiderna.

I denna pilotstudie presenteras och analyseras statistik och användardata från kommunala webbsidor samt några andra digitala kontaktytor vilka informerar och kommunicerar om risk, beredskap och kris. Undersökningsmetoden som används och testas är webbanalys. Pilotstudien är genomför i samverkan mellan DURCOM-projektet vid Örebro universitet och Örebro kommun. 

This mixed-methods study presents a comparative analysis of the use and perceived usefulness of Facebook and Twitter, among Swedish citizens and crisis communication professionals, as crisis communication tools and information sources. The use and per-ceived usefulness of Facebook and Twitter are not congruent and consistent betweenthe two different groups, according to the overall study. Communication professionals, for example, report higher levels of perceived usefulness regarding Facebook’s potential as a crisis communication tool than do the citizens. Taken together, the results show that researchers (within social media and crisis communication) and crisis managers both need to deal with the fact that social media is not a homogenous phenome non with a single coherent role in crisis management and communication research and practice.

Denna rapport undersöker vad som utmärker medborgarengagemanget i hemberedskap efter inledningen av Rysslands fullskaliga anfallskrig, samt hur ett aktivt förhållningsätt till hemberedskapsfrågor i kampanjsammanhang formas i de oroliga tiderna. Rapporten är en del av avrapporteringen från forskningsprojekt Nya förutsättningar för hemberedskapskampanjer? Projektet har genomförts vid Örebro universitet.

In managing and communicating crises, the responsibilities of government far exceed those of private organizations. This chapter is therefore taking a closer look at the ability of public organizations to handle a crisis. This chapter introduces frames for public administration and public communication management as a starting point for the understanding of public organizations’ practice of crisis communication. It also pays attention to how the emergence of networks and use of social media affect public organizations’ crisis communication. From these viewpoints, the chapter presents both practical and normative challenges for future crisis communication work in public organizations, 

The study aims to explore government agencies' social media use. Inspired by the notion of mediatization, we ask whether it is possible to find traces of a corresponding emerging social media logic with the propensity to challenge established organizational practices and processes. In doing so, we use a modified framework originally developed by Van Dijck and Poell which identifies key three characteristics of social media logics: programmability, popularity, and connectivity. We conducted a qualitative interview study using an abductive and hermeneutist-inspired methodology. The empirical material consists of 21 interviews with representatives of Swedish government agencies. The findings reveal patterns across the organizations studied which can be understood as an emerging social media logic. Regarding connectivity, the social media logic causes agencies to spend resources on channels that engage relatively few people who are already favorably disposed toward the agency, despite government agencies’ obligation to communicate with citizens at large. Programmability refers to agencies’ increased communicative and image-building power. Finally, popularity leads agencies to engage in more personalized communication, which includes exposure of individual employees as well as use of informal communicative styles. Taken together, these categories have important ramifications which risk jeopardizing agencies’ legal and normative foundations.

Using the Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (RVA) as a lens, this study examines the making of risk communication in Swedish municipalities by comparing two central professions in this work, safety and communication. Sweden's decentralised responsibility for risk preparedness means that municipalities are given a central role in promoting increased preparedness among residents and local actors. However, there is little guidance on how to organise the work and how to coordinate between the different professions involved. Municipal officials are tasked with developing strategies to implement national policies, including conducting and communicating RVA. The study is comparing two central professions in Swedish municipalities' risk communication, safety, and communication, to analyse their views on central tasks and perceptions of their practice. The theoretical approach is based on risk communication and institutional theory, and the empirical material consists of an interview study with both safety and communication officers (N = 36). The findings reveal that while both professional logics are active in municipal risk communication, interactions, and negotiations between them are somewhat limited. The organisational structure of the RVA favours the logic of safety officers, which has implications for how risk communication is made in practice. The article concludes by discussing what effect this may have on preparedness.

