Crismart

As scholars in fields such as media studies, crisis studies and public policy studies have argued, there exists a fundamental link between crises and the media. Once an event has been interpreted as a crisis, questions of accountability inevitably appear on the media agenda, and the struggle to attribute blame and responsibility to a specific entity or entities—the blame game—thus becomes an inexorable part of the crisis process. Focusing on three liberal Western newspapers with an international, primarily Western elite readership and a reputation for in-depth analysis of global events, The Economist, the Financial Times and the International Herald Tribune, this article employs Iyengar's and Valkenburg's notions of responsibility frames to examine whether initial coverage of the 2003 SARS crisis in these accounts held any particular entity accountable for the crisis, looks at three key themes used to communicate to the reader a particular way of thinking about responsibility for SARS and examines some of the consequences of the kind of responsibility frame constructed around the SARS crisis in these accounts. As our findings show, there is an entity that the early news accounts studied consistently held responsible for the 2003 SARS crisis, the Chinese system, and the corresponding responsibility frame at operation in these accounts is thematic rather than episodic in nature, since it consistently places the SARS crisis within a broader context (a product of “China” itself and/or of societal-governmental forces in China) rather than in relation to a specific episode or as the result of the particular actions of individuals. The SARS crisis narrative therefore presented in these accounts tells the story of an anachronistic Chinese system faced with a contemporary health threat that, by its very nature, it is incapable of assessing accurately or managing responsibly. By way of conclusion, we argue that, while the use of such a thematic frame to explain China's role in the 2003 SARS crisis may be accurate in certain respects, this frame falls short in other respects and proves particularly inadequate to the challenge of capturing the economic complexities of China's role during the crisis.

Climate change has been seen as a crisis looming in the future, and has therefore not reached the top of the political agenda. This no longer holds true when looking at Australia, where climate change has become high politics. In this paper we examine the Australian electoral debate in terms of accountability framing, where the Government and Opposition were involved in a ‘framing contest’. We argue that theories on accountability framing in crisis need to be modified in order to capture the complex dynamics of climate change due to its inherent scientific uncertainty and global nature. After conducting an inductive analysis of Australian Broadcasting Corporation-reporting we found three themes to be of importance for accountability framing in the ‘risk society’: labeling, linking and coping.

Abstract
The Muhammad cartoon crisis in 2005 provides an illustrative example of how crises travel across geographical boundaries, in this case, from a national newspaper into a full-fledged public diplomacy crisis at the international level. From a crisis management perspective, a multilevel setting poses a real challenge to actors trying to contain the situation at hand. Likewise, the multilevel nature of a crisis poses a challenge to crisis communication theories, which have traditionally focused on rhetorical strategies in single organizational crises. As a response, this article proposes a framework for examining crisis communication based on how actors’ framing impact the perceptions of arenas, stakeholders, and communication strategies.

Crises impose vast demands on political leaders' communicative abilities in terms of explaining the causes of the problem at hand as well as showing a plausible way out of the situation. These challenges become even more complex in connection with climate change induced compounded crises. These crises touch upon a broad range of issues, such as economic, environmental, social and energy policies. Drawing upon previous research on political crisis communication, this article aims to examine political actors framing strategies in connection with compounded crises and how these are affected by the media context in which they are communicated. The study rests on a case study examining The Australian's reporting of the drought in the Murray—Darling Basin in terms of how various actor groups portrayed in the reporting framed crisis responsibility. The article ends by proposing propositions for further research on responsibility framing in climate change induced compounded crises.

By comparing two newsrooms' responses, one with a traditional mode of production and one with a digital, to the terror attacks of 9/11, this article demonstrates that newsrooms, in contrast to what previous research tells us, differ in their ability to cover crisis events. Drawing upon findings from previous research on how news organizations cope with extraordinary -and crisisevents, the study explains news desks' ability to cope with the disruptions of everyday deadlines caused by 'disaster marathon modes' of reporting, based on organizational everyday structures and previous experiences. The study concludes that a digital newsroom designed to handle 24 hour reporting does not necessarily nor automatically have a suitable structure to deal with a crisis event. Rather, in this particular case the structure used for 24/7 coverage, based on journalists' independence and decentralization, was directly counterproductive when dealing with a crisis event.

Abstract: Transboundary incidents with the potential to develop into crises transcending geographical, cultural and religious boundaries are becoming increasingly common in today’s interconnected world. This development poses new demands on governments to communicate with publics on a transnational level, what is commonly referred to as public diplomacy. Based on an inductive comparative case study, this article suggests a framework for understanding public diplomacy as a crisis communication tool consisting of three core tasks: sense making, networking and messaging. The article ends with a
proposal as to how public diplomacy can contribute to crisis mitigation.

