Multicultural crisis communication: Towards a social constructionist perspective

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Multicultural Crisis Communication: Towards a Social Constructionist Perspective Jesper Falkheimern and Mats Heidenn Crisis communication is a field dominated by case studies and is lacking of systematic knowledge and theoretical framework analysis. Functionalist and objectivist perspectives have dominated the field even though there are exceptions. This may be one reason why multicultural approaches to crisis communication, increasingly relevant in contemporary society, are very few and undeveloped. The aim in the article is to give a critical analysis of research that has been done on crisis communication as well as intercultural public relations and develop a different theoretical framework. We propose the use of ethnicity, focusing collective cultural identity as dynamic, relational and situational in crisis theory and practice. Ethnic differences seem to escalate during crises. Media use and access are also discussed. A Swedish survey shows, among other things, that people with a foreign background read mainstream newspapers more seldom than average Swedes, but that the access to Internet and mobile phones is very high. Based on a social constructionist epistemology, the article ends with four proposals for future research and practice in multicultural crisis communication: (1) audienceorientation – focusing sense-making, (2) a proactive and interactive approach – focusing dialogue, (3) a community-focused approach – focusing a long-range pre-crisis perspective and, (4) an ethnicity-approach towards intercultural communication.

Introduction

n Assistant Professor Department of Service Management, P.O. Box 822, Campus Helsingborg, Lund University, SE-251 08 Helsingborg, Sweden [email protected], tel. 0046-709 35 06 22, fax 04642-35 66 60 nn Assistant Professor Department of Service Management, P.O. Box 822, Campus Helsingborg, Lund University, SE-251 08 Helsingborg, Sweden [email protected]

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Crisis communication has a short history as a research field in Europe. According to Nohrstedt and Admassu (1993) the communicative aspects of crises were neglected for many years and crisis communication did not establish itself as an independent research area until after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. In the USA, organizational crisis communication has been a core interest in public relations research and practice for a long period. In any case, crisis communication is still a field lacking of systematic knowledge and theoretical framework analysis. Instead, research is dominated by empirical case studies, often neglecting the transgressing boundaries between risk and crisis communication. Further, functionalist and objectivist perspectives have dominated the field even though there are exceptions (Sellnow et al. 2002). In this article we propose a social constructionist perspective, especially focusing the contemporary multicultural context. This means that crisis communication is understood and analyzed as a sense-making process (e.g. Weick, 1979) where reality is negotiated and constructed in cultural contexts and situations, rather than distributed from a sender to a recipient.

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Our social constructionist perspective takes two late modern societal characteristics as starting points. First, that we live in an increasing ‘‘environmental complexity’’ (Murphy, 1996), an ‘‘era of crises’’ (Lerbringer, 1997), in a ‘‘risk society’’ (Beck, 1992) as a part of reflexive modernity (Giddens, 1990), where humans and organizations experience a higher degree of uncertainty than in earlier times. Second, that we live in a society that is ethnically diverse and increasingly multicultural. In Sweden, as an example, immigration has led to a radical change in population since the 1960s. In 2004, 16 per cent of the Swedish population consisted of persons with a foreign background, which means that they were either born in another country or that both parents were born abroad, according to Statistics Sweden (2004). These figures are not that different from other European countries even though Sweden has had a higher immigration level than most other countries, in relation to the population of approximately 9 million. This development challenges crisis communication theory as well as practice. The changes call for a different theoretical perspective that enables practitioners to manage the risk and crisis flow in late modern

