The Power of Crisis Communication : A Qualitative Study of the Establishment of a Scientific Field

Janina Klingelhöfer deconstructs the development of the scientific field of crisis communication through the lens of the sociology of knowledge. To integrate both the social and intellectual dimensions of this scientific field, she unites the theoretical considerations of Bourdieu’s field analysis with the concepts of habitus and capital with a Foucauldian discourse analysis to conduct a comprehensive qualitative historiography. The study reflects on the beginnings of the field and its past developments to answer the main research question: How did the scientific field of crisis communication become what it is today? Acknowledgement Abstract Deutsche Zusammenfassung Contents About the Author Abbreviations List of Figures List of Tables 1 Introduction Part I Theoretical Framework 2 Historiography of Scientific Fields 2.1 A Social Perspective on Scientific Knowledge 2.2 Concepts of Scientific Knowledge Areas 2.3 Historiography of Communication Studies 2.4 The Status of Crisis Communication Historiography 3 Bourdieu—Deconstructing the Social Dimension 3.1 Scientific Approach and Concepts 3.2 Field 3.3 Habitus 3.4 Capital 3.5 National and Global Fields 4 Foucault—Deconstructing the Intellectual Dimension 4.1 Scientific Approach and Concepts 4.2 Discourse Analysis 4.3 Discursive Formations—A Strategic Choice 4.4 Four Rules of Formation Part II Category System and Study Design 5 Category System 5.1 Bourdieu and Foucault—The Question of the Subject 5.2 Category System 6 Study Design 6.1 Self-Reflection—The Impact of the Researcher 6.2 Methodology 6.3 Data Collection 6.3.1 Data Collection—The Social Dimension 6.3.2 Data Collection—The Intellectual Dimension 6.4 Data Analysis and Display of Results 6.4.1 Data Analysis—The Social Dimension 6.4.2 Data Analysis—The Intellectual Dimension Part III Results and Discussion 7 Social Dimension—Field Analysis 7.1 The Founding Scholars 7.2 The Scholarship 7.2.1 Origins 7.2.2 It All Starts With a Crisis 7.2.3 Making a Difference 7.2.4 Exclusive Scholars 7.3 The Community 7.4 The Crisis 7.4.1 Consultancy 7.4.2 External Funding 7.5 The Boundaries 7.5.1 Interdiscplinarity 7.5.2 Hyperspecialization 7.5.3 Crisis Communication and Crisis Management 7.5.4 Crisis Communication and Risk Communication 8 Intellectual Dimension—Discourse Analysis 8.1 General Overview 8.1.1 The Editors and Authors 8.1.2 Organizational Crisis Communication 8.1.3 Organizations and Their Stakeholders 8.1.4 Six Discourses 8.2 Crisis Management and Communication Discourse 8.2.1 Reputation and Transformative Paradigm 8.2.2 Theorizing Between Control and Flexibility 8.2.3 The Dominant Reputation Paradigm in Journal Articles 8.3 Risk and Crisis Communication Discourse 8.4 Public Safety Discourse 8.4.1 Health 8.4.2 Disasters 8.4.3 War 8.5 Cultural Discourse 8.6 Practice Discourse 8.7 Media Discourse 8.7.1 Traditional News Media 8.7.2 Social Media 9 Five Theses for Scientific Field Establishment 9.1 Constructing Different Realities of the Scientific Field 9.2 Let’s Call It ‘Organizational Crisis Communication’? 9.3 A One-Sided Relationship with Crisis Management 9.4 How Americans Maintain Power and Lead the Scientific Field 9.5 Transformations of the Field—Struggles Between Paradigms 10 Conclusion References