Abstract:
This creative project suggests updates to the 2000 National Education Association Crisis
Communications Guide & Toolkit that reflect crisis management theory and best practices in
social media crisis communication. This project includes a literature review that establishes the
theoretical foundation for a content analysis of crisis communication, and the content analysis
identifies the best practices and recommendations for the update. W. Timothy Coombs’s
Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), a public relations theory that not only
identifies possible crisis types an organization may face but also recommends appropriate crisis
responses for each, serves as the theoretical basis.
Because there are few primary and secondary schools that have published crisis
communication plans including social media contingencies, this project examines the crisis
communication work of higher education institutions. A content analysis includes the four
colleges and universities that won Circle of Excellence Awards from the Council for
Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) in the Issues and Crisis Management category
since 2010. The content analysis findings inform the recommended updates to the 2000 National
Education Association Crisis Communications Guide & Toolkit on the timing of crisis response,
the frequency of updates, the content of messages, the involvement of students, faculty, and staff,
and the response to external constituents.