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organizations and societies from a multicultural perspective. In fact, this perspective is necessary not only because of the multicultural context. In a wider sense, it may be integrated into a cultural and reflexive communication perspective that challenges the mass and system oriented paradigm. L. A. Grunig, J. Grunig and Dozier (2002) conclude that crisis communication is an emerging field of public relations. We mean that risk and crisis communication is the core of public relations practice and theory. From a historical standpoint ‘‘damage control’’, managing public opinion, mainly through mass media, set off the public relations industry (Ewen, 1996). Gradually, during the 20th century, public relations developed into a stable communication management function in different organizations. But it is still a fact that public relations show its main value when organizations face risks, uncertainty or suffers from crises. In other words, when organizations are in need of professional management of social reflexivity processes, defending or creating legitimacy between themselves and the public. In our review of articles in scientific journals concerning crisis communication and public relations from a multicultural perspective we found a large number of articles concerning intercultural communication issues, but mainly from an interpersonal and cognitive perspective, i.e. from nonorganizational levels. We also found several articles concerning crisis management from different angles, but not many articles that focused crisis communication integrating public relations theory or vice versa. Finally, multicultural approaches to public relations and crisis communication were very few and undeveloped (cf. Banks, 2000). Similar conclusions regarding the field of organizational crisis communication are made by Lee (2005: 276) in Communication Yearbook: ‘‘crisis communication theory is lacking cultural contextualization, dominated by applied case studies and is based on a Western oriented paradigm’’. Our review supports two conclusions: (1) crisis communication as a research field is dominated by non-theoretical case studies and guidelines, and (2) multicultural public relations is an undeveloped research field dominated by intercultural theory, quantitative empirical surveys, analyzed through established national frames and discourses. In the following section we will show some findings and reflections based on the review, and develop a different theoretical framework. Initially, crisis communication will be introduced and intercultural communication will be discussed as well as the relational and situational concept of ethnicity. Media research regarding media access and use in relation to multicultural differences is shortly presented. Then follows a section focusing multicultural public relations, ending in a final analysis of multicultural crisis communication as theory and practice. r 2006 The Authors Journal compilation r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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The aim is to (1) give a critical analysis of research that has been done on crisis communication with a multicultural public, (2) analyze its strategy value, and (3) propose central concepts and a social constructionist perspective that would develop theory as well as practice. Sweden is used as an empirical frame but the paper is mainly based on earlier research and theory. The paper is based on an on-going research project about multicultural crisis communication funded by the Swedish Emergency Management Agency.

Crisis Communication Crisis is in this paper defined as a wide concept covering societal as well as organizational dimensions. In fact, definitions of societal and organizational crises do not differ very much. According to Swedish crisis researchers Sundelius and Stern (1997: 13), a societal crisis is based upon a situation where the central operators experience that significant values are threatened, with only limited time at hand and circumstances which are very unpredictable. An organizational crisis is defined by similar characteristics: significant threats, unpredictability and urgency. But the perspective and aim differs. From a societal perspective the public is, or should be, at the centre. From an organizational perspective the subject that is threatened and under pressure is the organization itself where management find them selves in a situation that ‘‘[. . .] interrupts normal organizational functioning’’ (Lee, 2005: 278). Risks are, obviously, related to crises in several ways. From an organizational perspective it is concluded that if risks are neglected, crises may happen. This is the argument behind issues management, aimed to find risk issues before they escalate. The whole idea of finding risks and issues gives a notion of how the natural sciences view risks: ‘‘as the product of the probability and consequences of an adverse event’’ (Lupton, 1999: 16). From a social constructionist perspective risks are not defined by rational experts or organizations, but by ordinary humans. Traditionally, a crisis is seen as a very unusual situation that may threaten an organization’s business, reputation, image, and relation, or in any way harm its publics. In most cases, threats are regarded as external threats from the market or the surrounding environment. It usually becomes the responsibility of public relations practitioners to control and transmit information in order to maintain or recover the image of the organization and the relations with important publics. Often crisis communication situations are handled as fire emergency responses. This means that the sudden crisis is managed in a reactive way, hopefully on the basis of wellplanned strategies. From a more modern view, a crisis is regarded as a natural stage in an ongoing

