Internal dimensions of crisis communication in an on-going crisis situation: Lessons from 22th July terrorist attacks

Information-sharing and communication is a perennial challenge in crisis management and coordination, both intra- and inter-organizational communication and between the organizations and the public. Still, crisis communication researchers have thus far primarily focused on the external dimensions of crisis communication, such as crisis response strategies and image-repair efforts, rather than the internal dimensions, i.e. the communication within the organizations handling the crisis. Consequently, limited efforts has been made to conceptually and theoretically detect what are the underpinning dimensions of internal crisis communication and to explain their role. This project seeks to contribute to these shortcomings in two ways. First, by analyzing a case of internal crisis communication based on rich and detailed real-time data analysis including verbatim transcripts of telephone and radio communication and police logs. Second, by taking two classical theoretical perspectives in the communication literature and employing them on a ‘new’ field, internal crisis communication, and on a rich empirical case.

The project is a collaboration with PhD. Helge Renå, Department of Administration and Organization Theory, University of Bergen.