Compensation and Corrective Action as the BP Response to the Deepwater Horizon Incident

Abstract

The April 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon deep-sea drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 people working on the rig, and resulted in substantial economic and environmental damage to nearby U.S. states. BP responded to the crisis with an ineffective public relations (PR) strategy that focused on describing their efforts to resolve the problem and their attempts to compensate the victims. Their response temporarily shifted when the response received attention from President Obama in the United States, but it otherwise stayed consistent for 6 months before largely ending. This study applies Benoit's Image Repair Theory to BP press releases concerning the Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill, and judges that Benoit's work provides a strong framework for understanding the PR response to this crisis. The study also comments on the appropriate unit of analysis for capturing a corporate PR response using Benoit's framework.

Keywords:

• BP
• Image Restoration
• Public Relations

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Trey Garcia and Ben Clark for their work in coding the data, particularly given that they were willing to spend a significant portion of their Summer doing it. We particularly thank Diana Hinton for her continued inspiration on this project, and we are grateful for the guidance of this scholar.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

William Forrest Harlow

William Forrest Harlow (PhD, Texas A & M University, 2002) is an associate professor in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin.

Rachel Martin Harlow

Rachel Martin Harlow (PhD, Texas Tech University, 2005) is an assistant professor in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin.