Effective Crisis Communication: Moving From Crisis to Opportunity

Robert R. Ulmer is Professor and Chair of the Department of Speech Communication at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He also holds two secondary appointments in the College of Public Health at the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences. His teaching, research, and consulting interests focus on creating effective risk and crisis communication through renewal, growth, collaboration, and opportunity. He has served as a consultant working with a wide variety of public, private, governmental, and not-for-profit organizations on how to effectively prepare for and manage risk and crises effectively. He has published articles in Management Communication Quarterly; Communication Yearbook; The Journal of Business Ethics; Public Relations Review; the Journal of Organizational Change Management; the Journal of Applied Communication Research; the Handbook of Crisis Communication; The Handbook of Risk and Crisis Communication, The Encyclopedia of Public Relations; and The Handbook of Public Relations.

Timothy L. Sellnow is Professor of Risk and Crisis Communication in the Department of Communication at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, and currently serves as theme leader for the risk communication research team at the National Center for Food Protection and Defense, a Center of Excellence sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security. Sellnow’s primary research and teaching focus is on risk and crisis communication. Much of his recent research focuses on strategic communication for mitigating the impact of and maintaining resilience in response to potential terrorist attacks—particularly bioterrorism. His work on crisis, risk, and communication has appeared in the Handbook of Crisis and Risk Communication; International Encyclopedia of Communication; Communication Yearbook, Public Relations Review; Communication Studies; Journal of Business Ethics; and many others. Sellnow is the co-author of three books on crisis and risk communication and is the past editor of the Journal of Applied Communication Research.

Matthew W. Seeger is Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication at Wayne State University. His research interests concern crisis and risk communication, crisis response and agency coordination, health communication, the role of media in crisis, crisis and communication ethics, failure of complex systems, and post-crisis renewal. He has worked closely with the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on communication and the anthrax attack and on communication and pandemic influenza preparedness. He is an affiliate of the National Center for Food Protection and Defense where he studies issues of food safety and recalls. His work has appeared in the Handbook of Crisis and Risk Communication, International Encyclopedia of Communication, Journal of Health Communication Research, Journal of Applied Communication Research, and the Journal of Organizational Change Management, among many others. Seeger is the author or co-author of five books on crisis and risk communication.