Fleur Serlie - Public Relations (S_PR) - December 2023
PR article notes
Triantafillidou & Yanna (2020)
Image restoration theory:
1. Denial = simple denial, shifting the blame
2. Evasion of responsibility = provocation, defeasibility, accident, good intentions
3. Reduction of the offensive of the event = bolstering (= emphasizing the positive
actions/characteristics of the organization in the past in relation to the event),
minimization, differentiation, transcendence
4. Corrective action = solve the problem (compensation)
5. Mortification = admitting responsibility and apologizing to the public
Situational crisis communication theory (SCCT):
• There is an association between the perceived crisis responsibility attributed to an
organization and its reputation
• The extent of the organization’s crisis responsibility will determine which response
strategies are more appropriate in a given crisis for the purposes of reducing
reputational damage
• Low attribution of crisis responsibility/low reputational threat → denial response
strategies
• Moderate attribution of crisis responsibility/moderate reputational threat (e.g.,
accidental crises) → good intentions, minimization
• High attribution of crisis responsibility/high reputational threat (= preventable) →
mortification, corrective action and compensation
Results:
• Twitter is more effective than Facebook in restoring post-crisis reputation during a
racially charged crisis
• Twitter was more successful than Facebook or Instagram in triggering positive social
media engagement and enhancing offline behavioral intentions, because of more
online engagement
• Twitter resulted in higher offline behavioral intentions than Facebook and
Instagram, because of higher credibility
• The medium from which the company disseminates crisis messages plays an
important role in shaping post-crisis evaluations and behavioral intentions
• Preventable crises are better handled through rebuild strategies, such as corrective
action
• Social media usage frequency is an important positive antecedent that directly affects
post-crisis reputation, user online engagement, and users’ offline reactions
• Positive social media engagement served as a mediating variable, increasing the
effect of post-crisis reputation on the public’s offline behavioral intentions
• The effectiveness of each response strategy did not differ across the three social
media platforms
1
, Fleur Serlie - Public Relations (S_PR) - December 2023
Lee & Atkinson (2019)
Results:
• Functional brands are more vulnerable in product-harm crises, because of lower
positive attitudes, more negative eWOM and lower purchase intentions than symbolic
brands
• Functional brands require informational apologies, symbolic brands no difference
• Companies should investigate their customers’ involvement
• An emotional apology leads to less negative eWOM for symbolic and functional
brands
Deephouse (2000)
Results:
• Media reputation is how the firm is portrayed by the media and is produced by the
interactions with its stakeholders and information circulated among them
• Better media reputation → more competitive advantage (?) not really
• Media reputation is valuable, rare, non-substitutable, and imperfectly imitable
• Media reputation explains a significant amount of variance of ROA → improved
media reputation leads to better performance (ROA)
- Including environmental rating increased it even more
Etter (2019)
Early approaches:
• Perceived news media as the sole actors in influencing organizational reputation
• They assume that news media possess a superior credibility and reach, because of their
status and structural position, and that they are, therefore, far more influential on the
formation of collective judgments than other actors
Results:
• Organizational audiences are now able to publicly challenge evaluations offered
by the media, or even to subvert images projected by organizations themselves to
highlight contradictions between communication and action
• Future research should pay more attention to the active and direct engagement of
audiences, rather than assuming that audiences influence reputation mainly when the
news media pay attention to their actions
• Social media can help organisations expose themselves to different partial and
possibly inaccurate representations and to propagate these representations
selectively to restricted groups that insulate themselves from alternative and opposing
views
• Reputations are ever changing and (re-)produced
• Emotions should be more incorporated in understanding reputations → we should
remain open to the possibility that emotional responses may also shape the processing
2
PR article notes
Triantafillidou & Yanna (2020)
Image restoration theory:
1. Denial = simple denial, shifting the blame
2. Evasion of responsibility = provocation, defeasibility, accident, good intentions
3. Reduction of the offensive of the event = bolstering (= emphasizing the positive
actions/characteristics of the organization in the past in relation to the event),
minimization, differentiation, transcendence
4. Corrective action = solve the problem (compensation)
5. Mortification = admitting responsibility and apologizing to the public
Situational crisis communication theory (SCCT):
• There is an association between the perceived crisis responsibility attributed to an
organization and its reputation
• The extent of the organization’s crisis responsibility will determine which response
strategies are more appropriate in a given crisis for the purposes of reducing
reputational damage
• Low attribution of crisis responsibility/low reputational threat → denial response
strategies
• Moderate attribution of crisis responsibility/moderate reputational threat (e.g.,
accidental crises) → good intentions, minimization
• High attribution of crisis responsibility/high reputational threat (= preventable) →
mortification, corrective action and compensation
Results:
• Twitter is more effective than Facebook in restoring post-crisis reputation during a
racially charged crisis
• Twitter was more successful than Facebook or Instagram in triggering positive social
media engagement and enhancing offline behavioral intentions, because of more
online engagement
• Twitter resulted in higher offline behavioral intentions than Facebook and
Instagram, because of higher credibility
• The medium from which the company disseminates crisis messages plays an
important role in shaping post-crisis evaluations and behavioral intentions
• Preventable crises are better handled through rebuild strategies, such as corrective
action
• Social media usage frequency is an important positive antecedent that directly affects
post-crisis reputation, user online engagement, and users’ offline reactions
• Positive social media engagement served as a mediating variable, increasing the
effect of post-crisis reputation on the public’s offline behavioral intentions
• The effectiveness of each response strategy did not differ across the three social
media platforms
1
, Fleur Serlie - Public Relations (S_PR) - December 2023
Lee & Atkinson (2019)
Results:
• Functional brands are more vulnerable in product-harm crises, because of lower
positive attitudes, more negative eWOM and lower purchase intentions than symbolic
brands
• Functional brands require informational apologies, symbolic brands no difference
• Companies should investigate their customers’ involvement
• An emotional apology leads to less negative eWOM for symbolic and functional
brands
Deephouse (2000)
Results:
• Media reputation is how the firm is portrayed by the media and is produced by the
interactions with its stakeholders and information circulated among them
• Better media reputation → more competitive advantage (?) not really
• Media reputation is valuable, rare, non-substitutable, and imperfectly imitable
• Media reputation explains a significant amount of variance of ROA → improved
media reputation leads to better performance (ROA)
- Including environmental rating increased it even more
Etter (2019)
Early approaches:
• Perceived news media as the sole actors in influencing organizational reputation
• They assume that news media possess a superior credibility and reach, because of their
status and structural position, and that they are, therefore, far more influential on the
formation of collective judgments than other actors
Results:
• Organizational audiences are now able to publicly challenge evaluations offered
by the media, or even to subvert images projected by organizations themselves to
highlight contradictions between communication and action
• Future research should pay more attention to the active and direct engagement of
audiences, rather than assuming that audiences influence reputation mainly when the
news media pay attention to their actions
• Social media can help organisations expose themselves to different partial and
possibly inaccurate representations and to propagate these representations
selectively to restricted groups that insulate themselves from alternative and opposing
views
• Reputations are ever changing and (re-)produced
• Emotions should be more incorporated in understanding reputations → we should
remain open to the possibility that emotional responses may also shape the processing
2
