Public Relations and Crisis Communication

Crisis communication examines how organizations, governments, and institutions convey information during emergencies—whether a natural disaster, a corporate scandal, or a public health outbreak—and how those messages shape public trust and behavior. As social media has compressed the time between an event and its public interpretation, researchers are studying how platforms like Twitter and Facebook alter the flow of authoritative information, amplify rumors, and open new channels for two-way dialogue between organizations and affected communities. A central tension in current work is whether "dialogic" communication—genuinely listening and responding to stakeholders rather than broadcasting pre-packaged messages—actually improves outcomes, or whether institutional constraints consistently push organizations back toward one-way control. Researchers are also asking how reputation damage accumulates and recovers across crisis cycles, and what structural features of an organization's communication strategy predict its credibility when the next emergency arrives.

Works

86,354

Total citations

545,960

Keywords

Crisis CommunicationSocial MediaPublic RelationsDisaster ManagementStakeholder EngagementEmergency Response