The effects of media slant on public perception of an organization in crisis

Abstract

This study investigates the effects of mainstream media coverage on public perception of an organizational program in crisis. A survey was administered via Qualtrics using a web-based network sampling approach. The survey contained two mainstream media clips, one slanted negatively and the other slanted positively regarding an incident within the organizational program. Participants viewed both clips and answered questions regarding their perceptions of the program immediately after viewing each clip. Order of clip presentation was counterbalanced. Results of a mixed-model ANOVA revealed main effects for both media slant and presentation order on perceptions of the program; no statistically significant interaction was found between presentation order and media slant. Recommendations for practice, limitations and directions for future research are provided.

Keywords:

• Media slant
• framing
• organizational crisis
• primacy effects
• reputation

Introduction

An organizational crisis is an unexpected, low-probability event that often does not have a clear cause, resolution, or potential impact that requires decisive action and which can greatly negatively affect an organization’s viability (Crandall, Parnell, & Spillan, 2014; Seeger, Sellnow, & Ulmer, 2003). No organization is immune from possible crises; media proliferation including social media has greatly increased the likelihood that the public becomes aware of such events (Crandall et al., 2014; Seeger et al., 2003). From an organization’s standpoint, the question is often not whether but when and what type of crisis will occur (Coombs, 2010; Crandall et al., 2014, p. 3; Pearson & Mitroff, 1993). Furthermore, crises are unlikely to occur in isolation; they tend to occur simultaneously or trigger a chain of other crises (Pearson & Mitroff, 1993). Compounding this issue, crisis prevention measures taken to avoid one type of crisis may make other types more likely (Mitroff, Pauchant, & Shrivastava, 1988).

Because an organizational crisis represents a break from routine operations, such critical incidents tend to attract media attention due to their newsworthiness (Fearn-Banks, 2009). In fact, organizational crises may arise from the media attention given to otherwise minor organizational events of which the public was unaware (Crandall et al., 2014; Pearson & Mitroff, 1993). Thus, not only is the organization involved affected by the initial incident but also by media coverage of the incident which can escalate into its own crisis. Therefore, the event itself, how it is portrayed in the media, and the organization’s response to it can greatly impact the organization’s reputation and future viability.

The types of crises that organizations experience vary widely. Using data collected from Fortune 1000 companies, Mitroff and colleagues (Mitroff et al., 1988; Pearson & Mitroff, 1993) developed a taxonomy to classify crisis clusters based on four quadrants defined by two continuums ranging from normal to severe crises and technical/economic to human/social crises. Crisis clusters identified were: perceptual, psycho, mega damage, external economic attacks, external information attacks, breaks, and occupational health (Pearson & Mitroff, 1993, p. 50).

Study purpose

The purpose of this study is to better understand the impact of media slant and primacy of exposure on the public’s perception of an organization in crisis. The goal of the current study is to elucidate why organizations need to attend to and reframe media coverage of critical events they experience. This paper will first discuss extant research on organizational reputation, media framing and slant, primacy effects and the impact of message valence on message processing. Then, a quasi-experimental study will be described that investigates the impact of media coverage on public perceptions of one specific organizational event. The involved organization and the specific event which resulted in a media crisis are masked due to organizational concerns about confidentiality. Results of the study are used as a foundation for recommendations to organizations facing potential reputational damage due to negative media coverage.

Organizational reputation and the media

An organization’s reputation is amalgamation of beliefs that individuals outside the organization hold about that organization (Dutton, Dukerich, & Harquail, 1994). A review of literature by Lange, Lee, and Dai (2011) suggested that reputation is a multi-dimensional construct composed of the familiarity of the organization to outsiders, outsiders’ beliefs about what they can expect from the organization in the future, and outsiders’ impressions about the organization’s favorability or lack thereof. An organization’s reputation is formed and shaped by information shared with and available to the public about the organization. This information can come from the organization itself and other sources including the news media.

In contemporary society, news is ubiquitous and the general public’s exposure to media is increasing. A recent Nielsen report showed that in the first quarter of 2016, U.S. adults were exposed to media more than 10.5 h a day on average and that media consumption increased by an hour a day per adult from the previous year (Lynch, 2016). Given this proliferation of media consumption, the public is more likely to be exposed to organizational information through mainstream media channels and social media outlets than directly from the organization itself. For most organizations, direct communication with the public requires an investment of time and resources that is not central to the organization’s core purpose. The core purpose of news and social media outlets, however, is information dissemination; thus, those sources can more readily distribute information about organizations without facing the same type of cost burden the focal organizations face.

