The role of crisis history in Situational Crisis
Communication Theory:
A content analysis of media coverage and press releases about two
Boeing crashes.
Jasper Schrage 11040106 Master’s Thesis
Master’s programme Communication Science
Graduate School of Communication Dr. Pytrik Schafraad
University of Amsterdam 28-01-2020
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Abstract
The purpose of this study is to further explore the impact of crisis history as assumed by the Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT). This is done by executing a content analysis of press releases by Boeing and newspaper articles about two deadly airplane crashes in 2018 and 2019. These crashes provided an excellent case to study the role of of crisis history in SCCT, as the type of airplane that crashed and circumstances of the crashes were the same. Press releases were analyzed for changes in the used crisis response strategies, while newspaper articles were analyzed for the level of attributed responsibility to Boeing. Results showed that Boeing used diminish strategies the most in their press releases after both crashes, which was partly in line with the recommendations of the SCCT. As expected, the attribution of responsibility for the crashes to Boeing increased significantly in newspapers after the second crash. These findings are a first empirical confirmation of the assumed effect of crisis history on the attribution of responsibility.
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Introduction
In the literature about crisis communication Coombs’ (2007b) Situational Crisis
Communication Theory (SCCT) is a commonly referred to framework (Claeys, Cauberghe & Vyncke, 2010; Claeys & Cauberghe, 2014; Jeong, 2009; Ki & Brown, 2013; Kim, Avery & Lariscy, 2009; Ma & Zhan, 2016). The framework has been a useful one, as it covers a lot of ground relating to the role of communication on the impact an organizational crisis can have on the organizational reputation.
An important part of the SCCT (Coombs, 2007b) is the attribution of responsibility for a crisis by stakeholders. This means the level to which stakeholders hold the organization accountable for the crisis. According to this framework, this impacts the organizational reputation after the crisis. The strategy used by the organization in responding to the crisis is of importance for the organizational reputation as well (Coombs, 2007b). Using the right response strategy could be seen as damage control by minimizing the harm of the crisis. What the most effective strategy is, is determined partly by the level of attributed responsibility by stakeholders.
Next to these two variables in the process, the crisis history an organization has, is presumed to be of influence on the organizational reputation as well. The crisis history of an
organization is whether or not an organization has been involved in similar crises in the past. SCCT assumes that when an organization has a longer crisis history, stakeholders are
expected to attribute more responsibility for the next crisis to the organization.
This part of the SCCT has been hardly studied empirically however, as it is hard to cover in a research design. When conducting an experiment, it is hard to create a crisis for an
organization and create a crisis history on top of this as well. And when using cases taken from practice, for instance in a content analysis, it will be hard to single out crisis history as
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the reason for a potential increase in the attribution of responsibility. When the crisis history is made up of very different crises, it can very well be the case that the change in attribution is due to a change in the severity of the crisis, instead of a history of crises.
On the 10th of March, 2019 a Boeing 737-MAX airplane crashed shortly after take-off in Ethiopia, leaving no survivors. This was the second time in only six months that this
relatively new type of plane crashed shortly after take-off. The first one crashed on the 29th of October, 2018 in Indonesia, leaving no survivors as well. These two crashes with the same type of airplane resulted in a serious crisis for Boeing. The Boeing 737-MAX was even grounded worldwide, meaning it is not allowed to fly until Boeing has fixed the problems the plane has.
It offered a unique opportunity to look deeper into the effects of crisis history in SCCT. As the two crashes are very similar and in a relatively short period of time, there is a clear crisis history. This makes it more probable that potential changes in the attribution of responsibility are due to the crisis history, instead of other factors. It will also be of use in showing if and how an organization’s response to crisis changes when there has been a similar crisis before. This leads to the following two research questions:
1. How did newspaper coverage after the second crash differ from newspaper coverage after the first crash in terms of attribution of responsibility?
2. How did crisis communication by Boeing after the second crash differ from crisis communication by Boeing after the first crash?
While the SCCT (Coombs, 2007b) does not explicitly mention the role of media in the attribution of responsibility, it is decided to look at newspaper coverage for this study. This is done because newspapers have an agenda setting role in society. Next to this, newspapers
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have been shown to regularly discuss the causes of problems (An & Gower, 2009; Feindt & Kleinschmit, 2011).
The main addition of this study to the current literature is the focus on crisis history. As stated this subject has been hardly studied in practice and therefore there is only limited information about the impact available (for example: Jeong, 2009). The Boeing case presents the
opportunity to compare communications before and after crisis history. By using both media coverage and Boeing’s own communications in this study, the impact of crisis history on both sides can be shown. The results could be a start for more research into the subject of crisis history and the impact it may or may not have.
The research will be of practical relevance to communication practitioners working for organizations in situations of crisis. As the attribution of responsibility is an important factor for choosing the right response strategy (Coombs, 2007b), having knowledge about the role of media in this will help practitioners in shaping their future press releases, especially in
organizations with a crisis history.
Theoretical Framework
Situational Crisis Communication Theory
The main theory this study is based on, is Coombs’ (2007b) Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT). This theory shows how an organizations reputation can be protected from the damage caused by an organizational crisis, via the attributions stakeholders make about the responsibility for the crisis. The SCCT is partly based on attribution theory (Weiner, 1985, 2010), a theory about how people determine the cause of events by attributing responsibility using three dimensions.
