survivor-to-survivor communication model: how organizations can use post-disaster interviewing to...

Survivor-to-survivor post-crisis responses 1

Survivor-to-Survivor Communication Model: How Organizations can use Post-Disaster

Interviewing to Facilitate Grassroots Crisis Communication

Jennifer Vardeman-Winter

University of Houston

Robyn Lyn


Rakhee Sharma


Paper presented to the Public Relations Division, AEJMC 2014, Montreal


Survivor-to-Survivor Communication Model: How Organizations can use Post-Disaster

Interviewing to Facilitate Grassroots Crisis Communication

Abstract

Public relations and crisis communication research focuses largely on post-crisis

communication from the organizational standpoint. Problems arise like jurisdictional conflicts,

miscommunications because of cultural differences, and inefficiencies in crisis recovery because

national groups don’t have intimate knowledge of the disaster site like local groups do. Thus, it is

important to theorize and practice public relations with the knowledge of the publics’ standpoint.

In this essay, we look to a recent post-crisis anthropological project conducted with survivors of

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to highlight the important of local, grassroots efforts of recovery.

We suggest that public relations practitioners can facilitate some of the concepts used in this

process, such as survivor-to-survivor interviewing and sharing narratives. We provide a roadmap

that moves our field from a traditional organizational-based post-crisis model to a survivor-to-

survivor communication model to be utilized by organizational communicators.

Keywords: crisis communication, post-crisis, cultural response, narrative, survivors, grassroots


Introduction

Realities of Post-Crisis Communication

Crisis communication is an intellectual and practical discipline gaining significant

scholarly and media coverage, as large-impact disasters rise across the world (Heath & O’Hair,

2009). Communication is important to crisis response because of its power to help communities

and organizations prevent and recovery from disasters. Coupled with the reach of

communication technology today, media and communities demand more from organizations that

take—or are given—responsibility for responding to disasters. Among applied communication

scholars and practitioners, crisis communication persists as much of the discipline’s “reason for

existence,” particularly from a strategic management and business alignment perspective.

However, several important realities emerge from a theory-practice gap of crisis

communication. For example, preparation activities like creating a crisis plan, practicing

evacuations and tabletop exercises, and training executives and employees to speak to the media

inevitably fall short of adequately preparing an organization for the crisis response that it will

encounter (Tyler, 2005). To this point, historically, risk and crisis communication management

has overwhelmingly focused on planning, preparation, and response to physical losses in the

disaster cycle, meanwhile neglecting the social aspects of recovery (Nakagawa & Shaw, 2004).

Furthermore, scholarship has largely focused on organizations as the focus of attention during a

crisis rather than publics (Waymer & Heath, 2007), thereby neglecting the affected publics’ lived

experiences of crisis.

In this paper, we conceptualize this reality by addressing the gap between organizations’

and publics’ perceptions and responses to crisis communication. This is largely based in a

cultural understanding of crisis communication, our premise being that cultures adhere because


of shared meanings, and that cultures differ from one another because of different meanings

about a common environmental object. Furthermore, as cultural norms and shared meanings

form the basis for physical, social, and virtual communities, the importance of community-based

responses to issues and risks is increasingly advocated in research (e.g., Aldoory, 2009;

McComas, 2010). However, our scholarly field lacks an in-depth understanding of how cultural

meanings of crisis by communities exist at the grassroots level and can be manifested in practice

(Kim & Dutta, 2009). Thus, we propose in this essay that a cultural object of study should be

post-crisis communication—or the recovery stage—because this phase is the most tangible point

of the crisis process to study; as such, this is a popular area of crisis communication research but

one which is not often examined from a cultural standpoint (Falkheimer & Heide, 2006).

Plan of Essay

The purpose of this essay is to make some theoretical and practical connections between

traditional, mainstream narratives about post-crisis communication from an organizational

standpoint with an alternative narrative about post-crisis communication from a community,

grassroots standpoint. To do this, we first highlight research about how organizations conduct

traditional post-crisis communication. Then, we explain why and how alternatives to these

mainstream narratives have emerged primarily through the advocacy of grassroots crisis

communication. Drawing from other disciplines like sociology, social work, anthropology, and

folklore, we highlight a particular method called survivor-to-survivor response, and we to link

the characteristics of this approach to public relations’ crisis response discourse. The essay

concludes with a roadmap of how practitioners can help facilitate a survivor-to-survivor

communicative approach. We include implications for theory and for practice for communicating


organizations as well as ideas for future research to solidify this connection to survivor-based

responses.

