Towards a conceptual model of crisis communication with the media in the financial sector

Although crisis communication has emerged as a specialised study field for public relationsscholars and practitioners and has been a mounting area of inter-disciplinary research in recentyears, several gaps in current literature on crisis communication exist. Gaps include a notablefocus on the planning, prevention and recovery stages with lesser attention being devoted to thecrisis-response stage; a lack of a comprehensive conceptual framework to guide communicationdecision makers during this critical period; and that crisis-communication studies appear to bepredominantly Western based. This article attempts to address these gaps by focusing on thecrisis-response stage, with particular emphasis on communication with the media during a crisis.It is acknowledged that the success of a crisis-management effort is profoundly affected by whatan organisation says and does during a crisis – termed the crisis response (Benoit, 1997; Coombs,2004). This article focuses on this crisis response and is divided as follows: firstly, an introductionto key terminology is provided, followed by the theoretical background, the research approachand methodology, as well as the findings from the case studies, which culminate in the proposedconceptual model for effective crisis communication with the media. Lastly, a critical evaluation ofthe model is presented and recommendations for further research are provided.