The attribution of responsibility plays a major part in the SCCT (Coombs, 2007b) as well. Attribution of responsibility means that stakeholders blame the organization for the outcome
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of an event (based on Shaw & Sulzer, 1964) or see it as partly accountable for a crisis and its consequences. Stakeholders attribute a certain level of responsibility for a crisis to the organization, leading to different levels of threat to the organizational reputation and ultimately leading to changed behaviour towards the organization. This attribution of
responsibility for a crisis is partly based on the presence of earlier crises the organization may have had, the so-called crisis history (Coombs & Holladay, 2002; Coombs, 2007b), but the severity of the crisis and previous reputation of the organization play a role as well (Coombs & Holladay, 2002). An important note is that it is the perception of responsibility by
stakeholders that matters. If they perceive an organization as responsible for a crisis, this poses a threat to reputation, regardless of whether the organization is actually responsible or not. The crisis history and severity of a crisis are very much at play in the Boeing case, where the same type of plane crashed twice with no survivors.
Based on the level of responsibility attributed, a crisis can be put in one of three crisis clusters (Coombs, 2007b), or one of four types of crisis (Coombs, 1995). As the clusters are more commonly referred to, these will be used here as well. When an organization is barely
attributed any responsibility, the crisis falls in the victim cluster. This means that stakeholders see the organization itself as a victim of the crisis as well (Coombs, 2007b). The next cluster is the accidental cluster, in which organizations receive minimal attributions of responsibility. Here the organization is considered to play a role in the cause of crisis, but it’s perceived as unintentional or something out of control of the organization (Coombs, 2007b). The cluster with the highest level of attributed responsibility is the preventable cluster, where the crisis is perceived as being the result of intentional wrong behaviours by the organization. The
reputational threat posed by the crisis is the highest when the most responsibility is attributed to the organization. This means that reputational threat is the highest for a crisis in the
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preventable cluster and the lowest for a crisis in the victim cluster, while a crisis in the accidental cluster matches with a moderate level of reputational threat (Coombs, 2007b). SCCT then states that organizations should use a crisis response strategy matching the level of attributed responsibility. The crisis response strategies are assumed to mediate the effect of attributed responsibility on the reputational threat (Coombs, 2007b). By using the right response strategy, the negative effect on reputation should be reduced. As the crisis clusters are based on the amount of attributed responsibility, the response strategy clusters are based on the level the organization accepts responsibility. When the organization perceives that stakeholders attribute higher levels of responsibility for a crisis to the organization, a response strategy accepting more responsibility is recommended (Coombs, 2007b). The denial
strategies are meant to be used when no responsibility is accepted, the diminish strategies are used when minimal responsibility is accepted and when an organization uses rebuilding strategies, they accept full responsibility. The specific strategies and response strategy clusters Coombs uses, differ per article (1995, 2007b; Coombs & Holladay, 2002). Later on, the different strategies will be explained more thoroughly.
Crisis history, the attribution of responsibility and the right response strategy are all important in the end, because they are assumed to have an effect on reputation (Coombs, 2007b) and on the behaviour of stakeholders towards the organization (Coombs, 2007a).
Although the SCCT poses several assumptions (Coombs 2007b), it is based on prior research about organizational reputation, communication and Attribution Theory (Weiner, 1985). Next to this, it has been shown that severity of the crisis plays an important role in the attribution of responsibility (Coombs & Holladay, 2002), as well as in the reputational perceptions of stakeholders (Claeys et al., 2010), which is very relevant to this specific Boeing case. But overall, results of research further testing (parts of) the SCCT have been mixed, as some research supports response strategies being effective (Claeys & Cauberghe, 2014; Kim et al.,
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2009; Ma & Zhan, 2016), while others oppose this effectiveness (Claeys et al., 2010; Ki & Brown, 2013).
Attribution Theory
A big part of the SCCT is based on Attribution Theory by Weiner (1985), which states that people always want to know the causes of events. Especially in case of negative events, as it helps people to be prepared for future ones (Weiner, 1985). Attribution Theory is originated in psychology, where it is a theory concerned with the causes of emotions and motivations (Weiner, 1985). Coombs (1995, 2007b) altered it to be used in the setting of organizational crises. Using it for the attribution of responsibility, but also for the negative impact of this on emotions and eventually the organizational reputation (Coombs, 2007b). This link between the attribution of responsibility and organizational reputation, mediated by emotions, was confirmed by Choi and Lin (2009), showing the usefulness of attribution theory in practice. In attribution theory, the perceived cause of an event, whether it succeeded or failed, is determined by three dimensions: the causal locus, causal stability and causal control (Weiner, 1985, 2010). These dimensions don’t need to be factually right, it is about perceptions people have. The locus is about whether the cause of an event is internal or external to the actor (Weiner, 1985, 2010). For this, it is important to determine which actor is looked at, as this might change the internality or externality of the cause. In this case, the actor would be Boeing.
The second dimension, stability, is about the occurrence of the behaviour. It could be that the events are caused by stable behaviour, or that they are caused by temporary, unique
behaviour. When the behaviour is temporary, there is hope that the situation will be better, while stable behaviour could lead to feelings of despair, as there is no reason to believe things will change (Weiner, 2010). Coombs (1995) linked the stability dimension explicitly to
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performance history in the SCCT, what later became crisis history (Coombs, 2007b). As it becomes clear that when there is a crisis history, the behaviour seems to be more stable, than when there is not a crisis history.
