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Thursday, November 10
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PP 195
Contesting the Meaning of Crisis: Exploring the (Dis)Connections in the Meaning of Pandemic Disease Spread
A. Diers-Lawson
1
, J. Edwards
2
1
Leeds Beckett University, Strategy- Marketing- and Communications, Leeds, United Kingdom
2
Bridgewater State University, Department of Communication Studies, Bridgewater, USA
Most research in crisis communication emphasizes the organization’s experience in the crisis – what the crisis and its response means for the organization’s
reputation (Claeys & Cauberghe, 2012; Coombs, 2006; Lyon & Cameron, 2004); how the‘public’will respond to crisis response strategies (Lee & Chung, 2012;
Liu, Austin, & Jin, 2011) the best methods to reach and influence stakeholders (Falkheimer & Heide, 2007; Oles, 2010; Seeger & Griffin-Padgett, 2010). How‑
ever, what is lost in most crisis response are the voices of those actually affected by crises; thus, for both strategic as well as ethical reasons, crisis commu‑
nication scholars should better understand the attitudes, values, priorities, and concerns of those directly or indirectly affected by crises. Because crises are
highly emotional experiences for both organizations and various publics (van der Meer &Verhoeven, 2014), it is important that we explore the connections
and disconnections that members of publics make between organizations involved in or associated with the crisis, their own relationships with the broader
issue affected by the crisis, and the meanings these experiences create for stakeholders.Thus, in the context of understanding crises in an increasingly global
environment, one of the lessons that we have learned in the last few years is that crises are increasingly. For example, pandemics like Ebola inWestern Africa
or more recently Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) emerging as a major health crisis in Asia create larger local, regional, national, and international
debates about public safety and security in our increasingly globalized world (Bacchi, 2014; Martin & Weikel, 2014; Watt, 2015). Industries connected to
travel and tourism are affected, but so are people who have never traveled to the affected regions because of the increasing ease of intercontinental travel.
If we want to understand what a crisis means, we should begin by examining peoples’interpretation of a situation that has the risk of direct implications on
peoples’ lives that live far away from the epicenter of the crisis. Therefore, the present study explores the meaning of pandemics, from the public or stake‑
holder perspective – specifically exploring the relationship between the public and the issue of health and safety by investigating issue-specific attitudes,
prior experience with pandemics or travel, personal risk perception, issue importance, and efficacy. The study focuses on immediate reactions to the crisis to
help us better understand the kinds of interpretations, concerns, and interests that people have as news of pandemics begins to spread. Moreover, as a way
of more fully exploring the meaning of these crises and to explore any (dis)continuities in these meanings, we are approaching this from both experimental
and rhetorical approaches to understanding the early days of meaning and pandemic emergence.