To Örebro University

Purpose: Organizational trust is often professed to be communication-based, yet organizational research rarely provides methodological frameworks exploring how orientations to trust are articulated in communication. This paper therefore aims to help unpack how positions on trust are articulated in qualitative, conversational data in away that can be useful for future qualitative research into organizational trust.

Design/methodology/approach: The study contributes methodologically by introducing an untapped resource, appraisal analysis, and applying it to focus groups evaluating the pandemic response in Scandinavia.

Findings: The analysis suggests that the emphasis of previous research on rational justifications of trust, commonly via assessments of ability, integrity and benevolence, leaves unexplored stances on trust that are taken more straightforwardly with potential effects on power relations. The study draws attention to suchalternative ways of realizing trust/distrust, with the concepts of simple-assertive evaluation and prescriptive evaluation, which still empower (or oppose) organizations and leaders. In addition, the study disentangles some of the “messiness” of qualitative data by demonstrating how stances on organizational trust involve activity-, agent-, and results-centered evaluations, as well as mixed evaluations.

Originality/value: Through the suggested analytical framework, common challenges with qualitative data, involving ambiguities regarding power, agency and overall dilemma-ridden situations, can be dealt with better. It thereby offers methodological fine-tuning that enables a more exhaustive analysis of trust as acommunication-based process. 

During a pandemic, the advice issued by public health authorities undergoes significant scrutiny, potentially affecting public adherence to recommended measures. Trust and trustworthiness become key. This book analyses the rhetorical strategies of the Norwegian public health authorities as the COVID-19 pandemic moved through phases that presented different rhetorical problems and challenges. Many consider the Norwegian response successful, making it a particularly interesting case. Adopting an organisation-focused viewpoint, the analysis examines communication strategies through a dataset collected as the pandemic evolved. This included observations within communication departments of the main public health agencies during March and April 2020. The study offers five key insights: 1) A pandemic rhetorical situation has changing constraints and opportunities that influence the agency of the rhetor and necessitates bottom-up, continuing situational analysis and attention to perceptions; 2) The notion of “the rhetorical situation” conceptualises different phases that “bleed” into each other; 3) Trust and trustworthiness are negotiated through specific rhetorical strategies; 4) Transparency is the most crucial strategy; 5) Authorities used a combination of invitational rhetoric, providing a role for the citizens to willingly contribute to curbing the virus, and imperative form through simple directives that citizens were expected to follow.   

The primary audience for this book is scholars and practitioners within crisis communication. The book is written by a team from the “Pandemic Rhetoric” project, financed by the Research Council of Norway, consisting of Øyvind Ihlen (University of Oslo), Sine Nørholm Just (Roskilde University), Jens E. Kjeldsen (University of Bergen), Ragnhild Mølster (University of Bergen), Truls Strand Offerdal (University of Oslo), Joel Rasmussen (Örebro University), and Eli Skogerbø (University of Oslo). 

This chapter introduces a governmentality approach to issues of risk and safety, and carves out an analytical framework that combines it with appraisal analysis. From the perspective of governmentality, responsibilisation is the social process whereby actors assign/assume various moral duties that benefit governing purposes. Institutions and organisations are also increasingly trying to involve and motivate people to manage risk themselves and thus ‘partner’ with them in large-scale tasks of improving health and safety. Appraisal analysis can help demonstrate how actors evaluate risks and safety measures and how they assume or resist positions of responsibility. The analytical model proposed more specifically aids an examination of how actors appraise (a) what are risks and what should be protected; (b) safety measures spanning collective and individual protection (or lack thereof ); and (c) safety measures spanning behavioural prompts and risk elimination. Choices along these dimensions stand in a dialectical relationship to certain pervasive, global discourses of risk governance. Focus group discussions on a nuclear power plant (NPP) accident scenario are analysed, for which state agencies plan to recover contaminated neighbourhoods. The analysis shows that an enduring inconsistency in the policy of governing risk through the logic of recovery and individualised responsibility is a risk mitigation strategy that requires that the risk be considered tolerable by those who are to face it – a condition that is met only partially. It is therefore likely that such a policy will be met with resistance in the event of a nuclear accident, as it was after the Fukushima Daiichi disaster.

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.

This chapter examines how leading politicians and representatives of the public health authorities in Scandinavia attempted to create consent for their strategic choices to adopt or refrain from collective prevention measures, such as border and school closures, when such measures became relevant in the region in March 2020. It thus also concerns the broader strategic choices of the administrations in their attempts to curb or stop Covid-19. Based on a strategy-as-practice perspective, the chapter assumes that strategies are not artefacts that organisations only possess, but they are shaped, consolidated, and made public communicatively. The analysis of statements from press conferences shows how strategies are shaped communicatively through claims regarding a number of themes: economic consequences; the validity of epidemiological measures; secondary public health effects; the issue of risk severity (and in the Swedish case, natural immunity); and risk management history. The chapter also highlights the pragmatic arguments used and the dialogicality involved when a particular strategic choice is made viable through the presentation of alternatives. The chapter thus helps to bridge a gap between major response choices facing national and agency leaders on the one hand, and on the other, numerous micro-level communication efforts facilitated in part through press conferences.

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.