22 pages., via online journal., In 2015, Blue Bell Creameries had its first recall in the company’s history. Blue Bell issued a voluntary recall of all of its ice cream products after Listeria was detected and was linked to 10 illnesses that resulted in three deaths. With the theoretical framework of framing and Situational Crisis Communication Theory, the purpose of this study was to explore how this recall was presented in company press releases and news media coverage to determine what crisis communication strategies Blue Bell implemented and how the media presented that information. This study was a content analysis of 23 press releases from Blue Bell and 68 articles from newspapers. The four crisis response strategies, or postures, used as frames were deny, diminish, rebuild, and bolster. This study also examined sources identified in the articles and the topic areas they discussed. The results indicated Blue Bell’s communication efforts were properly and effectively disseminated through the news media to the public. Blue Bell used accommodative crisis communication postures to restore its reputation. Blue Bell was also commonly found as a source in the news stories, which benefitted the company when communicating about the recall to the public. This study provided an examination of crisis communication strategies and reputation management for organizations related to one specific food recall, which should encourage additional studies of these strategies in food and agricultural industries.
20 pages., via online journal., In a crisis situation, communication is an important asset for safeguarding the reputation of an organization. The communication strategy that is used in a crisis influences the way people perceive the crisis. While extensive research is conducted and clear communication guidelines about crisis communication are provided, current research tends to focus on a single actor in a crisis within a homogeneous stakeholder group. In this article, we analyze whether and how different groups of stakeholders frame a crisis and the extent to which they attribute responsibility for the crisis to actors. The case concerns the use of an illegal lice detergent (fipronil) in eggs in the Netherlands in the summer of 2017. Based on the analysis of Twitter data related to the case using multiple methods (network analysis, a longitudinal analysis and the annotation of a sample of tweets), this study shows that a seemingly simple case in a single sub-arena has different subgroups that use different frames and attribute different responsibilities to different stakeholders. This result implies that a reconsideration of communication strategies during and after a crisis is needed.