Post-Crisis Communication

Traditional Approaches to Studying Post-crisis Communication

Major frameworks used in public relations that examine post-crisis communication orient

around rhetorical framing of organizational behaviors relating to the crisis. For example, image

repair theory (Benoit, 1997), apologia (Hearit, 2006), situational crisis communication theory

(Coombs, 2007), and discourse renewal theory (Ulmer, Sellnow, & Seeger, 2009) examine the

quality of the communication messages and strategies used by organizations to repair damaged

relationships with publics, whether the crisis was caused directly or indirectly by the

organization. The evaluation of crisis communication is conducted largely by counting and

categorizing the organizational messages by theme; comparing those messages to the comments

made by affected publics and general stakeholders; and examining news coverage of the crisis to

gauge a third-party perspective of the organizational handling of the crisis. These studies and

evaluations are important because they provide reflective observations and critiques of how

effective the communication goals, methods, techniques, and messages are after a crisis, and

organizations can learn from others’ mistakes and successes.

Organizationally focused. However, post-crisis communication literature is largely

focused on the organizational perspective of a crisis rather than exploring the publics’

experiences communicating after a crisis (Kim & Dutta, 2009; Tyler, 2005). To this point, some

scholars have argued that crisis communication research demonstrates a heavy managerial—or

organizational—bias, resulting in the neglect of attention on publics’ post-crisis communication

needs (Waymer & Heath, 2007). While the party that will be held accountable for


communicating (i.e., organizations) should benefit largely from research, consumers of crisis

communication—typically, affected publics—demonstrate dynamic, unique communication

needs, cultural factors, and processes after crises that are important to know. Placing publics at

the center of research—rather than the margins—allows for researchers and practitioners to

“unlearn” their perspectives as organizational members with communication goals in order to

experience “the other” perspective more candidly (Vardeman-Winter, 2011).

Top-down, federal response. Communities are the first to receive the direct impact of

disaster, during, and after disaster events. Disasters reduce community capabilities, particularly

for resource-poor communities that may not have previously established crisis management

plans or ready access to the platforms of public sphere, such as for advocacy with media (Kim &

Dutta, 2009). Thus, communities typically cannot handle large-scale crises alone.

To accommodate this need, national and regional governments are obliged to protect all

citizens and respond in a hierarchical, top-down approach in which local groups are subordinated

to large governmental state, national, and (sometimes) international aid organizations. However,

because of jurisdictional conflicts, differences in cultural approaches, and other challenges,

disjointed approaches to post-crisis recovery may fall short of communicating most effectively to

all affected community members. For example, government, non-government, and international

organizations are effective at implementing plans and programs before and after a disaster but

not in the long-term post-disaster period. Once a community is operating at a ‘back to normal’

pace, government agencies cannot always commit to staying until the community is completely

functional (Pandey & Okazaki, 2005).

Examinations of the interaction between local and national agencies and the community

groups are missing. This interaction could improve the ability of a community to prepare for,


respond to, and recover from disasters (National Research Council, 2011). Despite growing

research and specific examples of private and public sectors working together in disaster

preparedness and response, the models seem to be limited to controlling the physical disaster

(e.g., Seeger, Reynolds, & Sellnow, 2009) rather than how cross-cultural groups socially and

commutatively collaborate.

The communication failures of Hurricane Katrina (Ulmer et al., 2009) cast doubt onto

governments’ abilities to serve as the epicenter of response operations. Thus, communities may

be the first and best site to carry out most crisis tasks, due to proximity and knowledge of the

physical area and affected groups. For example, during Hurricane Katrina, local volunteers were

called to serve as the first line responders since government officials could not make aid victims

right away (Brennan, Cantrell, Spranger, & Kumaran, 2006). However, coordinating outside

resources can be logistically very difficult for first responders. Therefore, we propose that

government should be responsible for a national response system but the local piece for

emergency response lies within the communities. Furthermore, state and federal aid agencies

should resolve jurisdictional differences by accepting that local communities will lead recovery

efforts. To shift this top-down paradigm, we suggest that scholars and practitioners more closely

examine grassroots and community-based knowledge as to core to crisis communication.