Media coverage is an important feature of reputation management (Carroll, 2004), nevertheless, bad news sells better than good news (Fombrun & van Riel, 2004) and the media’s use of ‘hysterical journalism’ has increased (Cho & Gower, 2006, p. 422). Cho and Gower (2006) describe this type of journalism as ‘over-dramatized coverage’ which affects viewers’ emotions and negatively affects their perceptions towards the parties concerned. Thus, media coverage of organizations tends to be weighted toward events that can be depicted as shocking. When an organization allows the mainstream media to be the only source of information the public has about an event it has experienced, the organization’s reputation is susceptible to long-term and potentially irreversible damage (Crandall et al., 2014).

Media framing and slant

Media coverage of an event affects the public’s perception of it. First, viewers implicitly assume that greater media coverage indicates an event is more important and worthy of interest than is an event that receives little to no media attention (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007). The media’s influence on viewers’ perceptions, however, goes beyond affecting perceptions of event importance. Because the media often must cover complex events in a limited time, reporters must frame events through the way they organize and present information. Framing helps viewers make sense of events being covered; members of the media frame events by using existing schema that audience members hold to portray complex issues effectively. While framing can be used to efficiently convey information, framing can further affect viewers’ perceptions. According to Scheufele and Tewksbury (2007, p. 11), ‘how an issue is characterized in news reports can have an influence on how it is understood by audiences.’ Cho and Gower (2006, p. 420) asserted:

the public perceives not the objective fact of a crisis event, but the fact construed by the media or news releases from the party in crisis. Framing or describing of a crisis may well influence the public’s evaluation of organizational responsibility for the crisis event.

Framing choices affect the evolution of a crisis including the way the public perceives and responds to the event and the organization involved. Use of framing can escalate (Cho & Gower, 2006) or soothe (van der Meer & Verhoeven, 2013) public perceptions about and attributions regarding the organizational event.

The way media frames an event can greatly alter audience perceptions of the event (Page, Shapiro, & Dempsey, 1987) and subsequently the reputation of the organization involved. For example, a study by An (2011) showed viewers were more angry and were more likely to attribute blame to an organization involved in a crisis when a morality frame was used than when coverage of the same incident did not involve such a frame. When competing frames are used, audience members’ interpretations of events are likely to be a function of the interaction of those frames (Edy & Meirick, 2007). Conversely, according to Entman (2007), when there is not an attempt to seek balance through the use of different frames, slant occurs. Specifically, Entman (2007, p. 165) describes news slant as ‘individual news reports and editorials in which the framing favors one side over the other in a current or potential dispute.’ So, while the process of framing highlights aspects of a story, unchecked use of a frame can slant coverage of controversial events. Thus, media coverage influences whether the public thinks about an organizational incident (frequency of coverage), what aspects of the incident it views as most significant (media framing) and also the overall impression of the incident (media slant). Thus, we hypothesize:

H1: There will be a direct association between media slant (positive or negative) and viewers’ perceptions (positive or negative) of the organization in crisis.

Primacy and order effects

Primacy effects refer to the tendency for early information to be weighted more heavily in decisions and impact the way later information is processed. Research on primacy effects (Buda, 2003) suggests that people’s opinions tend to be more influenced by initial information learned about a person or event. For instance, a meta-analysis of studies on jury decisions shows that jurors are unable to disregard pretrial information, such as information gleaned through media coverage, when making decisions that are to be solely based on evidence presented at a trial (Steblay, Besirevic, Fulero, & Jimenez-Lorente, 1999). While most research has focused on negative (anti-defendant) pretrial information, an experimental study by Ruva, Guenther, and Yarbrough (2011, p. 526) found that pretrial information, whether positive or negative, led study participants to ‘distort witness testimony in the direction consistent’ with the pretrial information, whether it was pro- or anti-defendant. Ruva and colleagues (2011) also found that emotional responses mediated the relationship between pretrial information and later verdicts. Specifically, anti-defendant pretrial information can lead to anger and subsequently higher ratings of defendant guilt and conviction verdicts whereas pro-defendant pretrial information can lead to positive emotions which led to lower guilt ratings and a higher proportion of not guilty verdicts. These findings suggest that early framing can have a lasting impact on individuals’ interpretations of information through framing influences on their emotional states. In fact, Pechta, Brandenburg, and Seeger (2010, p. 5) asserted that ‘The initial media framing of a crisis…shapes the immediate and ongoing responses to the crisis by the public and the many stakeholders.’ Thus, we hypothesize that:

H2: There will be a significant primacy effect for order of exposure on the two types of media attention (negative and positive) such that there will be a carryover effect of media slant from the first condition to which audience members are exposed to the second condition. Specifically, viewers who are exposed to the positively slanted media coverage first will view the event more positively even after exposure to the negatively slanted coverage and vice versa.

