MEASURING A WORLD IN CRISIS: A NEW MODEL OF REPUTATION REPAIR

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dc.contributor.advisorLiu, Brooke Fen_US
dc.contributor.authorPage, Tyler Granten_US
dc.contributor.departmentCommunicationen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2018-09-12T06:03:06Z
dc.date.available2018-09-12T06:03:06Z
dc.date.issued2018en_US
dc.description.abstractReputation repair is a paradigm within public relations and crisis communication. The reputation repair paradigm is currently focused on the symbolic strategies organizations use to repair their reputations in the aftermath of a crisis. This dissertation proposes significant revisions to the reputation repair paradigm and builds a series of scale measures and a revised model of reputation repair to achieve this goal. Using moral foundations theory, situational crisis communication theory (SCCT), image repair theory, and input from 20 participants with expertise in public relations, this dissertation designs new measures for instructing information, adjusting information, reputation management messages, offensiveness of a crisis, and perceived virtuousness that buffers against reputational harms posed by crisis. This dissertation then refines and validates these measures with a pilot test with 797 participants recruited from mTurk. Finally, it concludes with an experiment testing these measures in a crisis situation operationalized as a potentially deadly fire in a building. The experiment used 1,000 participants recruited from mTurk in a 2 (crisis types: rumor or organizational misdeed) x 2 (offensiveness: high or low) x 2 (instructing information: yes or no) x 2 (adjusting information: yes or no) x 2 (crisis response: denial or rebuilding) factorial design to test the effect of SCCT’s matching construct of response strategies and the proposed revised model of reputation repair that explains how messages, offensiveness of a crisis, and perceived virtuousness impact post-crisis reputation. This dissertation finds that matching strategies according to SCCT have a very small effect (ή2 = .005) on post crisis reputation while reputation management messages overall have a very strong structural effect on post crisis reputation (.814). Further, it finds that the revised model of reputation repair explains how messages, perceived offensiveness, virtuousness, and post-crisis reputation interrelate and that the revised model changes slightly under different situations. Implications for theory and practitioners are discussed.en_US
dc.identifierhttps://doi.org/10.13016/M2QF8JP08
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/21310
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledCommunicationen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledBusiness administrationen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledManagementen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledcrisis communicationen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledimage repairen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledpublic relationsen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledqualitative comparative analysisen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledreputationen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledsituational crisis communication theoryen_US
dc.titleMEASURING A WORLD IN CRISIS: A NEW MODEL OF REPUTATION REPAIRen_US
dc.typeDissertationen_US

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