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evolution (Sellnow, 1993; Weick, 2001; Kersten, 2005) and an import part of an organization’s ongoing learning processes (Stern, 1997). From this point of view, a crisis is not an anomalous situation but a certain stage in the never-ending development of an organization. Several phases of a crisis can be identified, but they are often delimited to three: a pre-crisis or an incubation phase, an acute or crisis phase which follows a dramatic event, and a post-crisis when questions on cause, responsibility, and preparation for a new crisis are addressed. This apprehension gives a more holistic view of crisis, and calls attention to the fact that both crisis and ‘‘business-as-usual’’ are normal parts of an organization’s life cycle. A weakness in the bulk of the research on crisis communication is the exclusive focus on postcrisis. Consequently, crisis communication has mainly focused on production of information – designing material in preparation for crisis, to cope with an existing crisis, and to restore order after the crisis has settled (Kersten, 2005). After an exposition of earlier trends in crisis management research, Gonzalez-Herrero and Pratt (1996) conclude that there is a great need for progress and development of new theories. The majority of the research in crisis communication has had a focus on guidelines and procedures often gathered from the experience of practitioners, rather than on a more theoretical perspective (Williams & Olaniran, 1998). The modern research in crisis communication has developed in two directions (Seeger, Sellnow, & Ulmer, 2001). One direction encompasses theoretical models from the research on corporate apologia and impression management (e.g. Benoit, 1995; Coombs, 1995; Benoit, 1997). The aim of this research is to produce strategies to improve an organization’s image after a crisis has occurred. The other direction has moved beyond the post-crisis communication, for example by focusing on the role of issues management and risk communication at ‘‘crisis incubation’’. Crises often result from poor communication between organizations and the public (Zoch & Duhe, 1997; Coombs, 1999) and communication problems tend to be intensified in a multicultural context. In mainstream public relations theory, intercultural communication has dominated the small but emerging field. In crisis communication research multicultural issues are neglected, even if there is an increasing need for management knowledge among practitioners working in a heterogeneous environment.

Intercultural Communication – a Traditional Field People from different cultures have difficulties in understanding each other due to different mean-