Grassroots Communication and Community-Based Responses1

Grassroots communication at the tactical level is based largely on face-to-face

interactions, is forged at the community level, and is meant to develop trust over time (Christens,

2010). Similarly, community-based responses play an important role in post-crisis

communication, particularly in relation to the aid that is given by state and national emergency

1 For this essay, a community-based response refers to the strategic orientation toward crisis response, whereas

grassroots communication refers to the tactical type of interaction to achieve a community-based response.


agencies in post-crisis recovery periods. Community members understand the

“microenvironment” of crisis, as they are often more knowledgeable on local logistics,

interpersonal relationships, cultural norms, and likely challenges (Holtzhausen & Roberts, 2009).

Differently, state and national agencies often have a wider scope than to only provide aid to a

single community; however, they typically possess more financial and personnel resources than

local communities. Often, problems in post-crisis communication occur because of a cacophony

of mixed resources, jurisdictional conflicts, and clashes among local and national cultures

(FEMA, 2012). This section details some of these challenges as well as some commonly-

accepted best practices for community-based post-crisis communication.

Best practices for community-based crisis communication. Scholars and national

preparedness groups advocate some core best practices for employing crisis communication at

the community level. First, crisis communication scholars suggest that communicators develop

culturally-sensitive approaches to post-crisis communication, as well as create messages that are

relevant to the community’s culture and traditions (Aldoory, 2009; Dutta, 2007). That is a main

reason grassroots organizations have significant advantages when it comes to post-crisis

management. Grassroots organizations are made up of individuals from the affected populations.

Scaling and processing information occurs at a faster pace than when large inter-/national

organizations enter a local community/culture because grassroots organizations know the

community intimately and can mobilize and train volunteers quickly on a large scale and know

exactly where to target their efforts first (Crowley, 2013).

Also, communicators should strive to involve all stakeholders in post-crisis

communication messages. For example, the community based disaster approach (National

Research Council, 2011) suggests that as many stakeholders as needed should be involved in the


post-crisis process, with the end goal of transferring resources to the community. Furthermore,

responders should also utilize new technologies, as social media and crisis mapping have helped

aid communication technologies on the citizen-to-citizen level, at a growing pace.

Next, all communicators involved in recovery efforts should identify a common

community vision for renewal. According to crisis renewal theory, crises will always expose

failures and weaknesses in organizational systems as well as elucidate alternative approaches to

crisis management. Communicators should search for a common community vision for

renewal—a vision that may meet resistance on beliefs, values, and prior experiences related to

the crisis but that could encourage progress (Reierson & Littlefield, 2012).

Finally, a major recommendation among crisis scholars is for communicators to use local

resources to accomplish post-crisis recovery. Local knowledge, action, participation, and control

within the community can aid disaster recovery and ways to build back more efficiently

(Brennan, et al., 2006), particularly when community efforts are centered on self-respect, self-

empowerment, and self-defense (Kim & Dutta, 2009). When preparing and responding to an

event, the community can speak to immediate needs, preparation coordination, and implement

immediate emergency response programs. Community groups can also rally their communities

emotionally, to provide a sense of connection and decrease the anxiety and depression of their

residents following a disaster (Brennan, et al., 2006).

Recently, scholars from fields outside public relations are examining, participating in,

and advocating for methods that engender these post-recovery outcomes among communities.

Specifically, sociologists and folklorists have championed one method—generally named the

survivor-to-survivor method—as an individually empowering crisis recovery process. They also

suggest that because individuals benefit from this method, communities regain coordination and


strength after crisis as well. We suggest that the individual-level concepts in the survivor-to-

survivor method can be extracted and integrated into methods used by larger responder

organizations that are tasked with aiding a community after a crisis. Thus, public relations

managers should consider how such methods could complement current post-crisis

communication approaches, particularly as large organizations re-orient their responses around

communities. The next section introduces the survivor-to-survivor method and is followed by a

proposed model of post-recovery crisis communication from a public relations perspective.

