
Hui Zhao
CRISIS COMMUNICATION | DIGITAL MEDIA

Politicizing crisis communication via social media : A contextual understanding of organizational crises in China
Författare
Summary, in English
This dissertation offers a novel depiction of crisis communication in China, which accentuates the influences of political and technological contexts. The findings from the four articles justify and validate the complex and mutually constitutive relationship between politics and technology that underpin the construction of crises in the Chinese context. More specifically, the dissertation observes three ways of contextual influence on the construction of organizational crises: (1) the ascribing of crisis attribution through construction and negotiation of meaning; (2) the generation of authority through social actors’ actions and interactions; and (3) the debating of organizational misconduct through public interpretation and discussion. Moreover, a synthesis of the findings from the three empirical articles reveals that the politics, or the political dimensions, of crisis have become deeply ingrained —even unavoidable—in the Chinese context and are relevant not only to crises that derive from various political factors, but also for those that originate without political implications. This dissertation suggests the term “politicizing crisis communication” to describe the process through which social actors ascribe political meaning to and/or interpret organizational crises from political viewpoints. Three elements, namely crisis attribution, crisis management, and crisis implication, are discussed to conceptualize the idea of “politicizing crisis communication.”
This dissertation fleshes out and deepens our understanding of the relevance of political and technological contexts in the shaping of organizational crises by social actors via social media in China. More importantly, by integrating the social constructionist approach, this dissertation advances the context-oriented tradition by scrutinizing the large-scale dynamics of societal contexts in crisis communication.
Avdelning/ar
- Institutionen för strategisk kommunikation
Publiceringsår
2020-05-15
Språk
Engelska
Fulltext
Dokumenttyp
Doktorsavhandling
Förlag
Lund University
Ämne
- Communication Studies
Nyckelord
- strategic communication
- crisis communication
- Politics
- social media
- context
- organizational crisis
- China
Status
Published
Handledare
- Jesper Falkheimer
- Charlotte Simonsson
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISBN: 978-91-7895-465-0
- ISBN: 978-91-7895-464-3
Försvarsdatum
9 juni 2020
Försvarstid
10:00
Försvarsplats
U202, Universitetsplatsen 2, Campus Helsingborg / Digital disputation
Opponent
- W. Timothy Coombs (Professor)