Prelims

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Communication in Uncertain Times

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Advances in Public Relations and Communication Management

Series Editors: European Public Relations Education and Research Association (EUPRERA). http://euprera.org

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Advances in Public Relations and Communication Management Volume 7

Communication in Uncertain Times: How Organizations Deal With Issues, Risks and Crises

Edited by

Sabine Einwiller

University of Vienna, Austria

Jens Seiffert-Brockmann

Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria

Stefania Romenti

IULM, Italy

And

Chiara Valentini

Jyväskylä University School of Business & Economics (JSBE), Finland

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Emerald Publishing, Floor 5, Northspring, 21-23 Wellington Street, Leeds LS1 4DL

First edition 2024

Editorial matter and selection © 2024 Sabine Einwiller, Jens Seiffert-Brockmann, Stefania Romenti and Chiara Valentini.

Individual chapters © 2024 The authors.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-83549-593-3 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-83549-592-6 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-83549-594-0 (Epub)

ISSN: 2398-3914 (Series)

List of Figures and Tables

About the Editors

Sabine Einwiller, PhD, is the Professor of Public Relations Research at the Department of Communication, University of Vienna, Austria, where she acts as department chair and heads the Corporate Communication Research Group. Before joining the University of Vienna, she was a Professor at the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany. She is a member of EUPRERA's board of directors and headed EUPRERA's scientific committee from 2019 to 2021. Her research interests comprise employee communication, corporate social responsibility, crisis communication and the effects of negative publicity and complaining.

Jens Seiffert-Brockmann, PhD, is a Professor of Business Communication at the Department of Business Communication at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU), Austria. His work is focused on the area of strategic communication, especially on the impact of digital communication on businesses, especially with regard to content management, gamification and internet memes and also strategic communication with a focus on evolutionary psychology. He has published numerous articles and chapters on these issues in established international journals in the field. He is an associate editor at the International Journal of Strategic Communication.

Stefania Romenti, PhD, is a Full Professor in Strategic communication and PR at IULM University (Milan, Italy) and Chair of the Master in Strategic Communication (English Language). She is Delegate of the Rector for Sustainability and Track Chair of Sustainable Marketing of Società Italiana Marketing (SIM), Director of the Executive Master in Corporate Public Relations and of the PhD programme in Communication, Markets and Society at IULM University. She is past President of EUPRERA (European Association of Public Relations Education and Research Association) and Director of the Research Centre in Strategic Communication (CECOMS) at IULM University. She has more than 150 publications, most of which are articles in academic management journals (i.e. Journal of Business Ethics, MIT Sloan Review) and communication journals (i.e. International Journal of Strategic Communication, Journal of Communication Management, Corporate Communication: An International Journal, Public Relations Review).

Chiara Valentini, PhD, is a Professor and the Head of Corporate Communication Discipline at Jyväskylä University School of Business and Economics (JSBE), Finland, and Adjunct Professor in Strategic Communication at IULM University, Milan, Italy. Dr Valentini is the author of numerous peer-reviewed publications and books in strategic public relations, public and government communication and crisis communication in the digital environment. Her work has appeared in several international peer-reviewed journals and she has authored and co-authored over hundreds of scholarly works. She also serves as a reviewer of several international peer-review journals and is a member of the editorial boards of leading international communication journals.

About the Contributors

Guy Bennett-Longley has a Master of Commerce (MCom) in Marketing with first class honours from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. In his master's thesis, he studied the effects of corporate philanthropy on reputation following natural disasters.

Raluca Silvia Ciochina, PhD in Communication Sciences, is a specialist in online communication. She is actively involved in researching topics such as crowdsourcing, communication in social media, digital intelligence, entrepreneurship and human resources in the digital era, information and communication technologies and online consumer behaviours. She currently teaches courses on Digital Marketing, E-business and online promotion strategies, Public Relations in the online environment and Organizational Communication at the College of Communication and Public Relations, within the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania.

Diana-Maria Cismaru, PhD in Sociology, is a Full Professor and the Head of the Public Relations Department at the College of Communication and Public Relations in the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania. She coordinated five large international and national research projects and participated as an expert in another 10 national and international research projects. She is the author or co-author of several books and more than 30 articles in the field of strategic communication, social media and education.

W. Timothy Coombs, PhD Purdue University (USA), is an advisor for the Centre for Crisis and Risk Communications. His primary area of research and consulting is crisis communication. His works include the award-winning book Ongoing Crisis Communication, coediting the Handbook of Crisis Communication, and co-writing Strategic Sport Communication: Traditional and Transmedia Strategies for a Global Sport Market. His crisis communication research has won multiple awards from professional organizations including the Jackson, Jackson & Wagner Behavioural Science Prize. He is a Fellow in the International Communication Association.

Nora Denner is a research associate at the Department of Communication, Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz, Germany. She is currently working on her dissertation thesis looking at the personalization of corporate communication and corporate news coverage. Her research interests include personalization, trust in news media and corporations and media effects.

Juliane J. Gabel is a master's student of strategic communication at Lund University, Sweden. Her academic background in media communication is focused on the Psychology of Communication and New Media. Her research interests include international strategic communication, digital communication, media effects, as well as narratives and social understanding.

Denisa Hejlová, PhD, is a leading Czech scholar and communication consultant. She focuses on research, education and practice in public relations, public affairs, trust management and fashion marketing. Since 2011, she has been the Head of the Department of Marketing Communication and PR at Charles University in Prague. Before that, she served as a Vice-dean for PR and as a PR manager at the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Denisa was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Columbia University in New York. In 2015, she published a comprehensive book about public relations for the Czech audience.

