Breaking bad: how crisis communication, dissemination channel and prevalence influence the public perception of doping cases

Abstract

The publication of doping cases evokes media interest and forces athletes to apply crisis communication to compensate for a potential loss of trust or to protect their reputation in the public eye. Based on case vignettes and experimental designs, this three studies paper shows that justification can be regarded as an efficient crisis communication strategy, whereas the dissemination of a statement via journalistic sources or social media as well as the doping prevalence of the type of sports is not decisive for the general public perception. The paper evokes the question of whether recipients are willing to be confronted with the dark side of high-performance sports.

Keywords:

• Doping
• crisis communication
• trust
• reputation
• public perception

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded and supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), Research Training Group under grant 1712/1 “Trust and Communication in a Digitized World”.