Crisis Communication and Social Resilience
We live in an era of crisis—a contemporary society where we perceive and experience increased uncertainty, critical transformation and threats to the social order. Within this research theme we focus on communicative aspects of crises and resilience. At the core are the concepts of crisis, which originally comes from the Greek krisis meaning a turning point or critical moment (actually both good and bad), and resilience, the capacity to counter, withstand and recover from crises or tough times. A related concept worth mentioning here is risk. Risk means that there is a latent and potential threat that something will occur – it is the step before crisis.
Research in this field is diverse covering crisis comunication in different contexts— from internal organizational crisis, reputational crisis to disasters, terrorism and war. In the centre, connected to social resilience, are crises which may be serious threats to the basic structures or the fundamental values, legitimacy and norms of society. But this also includes research about organizational crises, where the consequences are narrower and more limited to events or incidents that threaten organizational trust. This is so since in practice these two different crisis communication perspectives both add to each other and may lead to conflicting strategies—defending public or organizational interest.
Researchers at the Department of Communication approach these questions in different ways, aligned with the theme Psychological Defense, in conjunction with the Lund University Centre for Preparedness and Resilience (LUPREP).
Lund University (and LUPREP/IKO) is the national node for the research network "Kommunikation och medier i kris och krig" atCampus Totalförsvar.
Research Portal at Lund University
Read more about our research, publications, projects and researchers.