Stormy weather: Testing "stealing thunder" as a crisis communication strategy to improve communication flow between organizations and journalists

Public Relations Review

Volumn 29, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 291-308

  Arpan, Laura M ^a   Pompper, Donnalyn ^a  

^a FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0141532185     PISSN: 03638111     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/S0363-8111(03)00043-2     Document Type: Article

References (127)

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55. G.A. Donohue, P.J. Tichenor, C.N. Olien, A guard dog perspective on the role of media, Journal of Communication 42 (1995), pp. 115-132. Also, perhaps the most contemporary examples of "hits" include accusations of fiduciary scandal at Enron, Inc. and at WorldCom, Inc.
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64. For example-conflict (e.g., between the organization and key publics such as employees, interest groups, or customers), prominence (e.g., large organizations usually are considered newsworthy due to their size and influence), timeliness (e.g., crises may be sustained with additional news pegs, and in related and follow-up stories), and impact (e.g., large crises that affect many people demand coverage). Conflict is considered one of the most often used but least legitimate news values. See also T. Richards, B. King, An alternative to the fighting frame in news reporting, Canadian Journal of Communication 25 (2000), pp. 479-496.
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68. Frames organize strips "cut from the stream of ongoing activity" of the everyday world and drive journalists to "come to closure quickly on the meaning of news-to determine what the story is about." Framing involves "selecting and highlighting some features of reality while omitting others." See R.M. Entman, Framing: toward clarification of a fractured paradigm, Journal of Communication 43 (4) (1993), pp. 51-58, p. 53
69. Also see, R. Fowler, Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press, Routledge, NY, 1991
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74. L. Dolnik, T.I. Case, K.D. Williams, Stealing Thunder as a Courtroom Tactic Revisited: Processes and Boundaries, 2002, Manuscript submitted for publication
75. Williams K.D. Bourgeois M.J. Croyle R.T. The effects of stealing thunder in criminal and civil trials Law and Human Behavior 17 1993 597-609
76. Ibid., p. 597. Stealing thunder has been defined as "revealing negative information about oneself ... before it is revealed or elicited by another person."
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78. L. Arpan-Ralstin, D.R. Roskos-Ewoldsen, Stealing Thunder: An Analysis of the Effects of Organizational Self-disclosure During a Public Relations Crisis. Presented at the International Communication Association Annual Conference, Acapulco, Mexico, June 2000.
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80. S.A. Ondrus, Scooping the Press: Reducing Newspaper Coverage of Political Scandal by Stealing Thunder, Unpublished Doctoral dissertation, University of Toledo, 1998.
81. Commodity theory, one theoretical explanation for the efficacy of stealing thunder, suggests that messages are just like commodities: the more of them there are, the less value they carry. See T.C. Brock, L.A. Brannon, Liberalization of commodity theory, Basic and Applied Social Psychology 13 (1992), pp. 135-144
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95. L. Dolnick, T.I. Case, K.D. Williams, op. cit., 2000, Indeed, one study of stealing thunder found that when the opposing side disclosed to jurors that the defense's self-disclosure of incriminating information was a long-standing practice designed to invoke sympathy for the defendant, the effect of stealing thunder was nullified.
96. According to Pincus and his colleagues, "[S]eparating these perceptions can uncover key data on how best to design strategies for bolstering public relations practitioners' credibility and enhancing the value of the materials offered to the media." See J.D. Pincus, T. Rimmer, R.E. Rayfield, F. Cropp, Newspaper editors' perceptions of public relations: how business, news, and sports editors differ, Journal of Public Relations Research 5 (1) (1993), pp. 27-45, p. 44.
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98. I b i d.
99. K.D. Williams et al., op. cit., 1993.
100. Two samples were drawn for the experiment. The first sample was a group of journalists, representing various media outlets throughout the U.S., participating in two seminars offered by the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, FL. The second sample was a group of journalists and journalism students attending a regional conference of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ).
101. Technical/relevant failures are those that occur within the product and technology activities of a firm and that occur within environments with which the organization shares a significant interdependency, such as customers, suppliers, competitors, regulators. See W.G. Egelhoff, F. Sen, An information-processing model of crisis communication, Management Communication Quarterly 5 (1992), pp. 443-484.
102. In both scenarios the factory's operations director said that a pipe from a vat containing the chemical burst near a broken window, and that the chemical spurted out the window onto the sidewalk below. The sidewalk had been designed to drain rainwater into the river, a common practice for old sidewalks near the river. In both scenarios a representative of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) who was on site (at the river in the thunder condition/at the press conference in the stealing thunder condition) indicated that the chemical was toxic to humans and animals, who typically become mildly ill from inhaling its fumes and may become seriously ill from ingesting even small quantities through water, other liquids, or food. He speculated that the spill eventually would kill hundreds, or even thousands, of fish.
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