The dimension of control is about whether the cause of an event was controllable by someone. At a first glance, this might look close to the locus dimension, as an external cause is not controllable by the actor. But for this dimension it is about the controllability of an event, regardless of the locus dimension (Weiner, 1985, 2010). The weather would be an external, uncontrollable cause in the case of the Boeing crashes, while faults made by the pilots would be an external, controllable cause, as the pilots could have fixed their mistakes.
Klein and Dawar (2004) have shown the usefulness of these dimensions in an organizational context. They showed how the three dimensions of attribution, locus, stability and control, were all predictive of the blame people put on a brand. Next to this, they also found that blame had a significant impact on the brand evaluation people made, a concept very close to the organizational reputation. Following above definition of the attribution of responsibility as people putting blame on an organization, this makes it reasonable that these dimensions play a role in the attribution of responsibility to Boeing as well.
Crisis History
The concept of crisis history from the SCCT, comes very close to the dimension of stability (Weiner, 1985, 2010). Crisis history is an important part of the SCCT, as it increases the chance of responsibility attribution, negatively impacting the reputation (Coombs, 2007b). Although there is little research about the impact of crisis history in the context of the SCCT, there is research indicating the role of crisis history is indeed as assumed by Coombs (2007b) (Greyser, 2009; Jeong, 2009; Klein & Dawar, 2014; Sisco, Collins & Zoch, 2010).
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As mentioned above, Klein and Dawar (2014) found that the stability dimension of attribution theory impacted the attribution of responsibility negatively. When a crisis has happened before, this indicates a certain stability in the negative behaviour of the actor, in turn
negatively impacting the attribution of responsibility. This is what is expected following the SCCT as well (Coombs, 2007b). Other research has also shown how people attribute more responsibility to a company for a crisis, when they were told that the company previously performed poorly in other contexts (Jeong, 2009), which is closely related to the stability dimension of Attribution Theory as well (Weiner, 1985, 2010). Although these results are not specifically about crisis history, they show the importance of prior actions by an organization. That behaviour of an organization is important for their reputation, becomes clear from
Greyser (2009) as well. He relates it to the concept of a reputational reservoir, meaning that a reputation can take damage when there is a reservoir, but when there has been a lot of
negative behaviour, the reservoir will be emptied already. Relating this to the SCCT
(Coombs, 2007b), this means that using the right response strategy will again fill up (part of) the reputational reservoir. This shows how crisis history is a twofold concept: there is the previous crisis itself, but the handling of that crisis by the organization as well. With the reputational reservoir, Greyser (2009) clearly links the concept of a crisis history to a
worsened reputation, again indicating the importance of crisis history. This link is also made by Coombs (2007b), albeit mediated by the attribution of responsibility.
Next to this, it has been shown that things prior to a crisis play a role in the attribution of responsibility or the organizational reputation after the crisis. Other prior factors impacting this are for instance relationships (Brown & White, 2010), CSR history (Kim & Yang, 2009; Klein & Dawar, 2004; Vanhamme & Grobben, 2009), and previous reputation (Claeys & Cauberghe, 2015; Greyser, 2009). While none of these are closely related to crisis history as such, they are closely related to its precursor, the stability dimension of Attribution Theory
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(Weiner, 1985). They show the effect of prior factors in the attribution of responsibility for a crisis and the reputation after a crisis.
Relating to the role of media, the tone of a story about a crisis involving the Red Cross was more negative, when the story mentioned previous crises involving the Red Cross (Sisco et al., 2010). This shows how crisis history does not only matter for the stakeholders themselves, but also impacts the coverage of a crisis in the media. Next to this, an item of the
responsibility frame was used in over 90 percent of news stories about crises (An & Gower, 2009), showing that media are very used to attributing responsibility for crises in their coverage.
These results and the SCCT make it reasonable to expect that something as directly linked to a crisis as the crisis history will impact the attribution of responsibility as well. Furthermore, research by Sisco et al. (2010) and An and Gower (2009) makes it plausible that this increased attribution of responsibility will show up in news media coverage of the crashes as well. This all leads to the following hypothesis:
H1: Due to crisis history, newspapers attribute more responsibility to Boeing for the second crash, than they did for the first crash.
Response Strategies
To reduce the reputational threat resulting from a crisis, Coombs (2007b) recommends the use of the right crisis response strategy. Depending on the level of attributed responsibility, he prescribes different response strategies to be used in communication about the crisis. When an organization is attributed more responsibility by their stakeholders, organization should accept more responsibility for the crisis in their communications. Following the strategies used in the 2007 article, he distinguishes three crisis response strategy clusters: denial, diminish and rebuild.
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The denial strategies are to be used when there is almost no attribution of responsibility by the stakeholders. When using these strategies, the goal is to take over the crisis frame and to remove the relation between the organization and the crisis. The underlying idea of this strategy is that an organization cannot be damaged by a crisis if it is not connected to it (Coombs, 2007b). Denial strategies are attacking the people who claim that there is a crisis, denying the existence of a crisis or scapegoating other people or groups for the crisis. Due to the severity of the event, these strategies would not be recommended to be used by Boeing (Coombs & Holladay, 2002).