The potential devastation that a nuclear accident can cause to public health and the surrounding environment demands robust emergency preparedness. This includes gaining a greater knowledge of citizens' needs in situations involving radiation risk. The present study examines citizens' attitudes to a remediation scenario and their information and communication needs, using focus group data (n = 39) and survey data (n = 2291) from Sweden. The focus groups uniquely showed that adults of all ages express health concerns regarding young children, and many also do so regarding domestic animals. Said protective sentiments stem from a worry that even low-dose radiation is a transboundary, lingering health risk. It leads to doubts about living in a decontaminated area, and high demands on fast, continuous communication that in key phases of decontamination affords dialogue. Additionally, the survey results show that less favorable attitudes to the remediation scenario-worry over risk, doubt about decontamination effectiveness, and preferences to move away from a remediation area-are associated with the need for in-person meetings and dialogue. Risk managers should thus prepare for the need for both in-person meetings and frequent information provision tasks, but also that in-person, citizen meetings are likely to feature an over-representation of critical voices, forming very challenging communication tasks.

Land remediation is an important part of restoration measures after a radioactive fallout containing long-lived fission products such as 137Cs. In this multidisciplinary study, we focused on three main issues related to remediation of contaminated urban areas. First, we assessed how much decontamination contributes to reducing resident radiation exposure and how much this reduction depends on the timing of implemented measures. Second, we calculated direct and indirect costs of decontamination in an industrialized country such as Sweden. Finally, in a survey study, we considered reactions of Swedish citizens to being given the hypothetical option of moving to a site decontaminated after radioactive fallout and how this predicted response might influence the design of contingency plans. The main findings are that clean-up operations must be done within the first few years after a fallout to contribute significantly to reducing residual dose. If conducted within 1-2 years, large-scale decontamination can, on average, avert 20-200 manSv per km2 residential area and unit ground deposition of 137Cs (1 MBq). The estimated direct costs (in 2020 purchasing power) would amount to 100 million Euro per km2 decontaminated residential area (comparable to Japanese estimates after the Fukushima accident), generating 39,000 m3 of radioactive waste on average, mainly in the form of 137Cs-contaminated topsoil. In our survey study of 2291 Swedish respondents about their willingness to return to decontaminated homes, women, families with resident children, and high-income earners exhibited more skepticism about returning, even if authorities were to deem it safe. The demographic pattern in attitudes was similar to that found among evacuees in the Fukushima prefecture after 2011. We conclude that predefined ranges of measured 137Cs ground deposition can be used as guidance for rescue leaders in the early post-accident phase in long-term planning for affected areas. This planning should include timing and intensity of decontamination measures, duration of evacuation, and risk communication to citizens. Because some citizens expressed both high risk perception and risk aversion, however, timely and dialogic communication is unlikely to limit a shift after the incident to an older and more male-dominated population composition. There is a risk that those who can afford to do so will move away, whereas people whose wealth is locked in property (houses or businesses) will feel stuck. Perceptions of unfairness may fray the social fabric and complicate resettlement, which in some cases may mean inefficient outlay of decontamination costs. We believe that the issue of monetary compensation to affected residents requires priority in future work.

Responsibility awareness is a vital component of several countries’ crises preparedness policies. In recent years there has also been a formal shift in responsibility, from state level to regional and local levels, as well as to households. The shift is emphasized in risk communication activities targeted at the citizens. However, even with the close connection between risk communication and responsibility for risk prevention and preparedness measures, surprisingly little is known about the relationship between communicating responsibility, and the effects on responsibility awareness and self-preparedness. The aim of the study is to identify how citizens’ reception of responsibility messages concerning a crisis event, influence how residents view their own responsibility awareness and self-preparedness intent. In our study we selected a cyber-crisis scenario as a case to prepare for. A post-test only quasi-experimental cross-sectional survey research design conducted on data collected from 3395 survey participants of the Citizen panel revealed that the responsibility messages with the government taking almost all the responsibility, does not lead to a decrease in the citizens’ own responsibility awareness, and that a responsibility message with shared responsibility but also a message where the citizen is left to their own devices, both lead to an increased own responsibility awareness. However, neither of the responsibility messages lead to an increased self-preparedness intent.