Crisis Communication in Public Organisations: Dimensions of Crisis Communication Revisited

Research on crisis communication has traditionally focused on private organisations' reputation and blame avoidance strategies. As a result, there is limited knowledge on crisis communication from the perspective of public organisations. This is troublesome as public organisations have substantial responsibilities for preparing, communicating and managing large‐scale crisis events. In order to be able to better conceptualise public organisations' crisis communication, a typology based on communication aims and orientations is introduced. According to the typology, public organisations engage in two dimensions of crisis communication: reputation‐oriented vs. resilience‐oriented and strategic vs. operational. These dimensions are illustrated and discussed by empirical examples from the Queensland floods of 2010/2011. The paper ends with a discussion on how to understand these dimensions of crisis communication in relation to public organisations' priorities, processes and practices.     

Blog Functions as Risk and Crisis Communication During Hurricane Katrina

Blogs were examined during the 2 weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. city of New Orleans to better understand what risk and crisis communication functions they served. The 4 major functions—communication, political, information, and helping—included both filtering and linking about rescue needs and efforts, missing persons, ways to offer and find assistance, fostering community, and providing information on damage and government response. A thinker function was fulfilled where bloggers expressed opinions, especially on government response. An additional function not previously delineated was identified, which might be termed emotive or therapeutic. In addition, several of the blog functions indicate the role the Internet plays in maintaining a sense of community in times of crisis.     

Facebook and Twitter in Crisis Communication: A Comparative Study of Crisis Communication Professionals and Citizens

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 perceived usefulness of Facebook and Twitter are not congruent and consistent between the 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 phenomenon with a single coherent role in crisis management and communication research and practice.     

Multicultural Crisis Communication: Towards a Social Constructionist Perspective

Crisis communication is a field dominated by case studies and is lacking of systematic knowledge and theoretical framework analysis. Functionalist and objectivist perspectives have dominated the field even though there are exceptions. This may be one reason why multicultural approaches to crisis communication, increasingly relevant in contemporary society, are very few and undeveloped. The aim in the article is to give a critical analysis of research that has been done on crisis communication as well as intercultural public relations and develop a different theoretical framework. We propose the use of ethnicity, focusing collective cultural identity as dynamic, relational and situational in crisis theory and practice. Ethnic differences seem to escalate during crises. Media use and access are also discussed. A Swedish survey shows, among other things, that people with a foreign background read mainstream newspapers more seldom than average Swedes, but that the access to Internet and mobile phones is very high. Based on a social constructionist epistemology, the article ends with four proposals for future research and practice in multicultural crisis communication: (1) audience‐orientation – focusing sense‐making, (2) a proactive and interactive approach – focusing dialogue, (3) a community‐focused approach – focusing a long‐range pre‐crisis perspective and, (4) an ethnicity‐approach towards intercultural communication.     

A Critical Evaluation of Crisis Support Arrangements in a UK Local Authority

This article explores crisis support work in a UK local authority and identifies significant issues for management and practice. It is based upon three elements: a detailed search of relevant literature; analysis of official guidance; and fieldwork with crisis support workers, their managers and other professionals in partner agencies. The latter was based upon 44 interviews and the observation of key meetings over a 3‐year period and includes a review of Crisis Support Team deployment at three major incidents between 2004 and 2007. Crisis support practice had much to commend it in terms of preparation, continuity, flexibility and proactive engagement with other agencies. Deployment to a wide range of ‘minor’ incidents was valuable in maintaining skills, motivation and inter‐agency familiarity between major incidents. On the other hand, significant and sometimes serious issues emerged in terms of capacity, inter‐agency communication and co‐ordination and fragmentation of overall incident response.     

Revisiting Institutional Resilience as a Tool in Crisis Management

Although institutional resilience is generally considered a desirable attribute in crisis management, many of our assumptions about its value are culturally based. The subject should be revisited because the most adaptive institutions tend to be those associated with statist coercive systems, especially in the developing world. The characteristics of resilient institutions and the factors promoting resilience are addressed here by reference to police systems in sub‐Saharan Africa. The conclusion drawn from the resultant discussion is that there is no simple hierarchy of values or goals in crisis management, that institutional manageability is only partly related to the skills and goals of the participants, and that the most significant factor facilitating resilience is an institution's fulfilment of a function or role considered useful by a government or regime.     

Is Crisis Management (Only) a Management of Exceptions?