Survivor-to-Survivor Approach

The certainty of disaster produces continual exponential membership within the

community of natural disaster ‘survivors.’ This inevitable production of future survivors

showcases the crucial need for a communication action plan of restorative mechanisms outlined

for both individuals and collectively. For example, survivors in New Orleans after Hurricane

Katrina connected in such a way that “transcends mere geography and represents a peace of

mind that is centered within the people and communities” (Hawkins & Maurer, 2010, p. 1,789).

This implies that natural disaster survivor-to-survivor relationships can merge through

communication technology, across physical and cultural barriers, on a global scale, and form

communities of support and recovery through both the real and virtual worlds.

To this point, survivor-to-survivor communication as a post-crisis recovery method

concentrates on social capital gained through social therapy within survivor communities. The

method emphasizes encouragement and advocacy among individuals through grassroots

organizational structures. This perspective is set up within a peer-to-peer network after disaster,

with a foundation of individuals sharing their personal narratives. Documented recently in a

collection of hurricane survivors’ essays as part of an ethnographic and folkloric project titled


“Surviving Katrina and Rita in Houston,” survivors’ stories can be updated and expanded

continuously as new therapeutic communities form in future catastrophes.

Case study. The methodology we propose in this article is largely documented in a recent

ethnographic project that illustrates the ability of survivor-to-survivor therapeutic communities to

form spontaneously from natural disasters (Ancelet, Gaudet & Lindahl, 2013). The researchers

archived 433 individual survivor-centered responses to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which are

housed in the University of Houston and the Library of Congress. These personal stories of

survival demonstrate how local communities were able to facilitate recovery themselves, in spite

of outside, government aid agencies attempting to lead recovery efforts. The personal narratives

demonstrate how individuals create therapeutic communities when faced with the devastation of

natural disasters and how efforts at the grassroots level are able to build centers of social support

for survivors that are not bogged down by governmental red tape.

Ancelet et al. (2013) described the cultural response to disaster, as differentiated from the

bureaucratic approach incumbent in governmental responses. According to the editors of the

anthology, the cultural response is largely characterized by improvisation rather than strategic

planning in which members “throw all the rules out” (Ancelet, 2013, p. 23). Cultural members

also enact crisis response in behaviors grounded in history and tradition; based on vernacular

power; self-organized, opposing of formal leadership and organizational infrastructure, dubbed

as “homemade rescue” (Davis and Fontenot, 2005, cited by Ancelet, 2013, p. 16); unsensational

and often contradictory of media frames of the disaster; pragmatic; and communicated among

members via citizen reporting.

For example, the improvised, “homemade rescue” was described by Glen Miguez, a

survivor of Hurricane Katrina after it hit the town of Delcambre between Lafayette and New


Orleans, LA, as he was interviewed by a fellow survivor, Barry Jean Ancelet (2013). Miguez

retold his experience of having to throw out all the rules: bureaucratic regulations and the

absence of decisive leadership actually prevented many survivors from being rescued or given

basic life necessities. In reaction, Miguez and other local survivors pushed back and worked

around the invisible walls constructed by the authorities to take care of one another. Stories of

local efforts include individuals who took their personal boats into the rising waters and risked

their lives to save people who were stranded on rooftops and in attics:

BA: Did you run into anybody who was any trouble?

GM: No, not one person. They knew me and when they saw the boat, the knew they had

to get in the boat and I’d bring them to safety. Everybody….If you know the area, it’s a

lot easier. We worked back and forth, back and forth. From road to road, back and forth,

back and forth. (Miguez & Ancelet, 2013, pp. 42-43)

When blocked from the most direct route to save others and threatened with physical violence

from government agents if they did not turn back, these community members found

supplementary longer routes around the government’s bodyguards that prevented the local rescue

operation. When entire communities could not flee due to the economic reality of their

marginalized status, they gathered together to wait out the storm, cared for and fed each other,

and welcomed displaced strangers into their homes as evacuees from other communities found

them. When those who did have the means to transport themselves hundreds of miles away from

the storm traveled to designated areas where they were told food, water, and supplies would be

available, local communities gathered supplies from their own homes and shared them with the

weary who continued to arrive for days after the storm hit.