Information valence

Positive and negative information are processed differently. Negative information and events tend to receive more attention and are weighted more heavily in decision-making (Fiske, 1980), are processed more slowly (Unkelbach, Fiedler, Bayer, Stegmüller, & Danner, 2008), are associated with more causal attributions (Bohner, Bless, Schwarz, & Strack, 1988), and are remembered better (Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, & Vohs, 2001). According to Baumeister et al. (2001, pp. 323, 324) ‘In general, and apart from a few carefully crafted exceptions, negative information receives more processing and contributes more strongly to the final impression than does positive information.’ This is because positive events are viewed as what is expected. Conversely, negative events represent deviation from the norm (Clark & Clark, 1977, pp. 538–539) and thus, according to Fiedler (1988), require greater precision in description to indicate how norms have been violated (as cited in Unkelbach et al., 2008). Possible ramifications of negative events are also more varied and long-lasting as compared those of positive events (Unkelbach et al., 2008). According to Taylor (1991, p. 67), as compared to positive and neutral events, negative events ‘elicit more physiological, affective, cognitive, and behavioral activity and prompt more cognitive analysis.’ Because people tend to weigh negative information more than positive information when making decisions (Ito, Larsen, Smith, & Cacioppo, 1998) and because early information about a person or event tends to affect the way later information is processed (Ruva et al., 2011), we hypothesize:

H3: There will be a significant interaction between type of media attention and order of exposure on perception of the organizational program resulting in differential carryover effects. Specifically, negatively-slanted media coverage will have a stronger carryover effect to the positively-slanted media condition than vice versa.

Methods

Organization, program and crisis

The affected program was part of a non-profit organization that included research facilities subject to regular inspections. A special interest group used results of a governmental inspection to attract negative media attention to one of its research programs. The organization then experienced a crisis as a result of this negative media attention. Specifically, using the taxonomy of crises developed by Mitroff and others (Mitroff et al., 1988; Pearson & Mitroff, 1993), a chain of crises occurred which began with a human-induced, internal event in which operational errors (normal ‘break’) were met with an external information attack which induced significant media coverage of the operational issues (perceptual crisis). Thus, an otherwise normal operational error led to a cascade of crises which ultimately led to the organization’s decision to end the program.

Media clips

Two mainstream media clips which covered the organizational program and incident were utilized. One clip represented negative media slant while the other had a more positive slant regarding the organizational program.

Negative

The negatively-slanted clip lasted 95 s. It was produced by a local news station and was obtained from a posting on YouTube. While several examples of negatively-slanted media coverage of the event were available, this clip was chosen specifically because it had the most negative slant. The clip represented hysterical-journalism mentioned previously which was designed to provoke viewers’ emotions. The clip included use of negatively-charged words (e.g., shocking, investigation, scrutiny, and hot water) by two organizational outsiders who were interviewed about their response to the event as well as by the newscaster himself. One of the outsiders represented a special interest group while the other individual was an unidentified outsider. Voice modulation that stressed the negatively-charged words was used throughout the journalist’s narrative. Of the 95 s of coverage, less than 10 s were devoted to a response by the organization involved which was comprised solely of the reading of an excerpt of a written statement by one of the organization’s communication officials.

Positive

Only one positively-slanted video could be located. It was produced by a different local news station than the negatively-slanted clip. The positively-slanted clip lasted 132 s and was also obtained from a posting on YouTube. This clip was determined to be positively-slanted as it included an interview with a current employee of the organization who chose to speak about the program without the consent of the organization. The interview was split with reporter coverage interspersed throughout. In total, the employee interview coverage comprised almost a full minute of the clip. In the clip, the employee spoke highly of the program and its employees, provided pictures and video from inside organizational facilities, discussed employees’ dedication to being good stewards of the program’s resources and indicated being frustrated by the organization’s limited response to requests for more information about the program. While the clip focused on positive aspects of the organizational program, it did mention an incident that occurred in the program. The reporter provided balanced discussion of the program and presented information in an impartial way. Thus, the positively-slanted clip was not wholly positive but slanted somewhat positively regarding the organizational program being covered. The positively-slanted clip included use of several elements of image repair strategy by the employee such as denial, bolstering, and minimization (Benoit, 1997) to mitigate damage to the organization’s reputation.

