Abstract:
In a rationalised world, crises attack central mechanisms of a society: Actors experience themselves as powerless, although they are socially obliged to act. Within the framework of PR research over the last thirty years, a broad research base on crisis communication management has emerged. There, however, the focus is on intentional communication or strategic action. Instead of aiming at effective crisis communication strategies, Laukötter develops a new perspective on crisis communication with sociological neo-institutionalism and shows that actors in crises have to represent agency. By means of communication, actors actualise and constitute their own culturally ascribed capacity to act under the acute threat to it. In other words, in crises, the construct of the actor capable of acting is constituted and updated by working through scripts to resolve the crisis.