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ing systems (i.e. language). Another factor that obstructs understanding is the context which importance was observed early by the anthropologist Edward T. Hall, one of the initiators of intercultural communication in the 1950s. A context embraces information not included in the message and often this information is more important than the message itself. The significance of a context varies from different languages and the use of the context to produce a meaning differs from culture to culture (Lim, 2002). Thus, to acquire a correct understanding one requires profound knowledge of a different group’s culture and language. Intercultural communication can be defined as the study of heterophilous interpersonal communication between individuals from different cultures (Rogers & Hart, 2002). The scholars of the field mainly focus on dyads and interpersonal communication, in contrast to the field of international communication that tends to work on a macro level with a focus on power, politics, and processes of influence over national borders. Crisis communication takes place at different levels, interpersonal as well as mass-mediated levels. Intercultural issues and problems may be found in most crises today. This is obvious when it comes to crises or disasters involving whole communities, regions or nations. But it is also a fact confronting emergency authorities in local accidents. For example, this was the case during and after an industrial accident at the Dutch energy plant Amercentrale (28 September 2003) where five subcontractor employees died. The accident was caused by a scaffolding that collapsed and trapped eight people. The last victim was recovered after five days. According to an evaluation made by the Institute for Safety and Crisis Management on behalf of the municipality (COT, 2003) the incident had a strong intercultural dimension since three of the causalities were Turks and the other two were Americans. The pre-crisis plans did not take into account any possible cultural differences, so the practitioners had to improvise. E.g., the notion of family among Turks is very wide and meant that the authorities had to inform approximately 250 people, and inform women and men separately since they were Muslims. Another example concerns trust, of major importance in crisis communication. If citizens do not trust authorities and their communicators, it is very hard to reach and influence them during a crisis situation. The cultural background is one relevant factor behind trust and it is not uncommon that persons with a foreign non-western origin, with experiences from authoritarian regimes, have low trust in emergency authorities. In Rosenga˚rd, a part of the Swedish city of Malmo¨ where the majority of inhabitants have a foreign origin, this has caused several incidents. r 2006 The Authors Journal compilation r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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Police cars have been vandalized and firemen have been attacked with stones. In the discussion of intercultural communication issues, habitually different dimensions of cultural variability are used to explain and predict differences and similarities. The most prevalent dimension is individualism–collectivism, which exists both on a cultural level (e.g. cultural norms and laws) and an individual level (e.g. individual values) (Gudykunst & Lee, 2002). A distinguishing factor is ‘‘in-groups’’ that are important for the members and for which they make sacrifices. In-groups have the power to influence the member’s behaviour in different situations. In individualistic cultures members have many in-groups (e.g. family, friends, profession and associations), and consequently they have relative little influence on the members. In collectivistic cultures, the logic is vice versa. Cultural individualism and collectivism influence the communication in a culture through the norms and laws that are associated with the dominant cultural tendency (Gudykunst & Lee, 2002). An obvious example of norms is the effort of individualistic cultures to reach clarity in conversations, which is perceived as fundamental for effective communication. Requests are often apprehended as the most effective strategy to reach the goal of clarity. This stands in opposition to collectivistic cultures where direct request is understood as the least effective strategy. As a result, there is potential for a cultural collision when members of these two categories are about to communicate. Another difference is that low-context communication tends to dominate in individualistic cultures and high-context communication is predominant in collectivistic cultures (Gudykunst & Ting-Toomey, 1988). According to Hall (1976), high-context communication occurs when most of the information is either in the physical context or internalized in the person. Low-context communication takes place when the larger part of the communication is explicitly coded in the message. Hall’s use of high and low context dimensions have links to Hofstede’s (1980) macro-analytical scales and indexes for classifying national differences, that has dominated the intercultural field for several years. Hofstede’s analytical dimensions are originally based on a large data base study of employee values in approximately 56 countries, collected by IBM. Through analysis of this database he found four primary dimensions that differentiated cultures at national levels: power distance, individualism–pluralism, masculinity–femininity and uncertainty avoidance. He later supplied one more dimension: Long-Term Orientation. There are some examples of multicultural public relation studies that use Hofstede’s dimensions. Sriramesh (2002) reports that in countries that are not characterized by pluralism or foster open disagreement with r 2006 The Authors Journal compilation r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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authorities, public activism is non-existent or restrained. There are obvious limitations with Hofstede’s grand theory, let us mention some of them. Despite the large amounts of survey data, one may question if employees at IBM represent national cultures. The concept of nationality is quite difficult to handle. Cultural identity is complex, situational and dynamic and may not be definable through quantitative surveys. One may also – and this is the main problem with the whole idea of thought – question the national cultural determinism that Hofstede’s research is based upon. Explaining organizational behaviour as based on national cultural differences is too easy. Hofstede (2002) has answered some of these arguments and means that surveys do have limitations but that the study of IBM employees has been validated by himself and other researchers over the years. Still, the criticism remains – summarized by McSweeney (2002: 113) in a debate with Hofstede in the journal Human Relations: Instead of seeking an explanation for assumed national uniformity from the conceptual lacuna that is the essentialist notion of national culture, we need to engage with and use theories of action which can cope with change, power, variety, multiple influences – including the non-national – and the complexity and situational variability of the individual subject. Intercultural communication appears to be a rather traditional field with a positivistic epistemology and the scholars seem not to have taken notice of the recent ‘‘turns’’ in the social science. A majority of the studies are quantitative, comparative and conducted by Western scholars (Barnett & Lee, 2002). The quantitative bias in the research fails to grip the complex and intertwined relation of context, including economic, educational and political factors, and communication in an intercultural setting. Consequently, there is a need for a cultural and critical turn in the field to get more innovative and contemporary based research results. One possibility is to dig into another intercultural concept, ethnicity, focusing collective cultural identity as a relational and situational perspective.

