Vol 28, No 1 (2009)

Although crisis communication has emerged as a specialised study field for public relations
scholars and practitioners and has been a mounting area of inter-disciplinary research in recent
years, several gaps in current literature on crisis communication exist. Gaps include a notable
focus on the planning, prevention and recovery stages with lesser attention being devoted to the
crisis-response stage; a lack of a comprehensive conceptual framework to guide communication
decision makers during this critical period; and that crisis-communication studies appear to be
predominantly Western based. This article attempts to address these gaps by focusing on the
crisis-response stage, with particular emphasis on communication with the media during a crisis.
It is acknowledged that the success of a crisis-management effort is profoundly affected by what
an organisation says and does during a crisis – termed the crisis response (Benoit, 1997; Coombs,
2004). This article focuses on this crisis response and is divided as follows: firstly, an introduction
to key terminology is provided, followed by the theoretical background, the research approach
and methodology, as well as the findings from the case studies, which culminate in the proposed
conceptual model for effective crisis communication with the media. Lastly, a critical evaluation of
the model is presented and recommendations for further research are provided.

The South African government set mining companies the target to have women represent 10% of
their workforce by 2009. Although the mining companies support the legislation, the target seems
almost unreachable and the process riddled with obstacles. This article aims to investigate - within
the context within which diversity relating to gender is managed within the South African platinummining
industry - the perception of female employees on employer-employee relationships and
communication management in a particular mining company. The researchers suggest some
interventional steps that can be taken to accommodate female employees in the South African
platinum-mining industry.

The Steyn and Puth (2000) model for strategic communication management has been applied by
students and other project participants to non-profit organisations (NPOs), government institutions
and small and medium enterprises in South Africa, but organisations’ communication practices
have not been measured against the model. This paper reports on the strategic communication
management practices of NPOs in the adult-literacy sector in South Africa, as compared with
the strategic steps in the Steyn and Puth model. The aim of this study was to analyse current
communication practices in the adult-literacy sector of South African NPOs in terms of the normative,
theoretical Steyn and Puth model for strategic communication management. The purpose was
to understand the participating NPOs’ operational and strategic communication management
context, since little research in this regard has to date been conducted. Recommendations for
strategic communication management and relationship building by NPOs are also made.

A proper assessment of the usefulness of the sources of information considered by prospective
students could enable higher education institutions (HEIs) to allocate funds, time and resources
more efficiently and effectively. The main objective of this study was to determine students’
perceptions on the usefulness of sources of information that they used to select a public HEI
in South Africa, and further to establish whether differences occur between the perceptions of
students from various institutions. A quantitative study with a self-administrated questionnaire was used to obtain information by
means of a non-probability convenience sample of 1 241 students from six public HEIs in South
Africa. The findings indicated that prospective students find sources of information coming directly
from a public HEIs - such as campus visits and open days, university publications and websites –
to be of most use, while information from mass media, such as radio, television, magazines and
newspaper advertisements are less important. The responses of students from the different institutions varied significantly regarding the usefulness of sources of information in selecting a public HEI. Although university publications,
campus visits and open days, and also websites ranked high, the importance ranking between
respondents from different institutions varied. The findings can be used to develop student-focused marketing communication that could aid prospective students in making more informed decisions about the public higher education
institution they wish to attend.

This article reports on the PPI itself, its information, and language usage in the texts, as tested in
focus-group sessions, using content analysis. Quantitative readability assessments of selected
PPIs revealed that the texts were mostly “difficult” or “very difficult”. However, readability relies not
only on text variables, but also on interaction between reader and text. From the findings, certain
recommendations are suggested to enhance the reader accessibility and cultural competence
of such documents. If PPIs, as a health communication tool, can be seen to be valuable and
easily comprehensible sources of medication information, they can fulfil a necessary role in health
literacy, especially in a multicultural, developing country such as South Africa, one typified by
huge class differences and where more than two-thirds of its households fall within the lower- to
middle-income groups.

This article reports the findings of Stage 3 of an international collaborative research programme,
its point of departure being that public relations (PR) roles researchers have largely ignored
research in the management domain in their conceptualisation of the PR manager role. (The
first qualitative stage was conducted in the US and UK, and the second, quantitative stage in the
UK). In the third stage, the UK study was replicated in South Africa (SA) to map and compare
the main elements of management performed by PR managers working globally in a range of
organisational settings and in different cultural contexts (with a view to reconceptualising the
PR manager role). While the UK research found five empirical PR roles, the final parsimonious
2-factor solution accepted in the SA study was labelled the strategic public relations manager
(a strategic role at the macro or societal level), and the operational public relations manager
(a functional role at the middle-management level).

Advocates of cultural imperialism theory have continued to argue that indigenous cultures,
especially of African societies, are daily eroded in the age of globalisation. Their argument is
based on Schiller’s debatable notion that a society is brought into a modern world system when its
dominating stratum is attracted, pressured, forced, cajoled and sometimes bribed into accepting
its traditional system and values as inferior, outdated and mundane; and shaping such system
and values to correspond to, or even promote, the values and structures of the dominating centre
of the system. This paper submits that this argument is no longer tenable in the age of globalisation. This is
because the major arguments of the cultural imperialism theory now strike a discordant note with
global-village and media-convergence tunes. Second, the theory - as suggested - builds on masssociety
and magic-bullet perspectives that have long been discredited both in media practice and
in scholarship because they do not acknowledge audiences’ ability to process information and
interpret cultural messages differently based on their cultural environment. The paper therefore
concludes that cultural imperialism theory needs a re-examination in line with the contemporary
realities of today’s world as a global village made possible by the advances in information and
communication technologies (ICTs).