”HAR DU INGENTING ATT SÄGA SÅ SÄG DET” En tvåfallsstudie om kriskommunikationen under sexbrotten i Borås 2014 och skolattacken i Trollhättan 2015

Abstract

This two case study examines how two communicators communicated during two different crisis situations; the sex crimes in Borås 2014 and the school attack in Trollhättan 2015. In the first crisis, a trainee at two kindergartens in Borås northern district, sexually harassed three children. In the second crisis, a 21-year-old man walked in to a school in Trollhättan and stabbed three people to death. The study is built on interviews with two respondents: Elisabeth Eliason – communicator at Borås northern district administration office and Niklas Claesson – head of the communication department at NÄL (northern Älvsborgs county hospital). The study’s goal is to find out how communicators can be prepared to act in future crisis situations. What can these situations and communicators teach us on how to think and act, and how can we learn from their experiences? Several crisis communication researchers argue that a crisis is a part of a process and not just one phase. It is important to see warning signals before and to evaluate after. Coombs argues that different crisis situations entails different reactions from the surroundings. The study examines how this can be seen in these two cases. By interviewing Eliason and Claesson and putting their experiences in relative to research in the crisis communication area, I have found out that it is complex to find best practices on how to handle different crisis situations. An organization must have knowledge about the crisis context and level, to handle it in the best possible way. An organization can either improvise or work with planned structure, depending on the situation. An organization must see the crisis as a process. When the emergency phase is over and after the evaluation is finished, the successful organization starts reading warning signals that could possibly lead to a new crisis. With new knowledge from the past crisis, the organizations get better at handling crisis every time they occur.