When there is a minimal attribution of responsibility by stakeholders and no crisis history, the diminish response strategies are most fitted to be used for communications (Coombs, 2007b). They are designed to downplay the seriousness of the crisis or to explain how the cause of a crisis was out of control of the organization. This aspect of diminish strategies is closely related to the control dimension of attribution theory (Weiner, 1985). Excusing is a diminish strategy, in which the organization minimizes their responsibility by denying the intent or by arguing they had no control over the cause of the crisis (Coombs, 2007b). Another diminish strategy is justification, where the organization tries to convince the stakeholders the damages are not as bad as they think.
Rebuilding strategies are mend to be used when the attribution of responsibility is high to very high (Coombs, 2007b). In this case it is better to repair the reputation and to take
responsibility for the crisis. In terms of the reputational reservoir (Greyser, 2009), these strategies would refill the reservoir. Compensating victims of the crisis with money or other goods is a rebuilding strategy an organization can use (Coombs, 2007b). Another rebuilding strategy is to offer full apologies for a crisis as organization and to ask the stakeholders for forgiveness (Coombs, 2007b).
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While these strategies and when to use them are very clear in theory, practice shows different. Organizations don’t always use the response strategy they should use when following the SCCT (Cooley & Cooley, 2011; Kim et al., 2009). Practitioners know and understand the theories, but they find them too abstract in practice, are constrained by managers and legal issues or hope to keep the crisis internal (Claeys & Opgenhaffen, 2016). But on the other hand, the use of response strategies is at least partly effective in reducing reputational damage (Claeys & Cauberghe, 2012, 2014; Claeys et al., 2010; Ma & Zhan, 2016). For that reason, Kim et al. (2009) noted that there was a clear gap between theory and practice regarding the SCCT.
In this case, the attribution of responsibility for the second crash is expected to be higher, due to an established crisis history with the first crash. Following the SCCT (Coombs, 2007b), Boeing would be expected to use different response strategies to cope with the reputational threat after the second crash. After the first crash, the crisis could be seen as part of the accidental cluster, while it very likely moved to the preventable cluster after the second crash, due to crisis history and the very high similarity between these two crashes (Coombs, 2007b), resulting in different appropriate response strategies.
To explore the gap between theory and practice (Kim et al., 2009) in a case with crisis history further, the following hypotheses are based on Coombs (2007b), as results will then clearly show if and where practice differs from theory:
H2a: After the first crash, Boeing used more diminish strategies in their press releases, than they used denial and rebuild strategies.
H2b: After the second crash, Boeing used more rebuild strategies in their press releases, than they used denial and diminish strategies.
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Method
To answer the research questions, a content analysis was executed. A method best suited to analyse the press releases and newspaper articles. Next to Boeing’s own press releases, articles from The Seattle Times, The New York Times and The Washington Post were used. A census sample was used, meaning that every unit was coded. This was done because it was possible that the response strategies and attribution of responsibility differed greatly between units of analysis.
Sampling
The sampling for this research was twofold, as it looks at two different types of content. Starting with the newspaper articles, the sample consisted of articles from three different American newspapers. American newspapers were chosen as Boeing is an American
company. Because of that, it is a logical match to use articles from the same country as where the press releases are made. Articles from two of the most important newspapers were
included in the sample, namely those from The New York Times and The Washington post. The Seattle Times was chosen as a third newspaper, as Boeing was founded in Seattle,
Washington. Because of this, there are still Boeing factories in Seattle, making it an important employer in the region. This makes the crashes and groundings of the airplanes more relevant to people in the area, which is expected to be reflected in the coverage in The Seattle Times. The articles from The New York Times and The Washington Post were accessed using Nexis Uni, while the articles from The Seattle Times were retrieved from their own online archive. The airline of the crash and its flight number were used as search terms, as crashes are commonly referred to by the combination of airline and flight number. For articles after the first crash this meant that the search term was “Lion Air Flight 610” and for those after the second crash this resulted in “Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302” as search term. As these search
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terms were about the specific flights that crashed, it was not necessary to include Boeing as part of the search term. By using these specific search terms, it was made sure that the articles were closely related to the crisis and not to other Boeing related news, such as the launch of a new plane.
Articles were used from the date of the crash to two months after the crash. A period of two months was chosen as it was believed that the articles during this period would be still closely directed to the crashes itself. The articles about the first crash were used from the 29th of October, 2018 to the 29th of December, 2018, and articles about the second crash were used from the 10th of March, 2019 to the 10th of May, 2019. In Nexis Uni the double articles were grouped, to only keep the different articles in the sample. In total, this resulted in 162 articles from the three newspapers.
Regarding The New York Times, these procedures resulted initially in 24 articles after the first crash and 60 articles written after the second crash. The corrections of articles were also included in this and were not coded. Next to this, some articles in the results were so-called briefings, stating the headlines of that days’ most important news. These briefings were only included when they had ‘Boeing’, ‘Lion Air’, ‘Ethiopian Air’, ‘Indonesia’ or ‘Ethiopia’ in the title of the briefing. When that was the case, there would be more information about the crash in the briefing than only a headline, making it important to code. When this was not the case, the briefings were left out of the sample, this resulted in a sample of 19 articles after the first crash, and 52 articles after the second crash.