This paper revisits the concept of crisis within the field of crisis management and puts forward a series of avenues for building a theory of crisis that is in closer relation with the mainstream of organization theory. We suggest that if crisis management still limits itself to the analysis of exceptional situations, it might never go beyond the sphere of exception management and will for a long time remain an isolated discipline with little room for innovation and progress. As an alternative we analyze crises as a process of incubation that starts long before the triggering event. This proposition implies revisiting other related notions that have seldom been discussed by authors: first the status and place of the triggering event that should be viewed both as a fault line and a hinge between a degenerative organizational past evolution and a future of change; second, the temporality of a crisis so as to extract it from the urgency it is traditionally associated with; third and contrary to authors who see in the crisis a collapse of meaning and of sensemaking, we analyze it as a surge of meaning that fosters organizational change and transformations.     

做好会议报道贵在创新

新闻报道,贵在创新,关于会议新闻报道方式的创新尤为重要。必须在传播理念转变上下功夫,本文作者根据多年的工作实践,从多角度阐述了关于改进会议报道的几个观点。不照搬会议新闻主题,精准提炼新闻点;找出实质内容,突出关键人物,运用直接引语,综合分析;另外还要大胆进行舆论监督。为了加强论点的说服力作者还将自己的实际工作经历运用到文章中,即使文章可信、客观又生动准确。     

大数据在通信网络规划中的运用

目前移动通信业务在我国的发展呈上升趋势,我国的人口基数较大,相关的用户数量较多,这在一定程度上导致相关的数据量十分庞大。传统的通信网络规划已不适用于当前的通信需求,所以加强大数据在通信网络规划中的应用十分重要。基于此,本文探讨了通信网络规划的重要意义和发展现状,分析了大数据在通信网络规划中的作用以及面临的问题,提出了大数据在通信网络规划中的应用措施。     

在TCP/IP网络中主机的"隐身"通信

1 引入 在网段192.168.0.0/24中(如图1),如果主机DATA的IP地址配置为100.0.0.5/24,则本网段中的其他主机将无法和它通信,其他网络中的主机也无法找到它。这样主机DATA就隐身在网络之中了。如果希望只有某些特定的主机(例如 MASTER)才能和它通信,则可以通过主机路由表设置以及NETBIOS名字解析设置来实现。     

Communicating with Key Publics in Crisis Communication: The Synthetic Approach to the Public Segmentation in CAPS (Communicative Action in Problem Solving)

The purpose of this study is to identify and understand key publics and their communication behaviours in crisis communication, using the public segmentation framework which has been rarely used in crisis communication. In doing so, the study quantitatively tests a new theoretical framework of Communicative Action in Problem Solving, classifying eight types of aware and active publics. Through the new framework of public segmentation, the survey results from 1,113 participants substantiate eight types of active and aware publics, as well as their communicative characteristics in a crisis situation. The study finds that the aware and active publics are, as the key publics, more likely to have negative behavioural intentions toward an organization. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

中速数字(IDR)通信

本文介绍了目前卫星通信网络中主要通信方式之一——中速数字(IDR)通信技术。着重介绍了各次群的复接方式,简单地介绍了数字倍增及多址技术。     

Improving Communication in Crisis Management by Evaluating the Relevance of Messages

Efficient communication is a major challenge for emergency responders during crisis management. Reports show that missing information and information overload are important factors that determine the success of crisis management. We propose a method as basis for a software system that improves text or voice‐based communication. Communication is split into segments and the system determines from the content of the communication, the tasks of actors and their locations for which responders in the crisis the information is relevant. The system is tested on data recorded at a fire fighting disaster management exercise and found to be accurate enough to be useful.     

Painful Steps of Progress from Crisis Planning to Contingency Planning: Changes for Disaster Preparedness in Turkey

Excessive losses in natural disasters in Turkey are, to a large extent, a consequence of omissions and deficiencies in the structuring of ‘disasters’ and ‘development’ laws, as well as negligent land‐use practices and avoidance of control in building processes. Two extreme forms of legal and organizational structures in disasters policy could be formulated as the ‘fatalist’ and ‘self‐reliance‘ models. Their contrasts can be investigated in terms of (a) the use of information concerning natural phenomena in formal planning procedures; (b) pre‐ or post‐disaster emphasis in preparations; (c) the political or technical basis of decisions; (d) the extraordinary or routine nature of responses; (e) the general or specialized nature of financial sources used; (f) and their compatibility with the order of priorities in risk management. An evaluation of the conventional policy in Turkey clarifies a position closer to the ‘fatalist’ model and indicates the lines of action for improvements. However, after the 1999 earthquakes, the conventional approach in disaster policy has been restructured. With the newly introduced ‘Obligatory Building Insurance’, ‘Building Control’, and ‘Professional Proficiency’ systems, greater emphasis is now given to mitigation efforts, and the introduction of contingency planning practices is more likely to happen.     

数据通信设备中协议软件研发的经验与思考

该文从研发一个数据通信设备的角度,提出了数据通信设备中协议软件研发所要考虑的关键环节,并给出了一些实践经验的总结。