Stefanie Holzer graduated from the Department of Communication at the Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz, Germany, in 2021 with a master's degree in Corporate Communication. In her master's thesis, she researched personalization, CEO communication and corporate crises. She now works in a consultancy for corporate and brand communications.

Tereza Ježková is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, and a communication professional. She has a PhD in Media Studies. Her research interests are communication of arts and culture, visual communication and PR. Before becoming a full-time academic, she was the head of communication at the National Gallery Prague.

Yan Jin, PhD, is a Professor of Public Relations and the C. Richard Yarbrough Professor in Crisis Communication Leadership at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia (UGA), USA. She is the co-founder and director of the Crisis Communication Think Tank (CCTT) and associate director of the Centre for Health and Risk Communication at UGA. She has authored more than 100 journal articles and over 30 book chapters, as well as edited three scholarly books including Advancing Crisis Communication Effectiveness: Integrating Public Relations Scholarship with Practice and Social Media and Crisis Communication (first and second editions). She has served as guest editor for a special issue of Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication Research and co-editor for a special issue of Public Relations Review. She received the Association for Business Communication's 2019 Kitty O. Locker Outstanding Researcher Award. She is a member of the Arthur W. Page Society.

Helena Kantanen, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer of Innovation Management at Business School, University of Eastern Finland and Docent (Associate Professor) of Organisational Communication at the University of Tampere. She is a communication professional and an expert in digital pedagogy. Her research interests include organizational renewal, learning and communication in virtual communities and pedagogy in business education.

Marcela Konrádová, PhD in Political Science, works as an Assistant Professor at Charles University in Prague, Department of Marketing Communication and PR. Her research fields combine political and government communication, political marketing, personalization of politics and resulting consequences on electoral campaigns. Marcela has participated in several internships and trainee programs for organizations such as KohoVolit.eu and Demagog.cz. She was also an external collaborator at the Institute of Political Marketing and Campaigns.cz. Marcela has worked in analytical positions on international projects in Germany, Serbia, Bulgaria and other countries.

Christine Korn, PhD, is an internal communications consultant in the administration of the state government of Hesse, Germany. She earned her PhD at the University of Mainz, Germany, where she also did her master's in communication. In her doctoral dissertation, published in 2018 by Springer, she researched the reactions of employees and the role of internal communications in the case of negative news reporting about an organization.

Merja Koskela, PhD, is a Professor of Applied Linguistics at Communication Studies, University of Vaasa, Finland. Her research interests concern organizational and financial communication as well as professional discourse. Currently, she leads research projects on transparency in the reporting of state-owned enterprises and on media representations of climate-wise housing.

Petra Koudelková, PhD in Management and Economy of Companies, is an Assistant Professor at Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Marketing Communication and PR. Her fields of study comprise all SMEs, marketing, and institutional communication. Petra has participated in research projects of communication for the Czech Ministry of Education and in a project focusing on increasing the effectiveness of direct citizen invitation to screen colon, rectal, breast, cervical and other types of cancer. She is the author of many research articles and two monographs.

Daniel Laufer, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Victoria University of Wellington. He is an expert in the area of Crisis Management and has published articles in both leading academic and managerial journals. He is an Associate Editor at the European Journal of Marketing and a former Associate Editor at Business Horizons. Daniel Laufer also serves on the editorial boards of Public Relations Review and Corporation Reputation Review.

Ursula Lutzky, PhD, is an Associate Professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria. Her research interests include business communication, discourse studies and corpus linguistics. Her recent work has focused on the study of language and communication in large corpora of digital discourse, such as blogs and microblogs. Her monograph, The Discourse of Customer Service Tweets (2021), explores the linguistic and communicative features used by companies and their customers when engaging in customer service interactions on Twitter (now X) and illustrates the use of corpus linguistics for the study of crisis communication.

Katia Matijašević, Mag. Comm., is a communication professional at Demosthenes Rhetoric Academy, Croatia. She graduated from the Catholic University of Croatia with a degree in Communication Studies, majoring in Scientific Media Research and Public Relations. As a member of the winning team, she won the ‘Young Hope’ award for the best strategic communication plan organized by the Croatian Association for Public Relations.

Lucija Pranjić, Bacc. Comm., is a communications assistant at Z1 Television, Croatia. She is a master's student of Scientific Media Research and Public Relations at the Catholic University of Croatia. Through participation in various projects as a communication assistant, she has gained knowledge and experience in the field of political communication and communication in general.

Tereza Klabíková Rábová, PhD in Media Studies, is an Assistant Professor at Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Marketing Communication and PR. In 2010, she was a doctoral scholar at EHESS, Paris. Her fields of study include media, current language, media and marketing language and public and institutional communication. Tereza has participated in research projects of communication of the Czech Ministry of Education and Czech government communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. She prepares analyses of Czech television broadcasting and provides expert opinions on current public communication.

Soňa Schneiderová, PhD in Czech Language Studies, works as an Assistant Professor at Charles University in Prague, Department of Marketing Communication and PR. Her research areas are discursive analysis of media texts and culture of public communication. Soňa is the author of several publications analysing media text in terms of the appropriateness of expression to social context. She is also involved in projects analysing government communication in emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Her work also supports the media education of high school students.

Kristijan Sedak, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Communication Sciences, Catholic University of Croatia. Alongside his teaching responsibilities, he has gained extensive expertise in the field of public relations and communication through his work as a consultant, spokesperson and collaborator on various campaigns. Currently, he serves as a researcher for the project ‘Dangers and advantages of social networks: e-professionalism of healthcare professionals’.

Benno Viererbl is a Research Associate at the Department of Communication, Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz, Germany. His research interests include the relationship between journalism and public relations, crisis communication and issues management, media effects as well as corporate social responsibility.