Are Crisis Communicators Practicing What We Preach?: An Evaluation of Crisis Response Strategy Analyzed in Public Relations Research from 1991 to 2009

Elizabeth Johnson Avery, University of Tennessee - Knoxville

Abstract

Quantitative content analysis is used to evaluate crisis response strategy analyzed in more than 18 years of research published in crisis communication literature in public relations to reveal its effectiveness, nature, and contextual application. Analysis of 51 articles published in 11 different journals using two dominant theories in public relations crisis communication literature, Benoit's Image Restoration Theory and Coombs’ Situational Crisis Communication Theory, indicates a lack of diversity in cases analyzed by scholars, gaps between theory and practice, and pressing directions for future research in crisis communication.