As the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the world, requiring emergency management by health authorities and providers, it created flow-on crises and “crisis contagion” for organizations ranging from international airlines and tourism operators to local businesses, schools, and universities. In addition to the risks directly associated with the health emergency, many organizations were plunged into crisis because of severe restrictions to their operations and income losses. This analysis examines crisis communication in an organization faced with major financial losses, staff redundancies, and disruption. It analyses how these and necessary crisis responses were communicated to stakeholders, using situational crisis communication theory (SCCT), as its analytical framework. While noting alternative perspectives such as crisis and emergency risk communication (CERC) theory, SCCT is identified as the most widely applied theory of crisis communication, and thus warrants ongoing review in an era of media fragmentation, disinformation, and low public trust. Furthermore, this analysis provides a relatively rare “inside” (emic) perspective through ethnography and autoethnography conducted by a senior decision-maker in the organization studied, which expands traditional outside (etic) perspectives and offers new insights into crisis communication.

随着COVID-19大流行在全球蔓延，需要卫生当局和提供者进行紧急管理，它为国际航空公司和旅游运营商到本地企业，学校和大学等组织造成了持续的危机和“危机蔓延”。除了与突发卫生事件直接相关的风险外，许多组织由于对其运营和收入损失的严格限制而陷入危机。该分析检查了组织中面临重大财务损失，员工裁员和中断的危机沟通。它使用情境危机沟通理论分析了如何将这些和必要的危机应对措施传达给利益相关者（SCCT）作为其分析框架。SCCT在注意到诸如危机和紧急风险沟通（CERC）理论等替代观点的同时，被认为是应用最广泛的危机沟通理论，因此值得在媒体分散，信息不实和公众信任度低的时代进行不断的审查。此外，该分析通过所研究组织中的高级决策者进行的人种志和自动人种志研究，提供了一种相对罕见的“内部”（emic）观点，从而扩展了传统的外部（etic）观点，并为危机沟通提供了新的见解。