The paper Contextual Factors and Crisis Attribution in Social Media Crisis: Revisiting Situational Crisis Communication Theory in the Chinese Context, address recent appeals for more contextually sensitive perspectives in crisis communication research. This study takes Chinese contexts as a case to revisit Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), a classic theory in this field. The study builds on prior framing theory and categorization of national contexts to refine the model of SCCT by taking account of contextual influences. The empirical results demonstrate the complex negotiation process of multiple context-embedded frames and its influences on crisis attribution. Based on that, three main contextual factors (i.e., technology, political value and cultural value) and their relevance to crisis communication were identified and discussed. This study further advances the model of SCCT in the following two ways: First, the consideration of “modifiers” should integrate contextual factors within the material and ideational system in a national context. Second, the evaluation of crisis situation should rely on the framing process of crisis instead of fixed crisis frame. In this way, SCCT as a western originated theory can be further informed and enriched when it transforms itself into a contextually sensitive theory for a worldwide view.

Hui Zhao’s ongoing dissertation “Dynamics of Crisis Communication” focuses on crisis communication in a digital era. This project takes China as a case to explore the dynamics of crisis communication in the age of social media, departing from but transcending the diverse frames created by multiple communicators during crises. This project aims to identify crucial dynamic mechanisms that occur/ recur in crisis communication, but produce different aggregate outcomes depending on both the internal and external factors of organizations. Based on an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, this study emphasizes that there are multiple and autonomous actors participate in a dynamic and ongoing process of crisis communication, which is constrained and facilitated by contextual factors. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are employed to reveal the dynamic mechanism in crisis communication.