Ansgar Thiessen

Topic: Crisis management in the media society: Safeguarding reputation through strategic, integrated and situative crisis communication

Synopsis: Building and loosing reputation in media society heavily depents on mediated communication. Hence, crisis communication is a crucial driver to safeguard reputation in times of crisis. Over the past few years, academic research has been systemising crisis communication, explicitly refraining from case study research. The presentation will outline cutting edge insights into crisis communication research, transferring the new approaches to practical strategic crisis communication management.
Part a: Classification of crisis situations - how academia helps to bring order into a chaotic situation;
Part b: New frontiers for crisis communication - the 7 characteristics of post modern crisis communication;
Part c: Loosing credibility and reputation - communicative integrity as the foundation for crisis communication;
Part d: So what? - Exploring the effects of crisis communication response strategies on safeguarding reputation;

Ansgar Thiessen is a scientific advisor and member of the board of the Swiss Association for Crisis Communication since 2009.
In his academic studies, mainly at the Université de Fribourg, he specialised in the effectiveness of strategic crisis communication and reputation management for both profit and non-profit organisations.
He has also been working for federal authorities in Switzerland on the topic of communication controlling.
Thiessen was scholarship holder of the Foundation of German Businesses and the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Selected publications:
- Thiessen, A. (2009):
"Crisis management in the media society – Communicative integrity as the key to safeguarding reputation in a crisis".
In: Klewes, J./Wreschniok, R.: Reputation Capital. Building and maintaining trust in the 21st century. Springer.

- Nolting, T./Thiessen, A. (2008): "Krisenmanagement in der Mediengesellschaft. Potenziale und Perspektiven der Krisenkommunikation"
[Crisis management in media society. Potentials and perspectives].
VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.