اکتشافات بیشتر ارتباطات پس از بحران: اثر رسانه ها و استراتژی های پاسخ در برداشتها و اهداف

Crisis communication represents a rapidly growing body of research and is seeing an increased use of experimental methods. However, the experiments have relied exclusively on print stimuli resulting in little knowledge of channel effects on crisis communication. This study evaluates the effects of different response strategies and media channels on respondents exposed to a crisis. The study used a 2 (crisis response: sympathy and compassion) × 2 (media: print and video) design. We selected two similar response strategies that could differ in terms of the additional cues provided by video. Results revealed virtually no meaningful difference between the use of video versus print or sympathy versus compensation.

Following calls in the literature on crisis communication (Ahluwalia, Burnkrant, & Unnava, 2000; Dawar & Pillutla, 2000; Dean, 2004), research has moved beyond case studies to experiments designed to assess systematically how people perceive crisis situations and crisis response strategies. Increasingly, experimental research is being used to explore how people perceive crises, how crisis response strategies affect stakeholder perceptions, and how these factors shape perceptions of organizations in crisis and potential future interactions with these organizations (e.g., An & Cheng, in press; Arpan & Roskos-Ewoldsen, 2005; Coombs & Holladay, 1996; Dean, 2004; Huang, Lin, & Su, 2005). The experimental crisis response research has used print media almost exclusively for the crisis response stimuli. Many people do receive their news about organizations in print form. However, more people receive their news from television than from print (Audience, 2008). We increasingly live in a visual culture. This raises the question of whether or not the research has missed an important channel effect. It is possible that video presentation of crisis response strategies may have a different effect on stakeholders than print presentation. The primary purpose of this study is to explore if people respond to the same crisis response strategy differently in print verses video delivery conditions. This article discusses the rationale, execution, and results of the video and print crisis response study.