This survivor-based project is comprised of some foundational concepts: social capital,

shared narratives, concept maps, and community response grids (see Figure 1: Survivor-to-

Survivor Communication Model). These concepts are discussed next as conceptualized largely

within the social work discipline. Then, we embed the survivor-to-survivor method within

organizational communication responses to crisis.

Social Capital

Social capital is a “function of trust, social norms, participation, and network”

(Nakagawa & Shaw, 2004, p. 5) and is pivotal to post-crisis recovery. The processes of bonding,

bridging, and linking comprise the local as well as broader levels of social capital (Nakagawa &

Shaw, 2004), which are the “bonds that tie” people together and operate as the “main engine for

long-term recovery” (Aldrich, 2010, p. 1).

Bonding occurs when individuals seek information, support, assistance, and inclusion

from trusted individuals like family, friends, neighbors and co-workers. Through communication

with trusted individuals, social norms of communication within a community are established, and

individuals experience increased self-efficacy about experiencing crisis. Bridging takes place

when different communities interact across informal and formal groups, such as nonprofits,

NGOs and educational institutions. It involves multi-disciplinary mechanisms for

communication that bridge the divide between individuals and organizational with necessary

resources. Linking refers to efforts communities make to connect with formal governmental

agencies that have the power to legislate. The primary purpose of linking by communities is to

advocate for legislation that is favorable for crisis-affected communities. Both consensus

building and collective action are pivotal linking strategies as organizations engage in policy

reform for survivors and their communities (Nakagawa & Shaw, 2004).


Social capital processes employed within the survivor-to-survivor framework shape how

communities will rebuild at the different individual, organizational, and government levels. The

survivor-to-survivor framework relies on shared narratives, which must permeate all social

capital levels to be effective.

Shared Narratives

Interpersonal communication within a supportive group environment after surviving a

natural disaster is vital to recovery and healing of victims. Survivor-to-survivor collaborative

recovery through shared narratives is a holistic social and health communication initiative for

post-disaster rebirth, rehabilitation and restorative growth (Hartman, 2004; Lindahl, 2012;

Williams, Labonte, & O’Brien, 2003). These therapeutic communities are often characterized by

the physical geography of the shared living space, informal, non-hierarchical relationships, and

common understandings of crisis, which facilitate a culture of shared learning and inquiry

(Kennard, 2004).

For example, the Surviving Katrina and Rita in Houston (SKRH) project documented the

positive outcomes of social capital in post-disaster contexts via survivor-to-survivor interviews

(Ancelet, et al., 2013). The interviews establish a model for a “three-stage recovery program:

telling one’s story, forming social networks, and building communities” (p. 263). Participant

observers—as researchers referred to themselves—volunteered their time in between interview

sessions: “Interviewers used ethnographic techniques, serving as participant observers and

volunteering with clean-up efforts in New Orleans between interviews. Interviewers also spent

time with participants at community events” (Hawkins & Maurer, 2010, p. 1,782). Shared

narratives allow a glimpse into the past for the benefit of the future. For example, Nicole—a

survivor of Hurricane Katrina—became trained by the SKRH project and interviewed a number


of Hurricane Katrina and Ike survivors, including Henry and his mother, Dorothy, two people

stranded on a bridge in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Nicole described the

importance of gathering the multiple stories, as they weave together to paint a whole picture of

the event:

There were others on the bridge, and I have met and interviewed several other Katrina

survivors that were brought to the bridge: one woman spent one night on the bridge,

another woman spent a few hours on the bridge…Each survivor offers a different glimpse

into that catastrophe and a different way of experiencing and dealing with the trauma of

being partially rescued…Yet, even more moving than these stories and their lessons is the

experience of sharing the narratives. (Eugene, 2013, p. 134)

To this point, narratives are less important to remember with detailed precision and more

significant in demonstrating the process survivors recount in making sense of their own

experiences of loss and devastation (Hawkins & Maurer, 2010).

