Marco Ehrl at Kutztown University in PA spoke about “Analyzing Crisis Communication with MAXQDA: A Content Analysis Approach.” Ehrl is a communications professor and presented two case studies. The first one was on crisis communications. Ehrl used Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT). The case study had three research questions:
- RQ1: How do Cuomo’s and DeSantis’ crisis responses vary across crisis events?
- RQ2: How do crisis responses differ based upon the stakeholder group under discussion?
- RQ3: What crisis responses co-occur with what crisis topics?
Ehrl obtained 24 YouTube transcripts from Cuomo’s COVID-19 press briefings (March 2-April 3) and 18 YouTube Transcripts from Ron De Santis’ COVID-19 press briefings (March 15-April 29). Ehrl developed two dictionaries using words and word combinations. Ehrl emphasized that the words were chosen to capture what was in the transcripts. Sentences were the unit of analysis. Ehrl used qualitative and quantitative data to analyze and visualize data. Cross tabs and code trends over time were useful to visualize data.
The second case study Ehrl presented was about media and diplomatic summits. This one focused on how is the crisis presented in the media. This study used the Rhetorical Arena Theory (RAT). The research questions for this study were:
- RQ1: Who plays an active (voice) and who plays a passive (visibility) role in different media arenas regarding EU-China summits?
- RQ2: What are the dominant narrative relations between actors in the media discourses?
- RQ3: What topics co-occur with active and passive actors in the media discourses?
Ehrl used maps to view the connections among codes. Ehrl also used a combination of inductive and deductive coding. This session provided examples of visualizations of codes and frequencies that I may be able to use.