Ethnicity as a Relational and Situational Concept The concept ethnicity is defined in several ways depending on perspective and aim. Historically the term has been used to classify racial differences, but in social anthropology and sociology, ethnicity has been a main concept since the late 1960s. In contemporary social science, ethnicity is used to describe and understand cultural group

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identities. In comparison with traditional intercultural communication research, ethnicities are usually analyzed from an interpretative perspective applying qualitative methodologies on micro-levels (Halualani, 2000). There are two main problems with using the concept. First, in public discourse it has often been used to subordinate groups of people, as a way to explain social behaviour from a dominant and discriminating standpoint. Second, there are two opposite ways of understanding ethnicity intellectually. Socalled primordial and objective definitions of ethnicity classify groups of people according to definite and non-changeable divisions, closely related to socio-biological theory. Social constructionist definitions do the opposite and view ethnicity as something that is dynamic, situational and depending upon the social context, and something that everyone in one way or another is a part of. Ethnicity has in this sense strong links to communication theory, since it is communication-in-situation-and-context that creates identity. This way of viewing ethnicity was originally developed by the scholars from the Chicago School during the 1920–1950s (e.g. Park, 1950). Oriented by social problems in the city of Chicago and applying an ethnographic methodology focusing symbolic dimensions, they turned racial socio-biology upside-down. The Norwegian anthropologist Eriksen (1993) summarizes his theory on ethnicity from a holistic and social constructionist perspective that we find fruitful. Ethnicity, according to Eriksen, becomes meaningful when it is experienced as being threatened. This means that ethnicity as a social formation is relational – it develops as a reaction to social pressure at different levels. Ethnicity is also something that may be used as a strategy to reach certain political or commercial objectives. Ethnicity is used in this way both in political combats where history or language is used as arguments for increasing independence, and in tourism where ethnic stereotypes are marketed. Eriksen interprets ethnicity as a contemporary social process and gives several examples of how history is constructed afterwards to gain modern objectives. He mentions some typical and effective ethnicity strategies such as naming, standardization of mass education and the repetition of ‘‘we’’ through different media and symbols. These strategies may in the long run create increasing social identification, but the most impact is related to relational pressure through rapid social changes, threats and crises. One of the central issues in ethnicity research regards how and why identity formation takes place. Is ethnicity something that one is positioned in dependent on structural cause, or is it something that one chose through rational action? But this classical dichotomy is, as always, too theoretical. A more pragmatic understanding

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of how ethnicity is constructed may be based upon Anthony Giddens (1984) theory of structuration that focus upon a mediating space beyond but influenced by structure or agency. From a macro-structural standpoint it is possible to view ethnic identities as the result of radical social changes. From a micro-agency level ethnicity is, at the same time, not a forced identity. People also, in different ways, make reflexive choices trying to differentiate themselves from other people. In fact, making difference between them and us is the main cause for constructing ethnicity. When it comes to crisis communication, case studies have shown that ethnic differences seem to escalate during crises. This seems for example to have been the case during the 1998 Gothenburg Fire in Sweden that killed 63 young people and injured 213. The fire took place during a party in the Macedonian Meeting Hall where 400 young people representing 19 nationalities had gathered. According to a qualitative interview study with 34 young people of different ethnic backgrounds: ‘‘A relatively wide gap between ‘the immigrant group’ and Swedish society was traceable, as was an implicit fear of severe conflicts between immigrants and racists in connection with the fire’’ (Andersson, 2000: 258). The conclusion that ethnicity becomes more important during radical changes, threats and crises are as earlier mentioned supported by Eriksen (1993). Ethnic identities are useful to rationalize and meet these processes, but they may also be obstacles from an organizational risk and crisis management perspective.