Narratives from survivors of natural disasters communicate feelings ranging from

disorientation and emotional exhaustion to guilt, shame, abandonment, and embarrassment

(Breckenridge & James, 2012). Survivors often talk about the need to ‘pay it back’ by ‘paying it

forward,’ even while they are still in the recovery phase of rebuilding. Sometimes survivors are

unable to communicate their needs for continued support; they, they may avoid their original

support systems, which further alienates them from their community (George, 2013). George and

her participants—all survivors of floods in Brisbane, Australia—conducted survivor-to-survivor

interviews post-disaster. She found that when survivors shared their personal stories with other

survivors, the communication process allowed for messages to be received, understood, and

reciprocated with sense-making outcomes like reciprocity and empathy. George noted that


although some “don’t want to remember anymore,” the “desire to share remains powerful” (p.

53). Some survivors believed that people in their community stopped talking about the disaster

too soon, but George continued the interviews:

I often ask my informants about the value of talking about disaster and the importance of

remembering...Some people say they try to remember positive things, the sense of

achievement that has come with rebuilding their lives, the community energy that was so

much a part of the early response to our predicament. Some people say that the brake on

remembering was applied too quickly by those who escaped the disaster. So they find it

helpful to keep talking about the flood with someone who they know is sensitive to their

plight and is not simply thinking ‘just get over it.’ (pp. 53-54)

Storytelling through shared narratives allows for survivors to look for shared characteristics in

the heroes of the story with whom survivors can identify (Tonkin, 1995).

Concept Maps

The availability of research regarding survivor-to-survivor communication of shared

narratives is limited. The majority of existing studies are conducted between observers—the term

given to researchers—and participants, those who have survived the crisis. Many of the

interviews also involve emergency management personnel and first responders recounting their

experiences from an organizational viewpoint (e.g., Lopez-Marrero & Tschakert, 2011; Miller,

2007). From a socio-ecological perspective, compiling individual stories into concept maps can

help survivors document their shared narratives and compare knowledge and information. The

maps generate a graphic representation of why the natural hazard occurred and what the positive

and negative effects were on survivors. The process provides insight of the experience and

subsequent decision-making process post-disaster.


The concept map-making exercise is a process of documenting the ‘why or what’ of a

situation: identifying new issues exacerbated by the event and identifying possible solutions. In

the process of sharing their experiences about crises, survivors assimilate to one another’s sense-

making of crisis, thereby creating collective forms of knowledge about disasters. These

collective knowledges form new communities—a new context in which communication of

material information for successful restorative and regrowth opportunities can be disseminated

by grassroots organizations and community leaders. Concept mapping encourages for cognitive

processing and social learning of how communities come to know crisis. Furthermore, it incites

survivors to think through the feasibility of possible recovery solutions, thereby strengthening

individual and communal efficacy. Effective linkages between community members promote a

collaborative effort as well as convergent knowledge through shared narratives.

Community Response Grids (CRG)

The ability to participate in community concept mapping of survivors post-disaster can

flourish digitally by utilizing a community response grid (CRG). CRGs are socio-technical

communities empowering people to establish peer-to-peer communication channels for

information gathering, filtering, synthesis, and dissemination (Qu, Wu, & Mahindrakar, 2009).

For example, in cases of temporary or permanent displacement as well as for ease of

communicating information and connecting survivors, survivor-to-survivor can cross the barrier

of disparate geographic locations by implementing a CRG. Preferably developed pre-disaster in

communities as part of the risk and emergency response plans, the survivor-to-survivor CRG

could be patterned according to the framework of the University of Maryland’s CRG in which

peer-to-peer assistance and information gathering and dissemination is routed through a system

of advanced tools on a web-based platform (Qu et al., 2009).


Survivors would have a space to meet online and communicate messages, receive

information, request assistance, and match to another individual or virtual community according

a complex system of keyword and expertise matching software. According to Qu et al. (2009),

social identity with an in-group motivates individuals to participate in community recovery,

especially when groups’ levels of involvement are rewarded. Further studies would need to

assess motivational factors for survivors’ continued membership in a virtual system of helping

other survivors without the benefit of contact outside of the virtual world.

