Читать книгу Theorizing Crisis Communication - Timothy L. Sellnow - Страница 9

Crisis, disaster, and risk have emerged as critical areas of multidisciplinary inquiry. These events continue to manifest as deeply disruptive occurrences and as significant forces of social change. Despite their power, crises and disasters are underexamined phenomena. Effective understanding, management, and response requires attention from the research community. This attention also necessitates the development and application of a diverse and multidisciplinary body of theory.

Puzzles and questions are the stuff of theory creation. Crises and disasters, by definition, are high uncertainty events that defy our sense of normal and our established processes and frameworks for making sense. Crises make the full realization of what is happening, why, and with what near and long-term outcomes difficult. Theory, and especially the predictive and explanatory functions of theory, help us explain these confusing and uncertain events.

We were gratified and somewhat surprised at the success of the first edition of Theorizing Crisis Communication. Although we believed a summary of crisis theory was important, we also assumed that crisis communication remained a relatively specialized area of communication research. The success of the first edition demonstrated that crisis communication is recognized as a critical area of practice for individuals, organizations, communities, and society at large and is becoming increasingly mainstream.

The second edition of Theorizing Crisis Communication reviews a larger body of theory reflective of the continuous growth in crisis communication scholarship. In addition to the discussion of more theories in all chapters, this edition includes new chapters on theory formation, social media, and applications of theory, as well as expanded treatment of technology, resilience, and risk, among others.

Special thanks to M. Scott Poole for his support and encouragement and to the editorial staff at Wiley for making a second edition possible. We also wish to thank the anonymous reviewers who provided feedback on the first edition.

There are many others to thank for their patience and support including our spouses, Beth and Deanna, and our children, Maggie and Henry and Debbie and Rick, and our grandchildren, Seneca, Greer, Lincoln, and Emmett.

We are also grateful to Stephanie Church for her editorial review, and America Edwards, Khairul Islam, Ashleigh Day, Sydney Wallace, Laura Boutemen, and Rodrigo Soares.

Many colleagues and current and former students allow us to share ideas including in no particular order Brook Liu, Marsha Vanderford, Barbara Reynolds, Joel Iverson, Dennis Gouran, Lee Wilkins, Bill Benoit, Tim Coombs, Andreas Swartz, Dan O’Hair, Kevin Barge, Robert Littlefield, Robert Heath, Finn Frandsen, Winni Johansen, Keith Hearit, Robert Rowland, Ron Arnett, Donyale Paggette, Bengt Johansson, Martin Loeffelholz, Andreas Schwarz, Amiso George, Christine Huang, Julia Smith, Catherine Galentine, Julie Novak, Steven Venette, Patric Spence, Ken Lachlan, Jeff Brand, Robert Ulmer, Melvin Gupton, Laura Pechta, Colleen Ezzeddine, Catherine Galentine, Keri LuBell, Bill Nowling, J. J. McIntyre, Alyssa Millner, Elizabeth Petrun-Sayers, Kathryn Anthony, Bethney Wilson, Nathan Stewart, Charles Bantz, Morgan Wickline, Emina Herovic, and Ronisha Sheppard.

Revising this work, amid a global pandemic of historic proportions as well as widespread protests regarding social justice, created unique challenges. While endeavoring to represent the moment, we also worked to ensure that we addressed both those risks that are understood and those that are emerging. Emerging infectious diseases, technological failures, hurricanes, fires, and chemical and biological contaminations are sadly common. The disruption and harm caused by factors such as climate change are new, especially given the scale. In fact, we are seeing more events that we would characterize as mega-crises, based on the scope, scale, and duration of the harm. Both familiar and new risks are likely to be increasingly important influences on our lives, and we hope this book aids and encourages those who seek to understand and manage crisis events.

We dedicate this work to our newest grandchildren Greer Johanna Swift and Emmett Adam Sellnow-Richmond.