Research on crisis communication has traditionally focused on private organisations’ reputation and blame avoidance strategies. As a result, there is limited knowledge on crisis communication from the perspective of public organisations.This is troublesome as public organisations have substantial responsibilities for preparing, communicating and managing large-scale crisis events. In order to be able to better conceptualise public organisations’ crisis communication, a typology based on communication aims and orientations is introduced. According to the typology, public organisations engage in two dimensions of crisis communication: reputation-oriented vs. resilience-oriented and strategic vs. operational.These dimensions are illustrated and discussed by empirical examples from the Queensland floods of 2010/2011.The paper ends with a discussion on how to understand these dimensions of crisis communication in relation to public organisations’ priorities, processes and practices.

In essence, terror attacks are communicative events. From the perspective of political leaders, the challenge is to make sense of the event by explaining what has happened, who is behind the attack, what is the most appropriate response, and how to move forward. Adding to the difficulties is the fact that leaders have to communicate in a highly mediated environment. In this article, we explore the Norwegian government’s crisis communication in the terrorist attacks in Oslo and on the island of Utöya on July 22, 2011. We do so by applying a model of crisis framing. According to the model, political leaders have to be able to select appropriate frames that reinforce each other and match the media coverage. The study proved managerial, responsibility and cultural congruence frames to be central. Moreover, the study demonstrated how the crisis produced a certain type of news coverage characterized by high levels of descriptive journalism, which, in combination with issue and episodic framing, supported the government’s communication strategy.

After early attempts to create universal models guiding managers in times of crisismore recent attempts have focused on situational factors and the relationships between organizations and stakeholders in times of crises. Albeit this shift, structural conditions are often overlooked and if they are integrated they are defined as context and as such often excluded in the analysis. This is our point of departure for bringing neo-institutional theory into crisis communication recognizing the importance of cultural, political, technological, and institutional environments of organizations. By this we shift focus from agency to structure and the social preconditions for organizational activities. However this is not to say that institutions are static or deterministic in the way they influence organizations and their behavior. On the contrary, institutions are open for strategic innovations and interpretations.

This paper will outline the evolution of competitive
intelligence in Sweden. It will start from a historical
perspective and describe how intelligence has been
used over the centuries in order to fulfill the objectives
of kings, politicians, generals and, last but not least,
companies. The intelligence industry is then described
as it is seen in 2004. The last one and a half decades
have shown a fantastic upswing in the interest and
focus on intelligence in Sweden. The great need for
intelligence from large international companies, from
state owned companies, from municipal organizations,
from small start up companies and from non-profit
organizations has led to the emergence of intelligence
consulting companies, intelligence training companies
as well as content providers in the form of business
research companies and companies that sell off-theshelf
information. This has lead to a very competitive
industry situation. After the 2000 economic downturn
that affected Sweden heavily, this nation has witnessed
a sharp decline in intelligence functions, intelligence
professionals and intelligence projects. As the dark
clouds now, at last, seem to disappear, it is with great
hope and great expectations that one looks forward to
see the rebirth of the Swedish intelligence community.

Companies invest in Market Intelligence hoping that it will help them secure current business and help tap new opportunities. But how does one demonstrate that MI contributes to a company's success when there are many variables at play? This White Paper will help MI professionals to point out tangible indicators of MI actually making a (positive) difference. Executive Summary This White Paper approaches the value and impact of MI from three perspectives: 1. Usage of MI in decision-making 2. Calculating the financial worth of MI 3. The 'soft' contributions of MI to company performance MI is only impactful when used in decision-making. In the context of the GIA World Class MI Roadmap, this means that companies should either set the ambition level high in MI program development from the beginning or not start at all. This is because the first steps (from 'Beginner' to 'Coordinator') will involve financial costs, yet without a parallel investment in adopting MI in the company's processes, as defined in the World Class Market Intelligence Roadmap as defined by GIA (see page 5) the company risks that only the costs will materialize while benefits will lag behind. Traditionally, calculating financial ROI on MI is difficult for three reasons: 1) The revenues or benefits may be dependent on many other variables than MI; 2) MI is either used in decisions or it is not, and once a decision is made one cannot turn back time and see what would have happened the other way; 3) Many of the benefits of MI are typically deferred and qualitative in nature. Therefore, calculating an exact ROI for an MI program or a company is virtually impossible. However, a specific financial figure can sometimes be calculated relatively

Intelligence SCOPE is one of the six key success faktors/protocols in th World Class Intelligence Roadmap concept developer by Hans Hedin. Intelligence SCOPE defines the purpose and sett the boundaries of an Intelligence program.

Intelligence SCOPE Protocol
1. Intelligence Mission & Vision Statement
2. Intelligence User Groups & Key Individuals
3. Intelligence Focus Breadht & Depth Of Analysis
4. Time Focus: Past - Present - Future
5. Intelligence Budget

Authors: Hans Hedin, Markko Vaarnas, Irmeli Hirvensalo