CRGs and other technological web-based tools integrated into a therapeutic community

would allow for immediate survivor-to-survivor communication and dissemination of critical

recovery information of natural disasters worldwide. For example, popular web-based programs

like Pinterest could be integrated with a survivor-to-survivor global CRG, and digital “pins”

could be mapped electronically to track each new event and survivors’ messages and information.

Skype interviews could be conducted in real time as well, allowing for geographical boundaries

to disappear.

Survivor-to-Survivor Approach for Organizational Crisis Communicators

Admittedly, the philosophies behind individual-level and organizational-level responses

and systemic structures are different and potentially difficult to reconcile. However, the purpose

of this article is to map out some ways that the responses are similar and suggest areas for future

research as well as exploration by crisis communicators. Our recommendations focus around

aiding first and communicating after (bonding); public relations practitioners serving as

observers, volunteers, and mentors to communities (bridging); and organizations facilitating the

survivor-to-survivor process (linking) (see Table 1: Roadmap for Survivor-to-Survivor Approach

to Post-Crisis Communication).


Bonding: Aid first, communicate after. Based on research advocating that communities’

perspectives are vital in post-crisis communication efforts (e.g., Kim & Dutta, 2009), a survivor-

to-survivor communication model encourages that organizations focus almost completely on

aiding communities first. We believe this is likely done in many cases, particularly by

organizations oriented around first aid and crisis. However, at times, organizations’ primary

concerns become the organization’s reputation and working solely to alleviate criticism they will

receive if they don’t communicate quickly or accurately enough about the crisis. Scholars should

research whether publics are likely to forgive organizations if they learn later that organizational

efforts were used nearly entirely to aid victims first without communicating until later when

victims were safe and well-being was established as well as when accurate information about the

nature of the crisis was available.

Bridging: Practitioners as observers, volunteers, and communication mentors. Finally, in

facilitating these “therapeutic communities,” organizational communicators must enter a disaster

site not as agents trying to control messaging or protecting the company’s reputation. Rather,

practitioners should embody the classic public relations role of boundary-spanning and instead

observe their publics, watching for their specific needs for communication, in the context to learn

how the organization can fulfill those needs. Practitioners can observe by volunteering in very

basic crisis recovery efforts like clean-up or distribution of supplies. Finally, when needed,

practitioners should volunteer their expertise in a mentor role, providing advice and skills

training for important communication efforts community members can use to facilitate their own

grassroots recovery. For example, practitioners can guide local groups in conducting media

advocacy, strategizing campaigns on social media, and networking with nearby groups for relief

efforts. In this sense, organizations become part of the communities they are aiding and thereby


reduce the negative consequences of the top-down approach to crisis response. Future research

should examine how cross-cultural efforts between local and state/national/international groups

are accomplished to find trends for success. Specifically, our discipline could benefit from case

studies in which organizations embed public relations practitioners within communities

experiencing crisis.

Linking: Facilitate the survivor-to-survivor process. Although the purpose of the

survivor-to-survivor approach is to allow for healing at the one-on-one interpersonal level,

organizations and the public relations function can still play an important role. First,

organizations can hire previously-trained survivors to conduct interviews immediately following

a crisis, as was the case in the SHKR project (Ancelet et al., 2013). They can also provide the

resources—like physically- and emotionally-conducive spaces—for facilitating survivor-to-

survivor interviewing in the hours, days, weeks, and months following a disaster. They can help

survivors chronicle and archive their shared narratives by donating online spaces for CRGs as

well as donating communication technologies (e.g., mobile telephony devices) for survivors and

other responders to use during recovery. During this facilitating process, organizational

communicators must continually ask community members how they can facilitate—rather than

dictate—the recovery process. Future research should document how well these efforts work,

both for the communities and for the organizations. Specifically, to uphold the need for more

publics-based research, scholars should match traditional post-crisis communication and

rhetorical messaging (e.g., image repair theory, SCCT) to grassroots and community-based

strategies to learn which organizational responses work at community-levels.