The search terms and dates resulted in 10 articles from the Washington Post after the first crash and 17 articles after the second crash. In these results, there were no articles like the corrections or briefings as were in The New York Times. As no articles were excluded, all 27 articles were coded.
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Lastly, 12 articles were found in The Seattle Times after the first crash, and 39 articles after the second crash. From these results, one article was excluded because it was a full article about a baseball game, which mentioned one of the victims of the second crash. Because this was very irrelevant for this research, it was excluded. In the end, this resulted in 50 articles coded. In total 148 articles from three different newspapers were coded using the codebook. Next to the newspaper articles, press releases by Boeing itself about the two crashes were used as well. These press releases were retrieved from Boeing’s own Newsroom, using the search function it has. Similar to the newspapers, the flight numbers were used as a search term here, as they are a common way of referencing to a case. In this case only the numbers itself were used, as there was only one logical reason these would be used in press releases by Boeing itself. The search terms then were ‘610’ for the first crash and ‘302’ for the second one. Again similar to the newspaper articles, a period of two months after the crash was used. These search terms resulted in 3 press after the first crash and 11 press releases after the second crash. As it was a census sample, 14 press releases were coded using the codebook.
Operationalization
Coding the attribution of responsibility in newspaper articles, as presumed in H1, was based on Attribution Theory (Weiner, 1985). This is different from the often used framing scale by Semetko and Valkenburg (2000), measuring the attribution of responsibility in news media. But as SCCT (Coombs, 2007b) is rooted in Attribution Theory (Weiner, 1985), using this theory as basis for the measuring instrument enhances the internal validity.
As Attribution Theory is based on three causal dimensions (Weiner, 1985), three questions were used to determine the attribution of responsibility in newspapers. One question for each causal dimension. The first question determines the locus of control, by looking at whether Boeing or some other person or group was mainly referred to as the cause of the crash in the
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article. If Boeing is mainly referred to as the cause, this puts the locus of control at Boeing. When Boeing is seen as the locus of control, they are attributed more responsibility for the crisis than when the locus of control was someone other. When answered other, another question would specify which other person or group was mainly referred to as the cause. The next question was based on the causal stability concept (Weiner, 1985). It was focussed on how the crash was described in newspapers, as a single event or as part of a bigger problem with more problems to be expected. For instance, when the newspaper article reflected on the relation between the first and second crash, it was described as part of a bigger problem. When this was the answer to this, it shows that it is seen as more stable behaviour, meaning that the attribution of responsibility is higher.
The last question was concerned with the controllability of the event. When an event is perceived as controllable, the attribution of responsibility is higher than when it is not considered controllable. That is why this question’s focus was whether the article described the crash as caused by something controllable or not controllable. For this question it was specifically instructed that it did not necessarily need to be controllable by Boeing itself, as this would then also relate to the locus of control dimension. By keeping the third question purely focussed on the controllability of the crash as portrayed by the newspaper, it kept the dimensions more separated.
All three questions about the attribution of responsibility had a ‘not mentioned/unclear’ answer option as well. Because a newspaper article doesn’t necessarily refer to every dimension of the attribution of responsibility, this option was needed. In the data file, this answer category was merged with the low attribution answer for each question (‘other cause of crash’, ‘one time accident’ and ‘not controllable’). This was done, because making these answers missing values, would skew the results in favour of high attribution of responsibility. By keeping these answers included, the results are kept closer to reality. Because when a
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causal dimension is not mentioned in the article, this means there is less attribution of responsibility. So, by including these answers in analysis, the results will reflect this.
After these three attribution related variables were recoded into having only two options, they were added together. This resulted in an index of the attribution of responsibility in newspaper articles ranging from 0 (no attribution) to 3 (high attribution). Results show that in 51 articles the attribution was at the highest level, equalling 34.5% of all articles. In 20.3% of all articles there was no attribution of responsibility at all.
Coombs’ (2007b) crisis response strategies were used as the basis for the part of the codebook that was used to code the press releases. While H2a and H2b focus on the response strategy clusters, the codebook made use of the separate strategies. This is done because the separate strategies are all part of the clusters and are more focussed on how the strategy would be applied in practice. The three crisis response strategy clusters consist of seven strategies in total. The codebook contained a statement for each response strategy, that could be answered with either yes or no, meaning that strategy was present in the press release. Each statement had to be answered for every press release, as it was possible multiple response strategies were used in one press release. The statements were kept very close to the descriptions by Coombs (2007b), mostly stating ‘Boeing’ instead of ‘crisis manager’ and often supplemented with coding instructions.
Crisis History
As this research is based on the assumption that crisis history plays a part in news coverage and in organizational communication, the codebook included a question about the mentioning of a prior crisis. This was done to check if history actually played a role in the coverage and organizational communication, or if it was not mentioned at all. There was indeed a strong relation between the mentioning of a prior crisis and the moment of publishing for the press
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releases (Cramer’s V = .70; p < .01). Of all press release published in the two months after the second crash, 81.8 % mentions the first crash. While no other prior crisis was mentioned in the press releases after the first crash.
In newspaper articles, there is a very strong relation between the mentioning of a prior crisis and the moment of publishing (Cramer’s V = .82; p < .001). Of all newspaper articles published after the first crash, 97.6 % does not mention any prior crisis. Of the articles published in the two months following the second crash, 84.1% mentioned the first crash somewhere in the story. Next to that, in 3.7 % of the articles published following the second crash mentioned the first crash as well as another prior crisis involving Boeing. From this, it can be concluded that crisis history is indeed acknowledged by newspapers as well as by Boeing itself, in line with expectations. Making it plausible that found changes in the responses or attribution are the result of the crisis history.
