Crisis communication strategies for an individual crisis in the context of alleged sexual harassment

In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, the #MeToo movement has revealed the sexual misconduct of many high-profile men across the world. As this is a recent occurrence, not much research has been done on this kind of crisis as well as on crisis communication for individual crises in general. The purpose of this study is therefore to investigate whether the existing crisis communication strategies, notably the Situational Crisis Communication Theory and Stealing Thunder, are also applicable on individual crises of alleged sexual harassment and assault. Five concrete cases during 2017 were selected for the theoretical reflection. An interpretative content analysis is made based on what is written on (social) media in order to determine the resulting appropriateness of the alleged perpetrator’s crisis communication strategy. What we see is that communicating in this context, whether it is initiating or responding to the crisis, is hard due to the type of the crisis. There are always sharp reactions from the public regardless of the applied crisis communication strategy. However, the results reveal that an accommodative crisis response strategy is most appropriate in this context, that no communication is not an option and that the alleged offender should stay on topic when responding to the crisis.