Public Relations Theory

3Crisis Communication, Risk Communication, and Issues Management

W. Timothy Coombs, Sherry J. Holladay, and Elina Tachkova

Public relations includes specialties that deal with crisis communication, risk communication, and issues management. Though separate areas, there are strong connections between these three specialties (Coombs, 2015). Risk is the key component of crisis preparation and mitigation, because a crisis is often the manifestation of a risk. Moreover, crisis events often require the use of risk communication. Proactive issues management can be driven by attempts to manage risks and avoid crises because issues emerge from risk. Effective crisis communication can help to avoid the need for issues management, while failed issues management can trigger a crisis. Because of the close connections between these three specialties, this chapter addresses all three.

Defining the Concepts: What Are Crisis Communication, Risk Communication, and Issues Management?

A critical element of theory is conceptual clarity. Chaffee (1991) emphasized the need for what he called concept explication. Part of concept explication is creating a conceptual definition that explains what a concept (or variable) means. Conceptual definitions can be created by identifying the essential elements or dimensions of a concept. Crisis communication and risk communication are concepts with a variety of definitions. Therefore, the conceptual definitions provided in this chapter will rely upon essential ...