Intracoder Reliability
Because the content analysis was executed by only one person, intracoder reliability was tested instead of intercoder reliability. To do this, a subset of the sample units was coded again by the same coder at a different moment, to see if they were still coded in the same way. The full sample was coded in the second week of December, and the sample to test the
intracoder reliability was coded on the 27th of December. By leaving two weeks between the two times of coding, the analysis will show whether the codebook was used in the same way again, making it more reliable.
To test the intracoder reliability of the questions regarding the attribution of responsibility in newspapers, a random sample of ten percent of the original sample of newspaper articles was used. As the newspaper articles were gathered using different archives and search terms, this meant ten percent of every list of results was used for the recoding. To determine which
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articles were to be recoded, a random number generator was used. In the end, 16 articles were coded again to be used for testing the reliability of the codebook.
The measure used to test the intracoder reliability is Krippendorff’s alpha (Kalpha). This measure is chosen as it can be used for every sample size and for all measurement levels. The value for Kalpha ranges from 0, meaning there is no reliability at all, to 1, meaning everything is coded exactly the same. The norm of a good reliability is normally considered to be Kalpha = 0.80, but 0.68 can still be considered acceptable (Riffe, Lacy & Fico, 2005). Sometimes the percent agreement is taken into account as well. This is done because a small sample and unequal distribution, as is the case here, can make the Kalpha appear very low, while there is a high percent agreement (Lombard, Snyder-Duch & Bracken, 2004).
Table 1 shows that the question concerned with the locus of control as described by
newspapers, was deemed very reliable based on its Kalpha. However, the question regarding the stability of the behaviour, was not reliable based on the Kalpha value. When merging the answer categories ‘one time’ and ‘not mentioned’, as explained above, the question was reliable based on the combination of the Kalpha and the percent agreement, as shown in Table 1. Recoding was seen as appropriate as this recoded variable is how it will be used in analysis, and stays true to division between high and low attribution. The last question, about the controllability of the crashes, was not reliable using Kalpha, which remained the same when recoding the answering categories in a similar way. However, Table 1 shows that the percent agreement was relatively high after recoding, showing that the low Kalpha value probably is partly due to a small sample and unequal distribution. Because of this, the controllability variable was deemed reliable.
To determine the reliability of the variables concerning the crisis response strategies, all press releases (n = 14) were coded again. Because of the small original sample of press releases, no subsample was used for testing the intracoder reliability. All seven variables regarding the use
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of response strategies were found to be reliable to very reliable (see Table 1). Only the apology variable scored a relatively low Kalpha, but this was probably due to unequal distribution and a small sample, as its percent agreement is still very high (see Table 1). Table 1: The intracoder reliability of the responsibility attribution and strategy variables
Variable Kalpha % Agreement
Locus of control 0.86 93.8
Stability 0.62 81.3
Controllability 0.35 75.0
Attack the Accuser 1.00 100.0
Denial 1.00 100.0 Scapegoat 1.00 100.0 Excuse 0.82 92.9 Justification 1.00 100.0 Compensation 1.00 100.0 Apology 0.64 92.9 Results
The first hypothesis expected that newspapers would attribute more responsibility to Boeing for the second crash, than they did for the first crash. An independent samples t-test has been carried out to test the hypothesis. This was done using the attribution of responsibility index and by differentiating the articles based on whether they were published after the first or after the second crash. It was shown that the attribution of responsibility to Boeing was indeed higher in the articles published after the second crash (M = 2.1, SD = 1.02), than it was in the articles following the first crash (M = 1.0, SD = 1.00). This difference in the level of
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attribution is significant, t (146) = -5.93, p < 0.000, CI = [-1.47, -0.74], d = 1,09. This confirms the first hypothesis that newspapers attributed more responsibility in their articles following the second crash, than in their articles following the first crash.
When articles pointed to other organizations or persons as cause of the crashes, most of them pointed to the airline as the cause of the crash, as they did in 69,2% of all articles mentioning another cause or 12.2% of all articles. There was a moderate association between pointing to Boeing or others as the cause and the moment of publishing of the article (Cramer’s V = 0.46,
p < 0.000). Of all articles published after the first crash mentioning a cause, 50% referred to
other persons or groups than Boeing as cause of the crash. After the second crash, this dropped to only 9% of articles referring to others as the cause.
H2a and H2b were concerned with the press releases published by Boeing about the crashes. Based on the SCCT, H2a presumed that after the first crash Boeing mostly used diminish strategies in their press releases, more than the other two response types. Table 2 shows that after the first crash Boeing did indeed use diminish strategies much more than denial or rebuild strategies. These results are in line with H2a.
The second hypothesis focussing on the press releases, expected that after the second crash Boeing would instead use the rebuild strategies the most in their press releases. This
hypothesis can be rejected, based on the results shown in Table 2. After the second crash, the most used response strategies were part of the diminish cluster as well. Although the rebuild strategies were not used the most after the second crash, there has been in increase in the use of rebuild strategies from the first crash to the second crash. After the first crash, none of the press releases contained rebuild strategies, whereas after the second crash, 18.2% of the press releases about the crash made use of rebuild strategies. However, this increase in the use of rebuild strategies after both crashes was not significant (Fisher exact p = 1.000).
