Trust and Brand Recovery Campaigns in Crisis: Findus Nordic and the Horsemeat Scandal

The aim of this study is to describe and analyze a transboundary crisis, focusing crisis communication, from the perspective of an involved major corporation. More concretely the intent is to increase understanding of how Findus Nordic in Sweden managed the crisis communication response and repair of its trust and corporate brand during and after the horsemeat scandal in 2013. The case study is founded in a theoretical framework that consists of three theories or concepts: transboundary crisis, image repair strategy and the rhetorical arena. Findus Nordic followed it´s corporate values and applied a consistent image repair strategy: denial and shifting the blame towards the supplier Comigel in an extremely multi-vocal arena. This strategy was supplemented with evasion of responsibility. Very close to the end of the public crisis Findus Nordic used the crisis as a possibility to recover their position and started a campaign that had positive effects in trust and the corporate brand. The launch of the campaign was very fast and might have been dangerous. But, according to the analysis the success of the campaign may be explained as a consequence of its sensemaking and auto-communicative approach

News Media and the Öresund Region:A Case of Horizontal Europeanisation?

This article presents a first attempt to investigate the news content and news routines of Danish and Swedish news media covering the Öresund region. From a theoretical perspective, the Öresund region can be considered a possible best-case example of what is categorised as horizontal Europeanisation, in other words, of the potential for increased communication linkages in news media content among European Union (EU) member states. We investigate this topic by analysing news content published by selected media outlets from 2002 to 2012 and by interviewing Danish and Swedish journalists who cover the region. We find that most news content does not mention the Öresund region, and that one reason for this lack might be that neither Danish nor Swedish reporters consider the region to be newsworthy

Crisis Communication in a New World. Reaching Multicultural Publics through Old and New Media

Crisis communication is a growing field of research and practice. A weakness in the traditional research field is the lack of theoretical development and the isolated sender and mass communication focus. In the present paper, we challenge traditional research by focusing on the contemporary cultural and ethnic diversity in society from an audience-oriented media perspective. In the paper, we review earlier research on multicultural crisis communication. The discussion is based on secondary data on multicultural media use in Sweden and an Internet analysis focused on dialogue and community building. All together, the review and secondary data show that persons of foreign origin in Sweden have high access to ICT. This is an argument for directing crisis communication not only through traditional mass media, but also through new media. This is not only because of the simple reach of these channels, but also because of the increase in the quality and dialogue potential of these “great good places” (Oldenburg, 1999)