Measures

A four-item inventory was utilized twice, once for each media condition. Participants responded to each item on a 10-point scale ranging from 1 to 10. Scale anchors differed by item but were such that the farther scores were above the scale midpoint of 5.5, the more favorable the organizational program was viewed while scores below the scale midpoint indicated unfavorable views of the organizational program. The two media clips were embedded in the inventory such that participants viewed one clip, responded to the four items regarding the first clip, watched the other clip and responded to the four items regarding the second clip. Items asked participants about their feelings about the program (‘How do you feel about the [program] at [organization]?’), perceptions about the handling of program resources (‘How do you feel about the treatment of [resources] in the [program]?’), whether they believed the organization was properly overseeing the program (‘Do you feel [organization] is doing a good job with oversight of the [program] as it relates to [stewardship of resources]?’) and whether they thought the organization was hiding information about the program (‘Do you feel like [organization] is hiding information about the [program]?’ Responses to the last item were reverse-scored to ensure scoring aligned with scoring of the other three items.

Participants and Procedures

Institutional Review Board approval was sought prior to data collection. A web-based network sampling technique was used to collect as much data as possible within a narrow timeframe utilizing an initial ‘seed’ wave of potential participants. Approximately two hundred people from the first author’s professional and personal networks were recruited through email, LinkedIn, and Facebook to participate in the study. Recruits were told they could forward the link to the study to other potential participants. A total of 104 participants between the ages of 18 and 70 completed the survey. While demographic data was not collected directly from participants to ensure participant anonymity, consistent with recommendations by Wejnert and Heckathorn (2008, p. 109), the first author’s network which served as the initial seed included individuals with diverse educational (high school to college graduates) and ethnic backgrounds (e.g., African American, Caucasian, Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans). Employment type of individuals in the network was also diverse including unemployed college students to full-time employees who worked in public and private organizations in diverse fields including but not limited to educational, biomedical, and energy sectors.

Design and procedures

Two versions of the survey were created so that a counterbalanced design could be used. Data was collected online via Qualtrics. Slightly more than half of the participants viewed the positively-slanted media clip, answered questions about that clip, then viewed the negatively-slanted media clip and answered questions about that clip (N = 60); other participants viewed the clips in the opposite order (N = 44). The design was quasi-experimental; true counterbalancing was not possible due to the use of web-based network sampling. While individuals in the seed wave were randomly assigned to one of the two orderings, participants could only forward the link they received. Thus, participants within a particular clip sequence may be somewhat more homogeneous than would have occurred if members of the entire sample could had been randomly assigned to a viewing sequence.

Results

Principle components analysis

To determine whether items could be combined into scales, principle components analysis and Cronbach’s reliability analyses were conducted. Results suggested the first three items (i.e., feelings about the program, treatment of program resources, and organizational oversight) could be combined to create a scale measuring perception of the program (see Table 1). Internal consistency reliability for the three retained items for the positively-slanted media clip was .95 and for the negative-slanted media clip was .97. Thus, these items were combined to form overall program perception composite scores for the positively- and negatively-slanted videos separately. Due to issues with use of single-item measures, no further analyses were conducted on the discarded fourth item.

Table 1. Results of the principle components analysis.

Rotated component matrix	Negative slant		Positive slant
Item	1st iteration	2nd iteration	1st iteration	2nd iteration
Feeling about program	.950	.964	.942	.958
Perception of treatment of resources	.965	.982	.944	.961
Perception of program oversight	.958	.973	.932	.946
Belief that organization is hiding information	.655	–	.618	–

Note:

Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization. A rotation converged in 3 iterations Factor Loads <.7.

Hypothesis testing

The mixed-model ANOVA was used to test the three hypotheses. Media slant (positive vs. negative) was a within-subjects variable while order of presentation (positive then negative vs. negative then positive) was a between-subjects variable. Perception of the program was the dependent variable. Means for each condition are displayed in Table 2 and represented graphically in Figure 1.

Table 2. Means and standard deviations (in parentheses) by media slant.