Societal Fragmentisation: Media Perspectives In media and communication research it is a known fact that technological, cultural and societal changes have led to an increasing audience fragmentisation. Media researcher McQuail (2005: 12) concludes that this development obviously also effects strategic communicators: ‘‘[i]t is generally harder for would-be persuaders, whether political or commercial, to reach any large general public’’. He illustrates the development through four models: (1) a unified model where the media output as well as audience is totally homogenous, (2) a pluralistic model where the audience have more choices but mostly chose the same channels anyway, (3) a centre-periphery model where the audience has segmented itself into several micro-audiences, even if there still is a media centre where the elitist societal discourse is taking place and (4) a totally fragmented model where there is no centre, only different micro-audiences with limited relations or contacts between them. r 2006 The Authors Journal compilation r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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The empirical issue at stake in contemporary society is whether the pluralistic model or centreperiphery model would best describe reality. There are few reliable investigations that have tried to answer this question from a multicultural perspective. One explanation is that it is hard to get immigrants to answer surveys. According to a Swedish media survey analysis covering the last decades (Andersson, 2005), there are some differences between immigrants and native Swedes media access. The relevant differences are that: (1) immigrants more often possess cable, satellite and digital television technology than native Swedes. (2) less immigrants have access to subscribed daily newspapers, but the reading of free daily local newspapers (such as Metro) is higher than among native Swedes. (3) second generation immigrants are gradually assimilating into similar media use patterns as native Swedes. (4) Internet access, of increasing importance in crisis situations, is high among first and second generation immigrants. (5) there are obvious language barriers for first generation immigrants, and sometimes a lack of interest in local and national news compared to international news. Some of the differences, such as the lack of subscriptions to newspapers, may be explained partly as a cultural issue, partly as a financial one. It is a fact that the degree of occupation as well as income is lower among first and second generation immigrants than among native Swedes. When it comes to media uses, the differences fit in this context. Less immigrants than Swedes read national newspapers, more immigrants than Swedes watch international TV-channels as well as Internet. Immigrants more often read foreign newspapers, obviously, but it is not a common pattern (16 per cent of the first generation immigrants read them regularly). If one trusts this survey analysis, one may conclude that media access and use are relevant factors to integrate into multicultural public relations analysis, but that there relevance should not be overestimated.

Multiculturalism and Public Relations Multiculturalism, as a concept, has only slowly emerged in the research of public relations. Motion and Leitch (1996, cited in Macnamara, 2004) reminds us that the lack of focus and understanding of multicultural and cross-cultural communication obstructs the possibilities for communicating successfully. Macnamara (2004) means that multicultural and cross-cultural communication can often be characterized as r 2006 The Authors Journal compilation r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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‘‘Chinese whispers’’ – what one communicates is seldom what others hear or see. Even though, many companies and authorities have a low understanding of the importance of a close understanding of the public with which they wish to communicate and build relationships. Durazo (1994) came to the conclusion that public relations people want to communicate with ethnically dissimilar publics, but they are restrained by fear of failure. For practitioners to overcome this fear, Durazo offers ten tips. Kruckeberg (1995) concludes that future public relations practitioners need to be more sensitive to the multicultural nuances of different publics, both in an international arena and within their own geographic locales. Also FitzGerald and Spagnolia (1999) argue for a greater sensitivity among public relations practitioners to cultural differences. Vasquez and Taylor (2000) have investigated what cultural values influence on American public relations practitioners work, grounded in a concern for ethnocentrism in public relations, i.e. a belief that the theories of public relations are applicable across all countries. They have combined Hofstede’s dimensions of culture with Grunig’s models of public relations to investigate the cultural foundation of American practice. The ontological underpinning of their research is a traditional, functionalistic view. Vasquez and Taylor regard culture as a variable that have some effects on different items. Their study shows that culture is a key variable in the practice of public relations, and that there are links between the American practice of public relations and societal culture. One interesting finding is that power distance correlate with both of the one-way models of public relations (press agency and public information) and also with the respondent’s worldview. According to Vasquez and Taylor, practitioners choose to practice a oneway model because it is easier compared with the two-way models, less skill is required, or because they do not have information about the alternatives. One of the most comprehensive efforts to encompass the subject of multicultural public relations comes from Banks (2000). He wants to get an improved understanding of diversity on public relations. The concept of culture has been under intense discussion among scholars, and as early as the mid 20th-century Kroeber and Kluckholm (1952) identified 160 different definitions of culture. Since then, multiple different definitions have been produced and still the scholars cannot come to terms on a single definition. However, culture can roughly be divided in two perspectives – an objective and a subjective perspective of culture. Banks prefers the subjective view of culture, and states that culture can bee seen as a system of meaning differently