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Table 2: The use of different crisis response strategies in press releases by Boeing.
After First Crash After Second Crash Total
Denial 33% 0% 7%
Diminish 100% 73% 79%
Rebuild 0% 18% 14%
n 3 11 14
Next to the differences in use between the rebuild strategies, the difference in use of the other two response strategy clusters between the two crashes has been analysed as well. The
difference in use of the denial strategy was found to be not significant (Fisher-exact p = 0.214). This is the case as well for the difference in use of the diminish strategy after both crashes, meaning it was not significant (Fisher-exact p = 1.000). This shows that there was no significant change in the use of response strategies in press releases issued by Boeing after the first or second crash. After both crashes they mainly used the diminish strategy in the press releases.
Conclusion
The purpose of this study was to explore the role of crisis history, as described in the SCCT (Coombs, 2007b), in press releases and media coverage. According to the SCCT (Coombs, 2007b), crisis history plays a part in the attributed responsibility for a crisis and on the eventual organizational reputation. So, while it is an important part of the SCCT (Coombs, 2007b), there has been little research into the actual effects, as they are hard to measure. The Boeing 737 MAX case presented a unique opportunity to look at the actual impact crisis history makes on news reporting as well as on the content of press releases.
The first hypothesis looked at whether the presumed effect of crisis history on the attribution of responsibility was to be found in media coverage of the crashes. Following the SCCT
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(Coombs, 2007b), crisis history would lead to heightened attribution of responsibility to Boeing for the second crash. Analysis of the articles published in three American newspapers following the two crashes, support this hypothesis. After the second crash, the articles
attributed significantly more responsibility to Boeing than they did after the first crash. Next to this, there was a significant decline in the attribution of responsibility to other persons or organizations. This is in line with the research by Jeong (2009) about poor previous
performance and research by Klein and Dawar (2014) showing how stability negatively impacted the attribution of responsibility.
As these results are in line with the SCCT (Coombs, 2007b), they add the importance of acknowledging the role media play to the SCCT. While Coombs (2007b) does not explicitly refer to the role of media in his theory, this research shows that there is in fact reason to believe they do play a role. In line with other studies on the role of media in organizational crisis situations (e.g. Van der Meer & Verhoeven, 2013; Van der Meer, Verhoeven, Beentjes & Vliegenthart, 2014). The supposed heightened attribution of responsibility by stakeholders due to crisis history, may in part be caused via the agenda setting role of the media
(McCombs & Shaw, 1972). When the attribution of responsibility increases in news media, this may be taken over by the public. This finding gives reason for future research to look further at the role news media play in the SCCT.
The next two hypotheses looked at the role of response strategies and crisis history in SCCT (Coombs, 2007b). Press releases published after both crashes were analysed for the crisis response strategies they contained. Based on the expected levels of responsibility attribution and the recommended strategies in each case by SCCT, the hypotheses were formulated. H2a presumed that Boeing mostly used diminish strategies after the first crash and H2b expected Boeing to use mostly rebuild strategies after the second crash.
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Boeing did indeed use the diminish strategies more than the denial or rebuild strategies after the first crash, confirming hypothesis H2a. However, H2b has been rejected, as Boeing also used mostly diminish strategies after the second crash. Next to this, there was no significant change in the amount any of the three strategy clusters were used in the press releases from the first to the second crash. These results give reason to believe that although H2a was confirmed, it wasn’t because Boeing follows SCCT. As diminish strategies were most used after both crashes, it is probable that Boeing regularly uses diminish strategies, regardless of the level of attributed responsibility. This difference between the recommended strategies and the actual used strategies was found in other research as well (Claeys & Opgenhaffen, 2016; Cooley & Cooley, 2011; Kim et al., 2009).
SCCT (Coombs, 2007b) recommends the use of certain strategies purely based on trying to protect the organizational reputation. While this is very important for organizations, only looking at this when choosing a response strategy can have very serious effects on other parts of the organization. If Boeing would have chosen to come forward with the recommended rebuild strategies for instance, this would have opened the way for claims by relatives of the victims and airlines. This shows how not only protecting the reputation is important in choosing a response strategy, but legal consequences as well. This problem was also described in another study by practitioners themselves (Claeys & Opgenhaffen, 2016). This shows the limited usability of the strategy clusters as proposed by Coombs (2007b). While the theory makes sense from a reputational standpoint, it will be too limited for many organizations to be followed directly in practice. Many other factors play a role for
organizations in their crisis communications, such as legal consequences and management that is afraid to use certain strategies (Claeys & Opgenhaffen, 2016). This doesn’t mean that the crisis communication strategies are not usable at all, as they provide directions to take into account. It is still important to know what would be the optimal response in term of protecting
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reputation, before taking other factors in account. In this way, the strategy clusters
recommended by SCCT can serve as a starting point when determining how an organization is going to respond in a crisis. But because of other factors, it is very probable that most organizations won’t directly follow the recommended strategies, as can be seen in the case of Boeing.
