The Public Tragedy: Clarifying and Defining a Public Relations Challenge

• In Event: Risk Communication and Perception

Abstract

Tragedy is substantively different than a crisis. Tragedies, whether man-made or natural disasters, have a substantially larger and singular impact than a traditional industry crisis, and current typologies of crisis fail to account for organizations being impacted by and having to respond to events that they are neither the victim nor the perpetrator of. Thus, tragedies require explication and, possibly, a different paradigm for public relations and crisis communication, both in industry response and academic scholarship. The goals of this paper are twofold: First, we define and extend our understanding of public tragedies within the scope of public relations and crisis communication, particularly for third-party organizations, those organizations not directly impacted by an event. Second, we discuss the potential role of organizational involvement in the conversation surrounding a tragedy, including the consequences and affordances of social media in tragedy response.

Authors

• Rebecca A. Hayes, Illinois State University

• Julia Crouse Waddell, U of Arkansas at Monticello