German and American Crisis Coverage- Treatment of the Baycol/Lipbay Crisis in Elite Newspapers

ISBN-13: 9783836418225 / Angielski / Miękka / 2007 / 104 str.

Nadine C. Billgen

Opis

In 2001, the German pharmaceutical company Bayer withdrew an anticholesteroldrug - Baycol/Lipobay - because the product was suspected to beconnected to several deaths. The alleged side-effects of the drug caused a bigPR crisis for Bayer that forced the company to respond in order to protect itsimage. The research of framing in public relations crises is a developing area.While previous studies analyzed how organizations frame crisis events, littleresearch has been done on media framing of crises. This study employs quantitativecontent analysis to analyze coverage of the Bayer crisis in two majornewspapers each from Germany and the United States. Billgen analyzes theframes used by journalists and company officials, but also focuses on thesources journalists cited when covering the crisis. Her results indicate thatBayers crisis communication was indeed quite successful. It also poses thequestion whether the newspapers under investigation always adhered toideal journalistic practices. Her research is particularly interesting for mediaspecialists and journalists, as well as for PR practitioners or anyone involved instrategic communications.