When looking at the results about newspaper articles and press releases both, it becomes clear that crisis history plays a very different role depending on which perspective is taken. While it has a very clear impact on the attribution of responsibility, it does not change much in the way an organization communicates about crises. This difference in the role of crisis history, could be very well explained by the extent to which the actors are at risk themselves to lose
something because of a crisis.
The role of news media is to provide objective reports about the crisis and be factual in their reporting. This leads to them attributing more responsibility to an organization when there is a crisis history, they look into the history and draw inferences from that (An & Gower, 2009; Sisco et al., 2010). For an organization linked to a crisis, however, there is much more at stake when confronted with the crisis. They need to protect their reputation as much as possible, make sure that people still trust the organization and be aware of possible legal repercussions as a result of the crisis as well (Claeys & Opgenhaffen, 2016; Coombs, 2007a; 2007b; Klein & Dawar, 2004). These are things that are important for an organization in every crisis, which may explain why the crisis history doesn’t change much in the way they communicate. In news media crisis history plays a major role in reporting all relevant things about a crisis, while from an organizational standpoint it has a relatively small role in all things they need to consider already in a crisis. Due to this, the role of crisis history is very different, based on different interests by the actors.
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Limitations and future research
One of the most important limitations of this study is the use of only 14 press releases. The number of press releases was minimal as only those press releases published in the two months following a crash were used. Because this Boeing case is one of the only cases with a very clear crisis history, there was no option to choose another case with more press releases. Of course, this limits the generalizability of the results regarding the use of crisis response strategies. It does however give a good indication how organizations react to a crisis. Especially because the diminish strategies are used so much more than the denial or rebuild strategies. Because of the very big difference in use between the strategy clusters, it gives reason to think that the diminish strategy would also be the most used strategy in a bigger sample.
The small sample of press releases, made it also very hard to find a significant change in the use of response strategies. As became clear from Table 2, there was decrease in the use of denial strategies and an increase in the use of rebuild strategies after the second crash. While these results indicate that there may indeed have been a small shift in the strategies employed, this was not likely to be significant due to the sample only consisting of 14 press releases. In a larger sample, a more clear change could have been found. However, that was not possible because of the limited amount of press releases published by Boeing.
For future research, using a bigger sample could strengthen the results and increase the
generalizability. Next to this, using press releases from more organizations would help for this purpose as well. In the case of this Boeing crash, this could mean to take more companies and organizations into account. By including press releases issued by both airlines, press releases from suppliers of Boeing or press releases from the Federal Aviation Administration, a more complete picture of crisis communication in all its complexity could be studied. This more
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complete picture of a crisis has been described as taking an issue arena approach (Luoma-aho & Vos, 2010)
Another limitation of this study is that only newspaper articles are used to determine the attribution of responsibility. While newspapers continue to be of importance in the news media landscape, television news and even social media are very important players in this as well. This especially holds true because the tone and style of news via television or social media is very different from the tone and style in newspapers, which results in different effects on reputation (Utz, Schultz & Glocka, 2013). This can have effects on if and how these media outlets attribute responsibility as well. As these media are important as well, future research could take these media into account when studying the attribution of responsibility, maybe in a situation of crisis history. By doing this, the role of (news)media in the SCCT can be further and more completely explored.
That the cause of the crashes is investigated by Boeing, airlines and aviation regulation agency could be seen as another limitation of the study. Because when these investigations publish more facts about the cause of the crashes, the attribution of responsibility can be heightened due to this instead of due to crisis history. This effect has been limited mostly by using only publications after the first two months after each crash. As investigations of plane crashes and its causes regularly take up to more than a year, this is a relatively short period of time. By doing this, it is hoped that results are mostly due to crisis history instead of new findings by the researchers of the crash.
This study added to current research by introducing a new scale for measuring the attribution of responsibility in media. It didn’t use the often used framing scale by Semetko and
Valkenburg (2000), because it instead used a new scale rooted in Attribution Theory (Weiner, 1985). While the coding of this scale was not entirely reliable already, it can serve as a
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is based on Attribution Theory, this scale is theoretically more related to the SCCT. This keeps the research more true to the base on which the SCCT is built, enhancing the internal validity. However, this new scale is less straightforward than that of Semetko and Valkenburg (2000). Next to this, it needs more testing and improvement to determine its ultimate usability in research.
Implications
This research tested the assumptions made by Coombs (2007b) regarding the role of crisis history. As there are very few opportunities to study the effects of crisis history in real-life cases, this study took the opportunity to do so in a case with a very clear and similar crisis history. The results show that media play a role in attributing responsibility, and that the attribution is indeed impacted by crisis history as assumed by Coombs (2007b). This has implications for organizations with crisis history in new crisis situations. They can expect that media will attribute them more responsibility than before, which is very useful to take into account from the start. Press releases can be composed with this in mind from the start, which should result in a better fitting reaction by the organization.
From a research perspective, an important implication is that press releases and ultimately the communication professionals behind them do not necessarily follow the recommendations made in research. The research gap noted by Kim et al. (2009) has become very clear in the overwhelming use of the diminish strategies over the other strategy clusters. This gap has been interpreted as being the result of researchers not promoting their work enough for practitioners to be used. Instead, this could mean that research has to take more factors in account when theorizing about organizational reactions in the case of crisis, such as legal constrictions. To be able to do this, research should not be done from a purely
communicational perspective, but instead be connected to research in business administration and law. While this is clearly ambitious, it will serve the future usability of research well.
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