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available to groups of individuals. For this reason, understanding of a culture requires a focus of meanings and contexts. In other words, one must understand the real-world settings in which people live and work, and their standpoints on those settings and performance. Banks underscores that discrepancies of cultures are matters of what people believe they are doing when they are performing their normal, everyday practices. When discussing multiculturalism the term diversity cannot be avoided. Basically, diversity stands for difference from what is apprehended as ‘‘normal’’ in a certain context, and specifically it is about factors that separate people. Banks emphasizes that a shortcoming in the popular diversity management literature is the focus on how the ‘‘diverse’’ shall adjust to the system. Another, more positive, meaning of diversity is that of variety or ideas, styles and behaviour. Diversity stands in this sense for an enhancement of subtypes of one comprehensive group, maintaining commonalities while recognizing dissimilarities. Banks suggests that cultural diversity can be understood as the normal human variation in the systems of meaning by which groups make sense of and enact their realities. The meanings are not stable, but subject to continuous change. Multicultural public relations have virtually no theories. Banks (2000) proposes a convergence of intercultural communication theory and multicultural public relations. He considers effectiveness in a multicultural context as the successful negotiation of mutual meanings that ends up in positive results in any communicative activity. Such outcomes are, due to Banks, reinforcements of the participant’s self-concepts, affirmation of cultural identities, enhancement of the relationship and accomplishment of strategic goals. Consequently, communication from an interpretive perspective enhances the function of communication from just being a tool for diffusion of information. As a consequence, public relations practitioners must acknowledge that people always create meanings in different situations, and their interpretation will inevitably be dissimilar to the sender’s original meaning.

Towards a Social Constructionist Perspective in Multicultural Crisis Communication In many classical texts organizations are reified, i.e. treated as a natural concrete phenomenon ‘‘out there’’ in the objective reality. The origin of this way of thinking is the Enlightenment and the dream of discovering ‘‘the real’’, already existing, orderly principles underlying peoples’ behaviour (Shotter, 1993). From a positivistic point of view, only one real reality exists with objects, occur-

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rences, and processes, and it is the task of researchers to make ‘‘true’’ and ‘‘correct’’ descriptions and explanations. It is assumed that language stands in a clear and an unambiguous relation to the reality, i.e. words have a certain meaning that everybody knows and understands. The tendency to reify is certainly the case when it comes to the major part of texts within the field of public relations and crisis communication. It seems that researchers, within the modernist or functionalist frame, see organizations as ‘‘containers’’ in which the organizational members function, work, and interact with each other and with actors outside the organization. Further, it is presumed that the researchers easily may observe and collect empirical ‘‘data’’ of the organizational life with quantitative methods. In this perspective on organizations and zeitgeist, it is the scholar’s task to develop variables, standardize measures, and assess casual relations to get a grip of the objective reality. McKie (2001) notes that critical reflections on ethnocentric tendencies in the field of public relations, which crisis communication belongs to, have only just been initiated. He further declares that there has to be a greater openness to other bodies of knowledge or the field’s poor reputation almost certainly will be cemented. The latest decennium, the epistemology of social constructionism has received remarkable attention among social scientists. The globalization and the development of ICT (information and communication technology) have gradually made organization researchers realize the flowing and changing character of organizations. The epistemology of social constructionism offers a shift from a focus on stable organization structures to ever-changing processes. We are of the opinion that social constructionism would promote a reflective approach to the field of crisis communication, integrating multicultural approaches. Social constructionism originated as a reaction against the dominating positivistic research in the social science (Gergen, 1998) and challenges many of the taken-for-granted assumptions, e.g. the notion of organization, culture and power. Scholars within the movement of social constructionism question the idea of objective facts (Burr, 1998). The role of language in the perspective of social constructionism is not to work as a picture or map of what has happened (Gergen, 1985). Instead, the perspective underscores that meanings are produced through people’s interaction. The social constructionist perspective (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Shotter & Gergen, 1994; Gergen, 1999; Czarniawska, 2003) does not question the existence of a reality ‘‘out there’’, but emphasizes people’s relation to it – what it means for different people. Some scholars, as Alvesson and Ka¨rreman (2000), claim r 2006 The Authors Journal compilation r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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that there has been a ‘‘linguistic turn’’ in organization studies with the implication that scholars no longer perceive language as a passive, simple medium that mirrors an objective reality. Accordingly, researchers should place language in the centre of their interest and acknowledge language as a carrier of power. Social constructionism draws attention to the importance of language and emphasizes the weight of social interaction processes (Shotter & Gergen, 1994). Implicit in this is also a multicultural approach since it focuses upon socio-cultural understanding. Accordingly, an organization is not a stable phenomenon, for more than a short while. Instead, it is continually transforming, progressing and adjusting to the environment. The social structure that constitutes an organization is produced and reproduced by the members of the organization through communication (cf. Shotter, 1993). The language is both a vehicle to produce and reproduce the social reality, and a vehicle to understand the world around us. New members are socialized into the organization, and internalize the institutional world of the organization. If organizations are regarded as social constructions, communication among the organizational members is the essence of the production and reproduction of the social structure. The American organizational psychologist Karl E. Weick (1979, 1995, 2001), probably one of the most quoted writers in organizational theory, has had great importance for the development of the field of organizational communication but is so far under-used in public relations theory. Weick introduced the concepts of sensemaking and enactment. Sensemaking involves the construction and bracketing of cues to be interpreted, linking them to frame of reference, and revising the interpretations that have been produced due to actions, interactions and their consequences (Weick, 1995). The result of people’s sensemaking depends on where they look, how they look, what they want to represent and their tools of representation (Allard-Poesi, 2005). According to Weick, an organization’s environment is not the physical surrounding, but the information the members of the organization reacts on. This implies that an organization will not react to changes in the environment in a causal way, which is proposed by the functionalist tradition. The members will not only react on information in the environment, but also actively enact the social reality of the organization. The essence of Weick’s theory is that people are active in the construction of the social reality, and that the reality of organizations could be seen as a communication product. Following a social constructionist perspective, the aim of public relations would be extended to r 2006 The Authors Journal compilation r 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

