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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
This paper combines two topics: “government public relations and public crisis communication” with the “erosion of trust in (public) authorities”. It is difficult to discuss public crisis communication without considering the damages and implications to people’s trust in public and governmental institutions.
Purpose: Study a particular severe situation that forced the Portuguese government to react
and communicate with the public to then draw conclusions about the consequences of that reaction/communication. Mainly, establish a correlation between the government’s performance,
its response strategy to the crisis that followed a big fire and the growing lack of trust in political
bodies.
Methodology: This research followed two sequential procedures - a stakeholder analysis and a
content analysis applied to information materials collected from the Portuguese government
official portal, between 17 June and 12 October 2017.
Findings: The results point out for a crisis response strategy that tries to avoid the citizen’s distrust emphasizing the government’s competence dealing with the fire issue and its consequences.
Research limitations: Being a sensitive issue, there were difficulties in the direct access to eventual goals and strategies behind the crisis management in the reported situation. In addition,
because this is an exploratory study the citizen’s opinion is not yet included in this research
stage.
Originality/value: Looking at the links between the issues of ‘crisis communication’ and ‘trust’
the study intends to bring awareness to the important role that public relations function can
play in helping governments to manage communication in a crisis context, providing enlightening for future crisis that may harm the trust in political institutions.
Description
Keywords
Government public relations Crisis communication Political trust Digital communication platforms
Citation
Pereira, S. & Nobre, P. (2018, jul 05-07). Crisis communication during a national fire disaster. Paper presented at International 25th International Public Relations Research Symposium BledCom. Rikli Balance Hotel, Lake Bled, Slovenia.