Conclusion


Post-crisis communication research overwhelmingly focuses on the organizational efforts

to improve its reputation among publics. However, this neglects how publics are affected by

crisis as well as how communities can recover themselves from disaster. In this article, we

looked to a case study that illuminates the power of communities to effectively recover and

communicate about a disaster in spite of conflicting governmental efforts. From this, we suggest

that these more emic perspectives of publics in post-crisis contexts can enable organizations to

aid publics better in becoming more communicatively active. Specifically, we suggest that public

relations and crisis communication scholars should pursue understandings of grassroots and

community-centric formations after crises. A grassroots survivor-to-survivor approach to crisis

communication can be a comprehensive tool by incorporating processes like bonding, bridging,

and linking.

Specifically, this article responds to several gaps in post-crisis communication

scholarship. First, we recommended that large aid and non-aid organizations (i.e., companies

unrelated to aid or the focal crisis) can work with local community members to aid in their

recovery without assuming jurisdiction on the crisis site or communication campaign. Second, as

critical public relations research emphasizes the publics’ perspectives in public relations, this

article bridges two seemingly opposite perspectives of a crisis: the governmental/large

organizational body and the individual. Although seemingly contradictory, we suggest that by

facilitating survivors’ sharing of their experiences, the public relations function more

authentically fulfills its fundamental boundary-spanning role. Finally, this model suggests that

organizational efforts can be elongated well after the immediate post-crisis period by donating

communication resources and mentorship to communities; this, in turn, strengthens an

organization’s bond with a community over time.


Lastly, survivor-to-survivor interview archives can serve as historical databases of

information and message channels of shared narratives, social learning, resilience education,

social support, risk training, and advocacy for both real and virtual world community

organizational structures for the purpose of mitigating the negative impact from past, present,

and future catastrophes. Survivor-to-survivor archives are multi-disciplinary community

development plans modeled from components of systems in other disciplines, whether it be

socio-ecological, socio-economic, anthropological, technological, sociological, urbanization,

psychological, and discourse analysis and conversation analysis, to name only a few. The steps

to mitigating negative impact during recovery can be outlined, new shared narratives

documented, and additional findings investigated through the survivor-to-survivor process.

Through the collective action of survivors post-disaster, social capital bonding, bridging, and

linking of individuals, families, institutions and organizations can be established. Storytelling,

content mapping, and other mechanisms of communication, can be put in place culminating in

the building of both real and virtual communities with social capital within a survivor-to-

survivor support system allowing for an advocacy component affecting public policy.

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Figure 1: Survivor-to-Survivor Communication Model


Table 1: Roadmap for Survivor-to-Survivor Approach to Post-Crisis Communication

Traditional

post-crisis

communication

characteristics

Problems

with

traditional

approaches

Contemporar

y best

practices

Survivor-

to-survivor

communica

tion model

Incorporation

into public

relations

function

Future public

relations research

Organizationall

y-based

Only one

part of the

situation;

neglects

publics’

orientation

to crisis

Involve all

stakeholders

in approach

Communit

y-based

Bonding: Aid

first,

communicate

second;

communicate

about the aid

Evaluating

whether messages

about the

improvement of

survivors’

situations

correlates with

publics’ perceived

reputation of

organization

Top-down

approach: state,

federal,

international

agencies take

the lead; local

groups

subordinated

Jurisdiction

al conflicts;

inefficient

processes;

culturally

insensitive

solutions

Use local

resources;

place cultural

members at

the center of

decision-

making

Facilitating

“therapeuti

c

communiti

es”

Bridging:

Public

relations

practitioners

enter site as

observers and

volunteers to

lend

communicatio

n expertise

and skills

Case studies of

organizations

embedding public

relations

practitioners

within

communities

experiencing

crisis as

grassroots

communication

volunteers

Rhetorically-

oriented: to

improve the

organization’s

reputation

Mass

mediated

messages

about org’s

reputation

do little for

survivors

Identify

common

vision for

renewal; base

public

relations

initiatives

within

survivor-to-

survivor

model

Shared

narratives;

peer-to-

peer

interviewin

g

Linking:

Organizations

hire survivors

to conduct

interviews;

facilitate the

survivor-to-

survivor

process (e.g.,

help with

concept maps,

CRG)

Chronicle the

facilitate process;

Match traditional

post-crisis

communication

theories (e.g.,

image repair

theory, SCCT) to

grassroots

strategies

survivor-to-survivor communication model: how organizations can use post-disaster interviewing to...

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