Gun Violence, eSports, and Global Crises: A Proposed Model for Sport Crisis Communication Practitioners

Abstract

On Sunday, August 26, 2018 an eSport gamer killed two competitors and injured 10 others in Jacksonville, FL. at the Madden 19 Southeast Qualifier, a competition sanctioned by the Madden Championship Series. The shooting, live-streamed to thousands of fans watching on Twitch, stands as the first mass shooting to occur at a professional sporting event. Due to the changing complexity of sports crises, and the ever-increasing power of sport organizations, the authors of this paper argue that sport communication practitioners and managers need explicit guidance for how to act in crisis situations, especially as research shows that sport crisis managers are overwhelmingly underprepared. The authors, therefore, propose a visual step-by-step model based off of Coombs’s (2007b) Situational Crisis Communication Theory that lowers barriers to entry for sport communication practitioners to effectively implement a crisis response even when they have little knowledge of the theory.

枪支暴力, 电子竞技和全球危机：体育运动危机沟通从业者的拟建模型

2018年8月26日星期日, 由麦登冠军系列赛官方授权, 在佛罗里达州杰克逊维尔举办的麦登 19东南区预选赛中, 一名电子竞技游戏玩家杀死了两名竞争对手, 并致使10人受伤。成千上万的粉丝通过游戏现场直播平台Twitch观看了此次枪击事件, 这是专业体育赛事中发生的首例大规模枪击案。由于体育运动危机的复杂性不断变化, 体育运动组织实力日益增强, 笔者认为体育沟通从业者和管理者需要显性指导以应对危机情况, 特别是有研究表明, 体育危机管理者中绝大多数人都没有做好危机应对准备。因此, 基于Coombs’s（2007b）提出的情景危机沟通理论, 笔者提出了一个可视化分步模型, 该模型降低了体育沟通从业者的入门门槛, 即使对情景危机沟通理论知之甚少, 也能有效地实施措施, 应对危机。

Keywords:

• Situational crisis communication theory
• gun violence
• crisis
• sport
• eSports

关键词:

• 情景危机沟通理论
• 枪支暴力
• 危机
• 体育运动
• 电子竞技

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

H. Ross Knight

Ross Knight is a Senior Associate Director in the MBA Programs for Working Professionals at University of California, Berkeley. He earned his Master of Arts in Communications from Idaho State University. His graduate research focused on how organizations respond to crisis and how the public relations practitioner can improve their preparedness with a theory-based approach to managing crisis. He also holds a BS in Communications with an emphasis in Rhetoric.

Karen L. Hartman

Karen L. Hartman, (Ph.D.) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, Media, & Persuasion at Idaho State University. Her research interests revolve largely around the role of sport in the United States and how language and public relations efforts frame athletes, organizations, and laws.

Amanda Bennett

Amanda Bennett is a graduate student in the Communication, Media, & Persuasion department at Idaho State University.