		Media Slant
		Negative	Positive
Presentation order	Negative then Positive (N = 44)	4.1 (2.6)	6.6 (2.4)	5.4
	Positive then Negative (N = 60)	5.7 (2.9)	7.9 (1.7)	6.8
		5.1	7.3	N = 104

Figure 1. Perception of program based on media slant and ordering.

Hypothesis 1

There was a significant main effect for media slant, F(1, 102)=106.88 p < .001. As shown in the marginal means at the bottom of Table 2, respondents overall had a more positive perception of the program (M = 7.3) after viewing the positively-slanted media clip than after viewing the negatively-slanted clip (M = 5.1) regardless of presentation order.

Hypothesis 2

There was a significant main effect for order of exposure, F(1, 102) = 11.27, p < .001; the first video viewed continued to impact perceptions of the program even after the second, oppositely-slanted video was viewed. This finding is indicative of a primacy effect. As shown in the marginal means on the rightmost column of Table 2, participants who viewed the positive clip first perceived the organizational program more positively (M = 6.8) overall than did those individuals who viewed the negative clip first (M = 5.4). If there was not an effect of presentation order, these marginal means would be equivalent.

Hypothesis 3

No statistically significant interaction between media slant and order of presentation was detected, F(1, 102) = .40, p = .53. While it was hypothesized that there would be differential carryover such that the carryover of the negative clip would be greater than the carryover of the positive clip, this hypothesis was not supported. If this hypothesis had been supported, the solid line in Figure 1 would have been horizontal, or at least more so, and the mean of 6.6 in Table 2 would have approached 4.1 indicating little to no change in perception even after exposure to the positively-slanted clip. Instead, we found a roughly equivalent change in magnitude of perceptions whether those perceptions became more or less favorable. Perceptions of the organizational program’s favorability increased approximately 2.5 points for those who viewed the positive clip last but dropped about 2.2 points for those who viewed the negative clip last.

Discussion

The results show that an individual’s perception of a negative event is influenced by the way media coverage frames and slants the incident as well as early information a person receives about the incident and organization involved. Results of the study suggest that early information received is especially important in the public’s formation of perceptions about an organization or event. Nevertheless, results suggest positive information provided after initial, reputation-damaging accusations are made can reduce the extent of the reputational damage even if the damage cannot be totally mitigated.

This study was based on only one critical event in one organization. While the event that prompted the media crisis was not described in detail due to organizational concerns about confidentiality, it did receive repeated exposure. Extant literature suggests repeated media coverage signals to viewers that an event is worthy of attention; in fact, media coverage of an otherwise minor organizational incident can quickly spiral into a crisis due to the way it is portrayed by the media. In this case, a negative but not program-ending incident spiraled into an organizational crisis after the incident garnered significant and mostly negative media attention. Consequently, this negative attention led to a perceptual crisis and public pressure to end the program. Based upon the public pressure, plus numerous other factors, the organization has since announced it will phase out the program. Termination of the program comes despite many advancements realized since its inception which have contributed to the public good.

Strengths and limitations

The current study had a number of strengths. Because findings from the current study were based on use of actual mainstream media clips, results are expected to generalize to other, similar real-world situations. Second, use of the counterbalanced design rather than an independent-groups design illustrated the impact of early information in attitude formation, the magnitude of carryover effect resulting from order of exposure, and the surprising lack of differential carryover.

The study had a number of weaknesses including use of a non-probability sampling technique, in this case web-based network sampling. While this sampling technique can be effective and efficient (Wejnert & Heckathorn, 2008), it does have limitations. For instance, participants included in this study may not be representative of the general population, especially given they had to have an active email or social media account to be eligible for recruitment. Also, given that the primary researcher’s contacts were used as the sample seed, it is possible that some of the participants may have had knowledge of the organization and event that spurred the crisis prior to taking the survey; this advanced knowledge could have influenced those participants’ perceptions of the organizational program involved. Also, because only one positively-slanted media clip could be found, only one media clip was used for each media-slant condition. Thus, media slant and media clip are confounded. Furthermore, because both researchers had ties, whether direct or indirect, with the organizational program that experienced the event and subsequent crisis, there is a potential for a conflict of interest and lack of objectivity regarding the study.