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communication to develop positive and supportive communities in which an organization regards itself as a member. Communication is seen as a reciprocal process in which the participants produce a mutual understanding of the reality, i.e. they make sense of the world and enact a social constructed reality. As we mentioned in the introduction, we find that risk and crisis communication are the core of public relations theory and practice. The multicultural context of late modern organizations are conditions one cannot neglect anymore. Our review and analysis show that these two assumptions need more theoretical and empirical focus among public relations researchers. There are examples of growing interest and new perspectives, such as Banks (2000) and Lee (2005), but so far the field of multicultural public relations and crisis communication is undeveloped. A major reason behind this limitation, discussed in this paper, is linked to the foundation of mainstream public relations theory that neglects cultural contexts. If culture is used in traditional and functionalist theory it is mainly as a national variable not taking into account culture as defined by the public themselves. The dichotomy between a modern transmission model of communication, focusing the distribution of messages and neglecting cultural contexts, and a ritual model of communication, focusing communication as sensemaking rituals, is well-known to most of us (Carey, 1988). In fact, multicultural issues more than any others put this dichotomy in centre. We propose a new perspective founded on social constructionism as discussed above: interpreting communication processes as relational, contextual, dynamic and ritual. This proposal would in methodological terms lead to more qualitative and theoretical analysis concerning the multicultural public, not accepting national cultural determinism that has dominated intercultural communication. Instead, we recommend using the concept of ethnicity, defined as dynamic cultural identities. Based on a social constructionist epistemology, we have four proposals for future research and practice in multicultural crisis communication: (1) a public perspective – audience-orientation (2) a proactive and interactive approach – focusing dialogue (3) a community-focused approach gaining a long-range pre-crisis perspective (4) an ethnicity-approach towards intercultural communication issues. From an applied perspective the development of a constructionist ethnicity-based perspective would probably lead to a turn of interest: from senders, channels and messages towards the audience as an active public. This could lead to higher efforts in proactive risk and issues

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communication, using and developing new media for listening to and defining different multicultural publics and communities, using reference and focus groups, involving local everyday field communicators, giving multicultural publics active parts in information production and distribution processes.

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