Directions for future research

Future research should consider using a larger, more diverse sample and also replicate this study with a variety of types of organizational incidents (e.g., legal, moral, technical, economic), different degrees of crises (e.g., normal breaks, mega damage accidents), and crises in different industries and sectors (e.g., public, private, non-profit). Replications of this study should aim to use multiple versions of positively and negatively-slanted media coverage to prevent confounding evident in the current study. The preponderance of negatively-slanted clips and lack of positively-slanted clips, however is consistent with the assertions that bad news sells better than good news and that hysterical journalism is common (Cho & Gower, 2006; Fombrun & van Riel, 2004). Thus, this weakness may be difficult to completely eliminate in future research that use real, as opposed to simulated, media coverage.

Future research should also test for moderators to examine whether some people are more affected by one type of message or primacy effects than are others. One such potential moderator is gender. Research has shown persuasiveness of advertisements may be affected by an interaction between gender, message content and message order (Brunel & Nelson, 2003). Thus, gender as a possible moderator should also be examined regarding order effects involving media exposure and crisis communication. Additionally, because individuals volunteered to participate in this research study, they may have been more susceptible to primacy effects, which are more likely when interest in a topic is high (Lana, 1963). Thus, future research is needed which can better control for and investigate the interaction of order effects and interest in the event regarding how media coverage influences audience members’ evaluations of an organizational incident. Finally, research should examine the permanence of the primacy effects. Because the two clips were viewed in succession, the impact of the initial message on long-term perceptions could not be assessed.

Implications for the organizational crisis communication

Media coverage of an organizational incident can cause the public to form negative perceptions of the organization which can hinder the organization’s operations and future viability. Incorporating post-crisis communication strategies and techniques during and after a crisis can improve the organization’s chances of preventing or decreasing the reputational damage from such an incident (Coombs & Holladay, 2005). Limiting communications with organizational outsiders during crisis to only specified communications professionals, i.e., the ‘corporate silence’ approach, can be beneficial in terms of ensuring uniformity in the organization’s response to reputational threats (Heugens, van Riel, & van den Bosch, 2004), however, lack of response to media requests for details about undesirable organizational events can greatly negatively impact an organization’s reputation (Decker, 2012) and future viability.

As a result of these findings, there are several recommendations for organizations to help lessen the impact of a critical event or crisis. When questioned by the media, officials should respond in a timely manner and utilize framing and image repair strategies (see Benoit, 1997). Organization should also have crisis communication teams to respond to all relevant audiences during crises with strategically-designed response messages. Ideally, these teams will utilize a multiple stakeholder model to ensure all relevant parties receive critical information that can facilitate the organization’s prevention, management and recovery from crises (see Alpaslan, Green, & Mitroff, 2009). Furthermore, when possible, response messages should utilize positive frames suited to the diverse audiences and multiple image-repair techniques to minimize the threat of reputational damage. Image repair discourse theory offers five general categories of image repair strategies: denial, evasion of responsibility, reducing offensiveness, corrective action, and mortification with each category containing several unique image repair strategies (see Benoit, 1997). Based on research by Reinhard, Schindler, Raabe, Stahlberg, and Messner (2014), however, the communication team should be careful to avoid over repetition of such messages to avoid weakening the perceived credibility of the source.

Additionally, consistent with the notion of primacy effects, organizations may benefit from outreach efforts to educate the public regarding the positive aspects of their programs so that harm to their image will be lessened when crises do occur. Research by Decker (2012, p. 27) showed that a ‘good reputation can act as an ‘insurance policy’ or buffer if it has been developed prior to the occurrence of negative publicity.’ Such outreach efforts also promote transparency. These efforts may include, for instance, public tours of program facilities through special events or via Internet video. Additionally, a website and mainstream media coverage that focuses on benefits of such programs are suggested as well as regular outreach to the public through social media to foster positive ties with the public.

Furthermore, work by Wang and Ahern (2015), suggests individuals seek out additional information from multiple channels after an initial surprise, such as a crisis; through seeking such information, individual’s attitudes and subjective norms can be influenced. That is, if individuals are exposed to negatively-slanted coverage of an event in the media, organizations may be able to help them see the event in a more balanced way by presenting information beyond the short, sensationalized snippets presented by media sources. Thus, organizations may be able to positively impact the public’s perceptions by making information readily available for individuals seeking to learn more about the crisis than what is covered in the media alone. Being able to response to this information-seeking behavior by having multiple sources of accurate information about an event or crisis may help elicit more positive attitudes and behaviors than having no or only one source of information. Such efforts thus prevent the media and outside groups from being the only source of information the public has about the organization’s programs in such situations.

Disclosure statement

Each author had a direct or indirect tie to the organizational program that experienced the crisis.