Craft an appropriate communication response and plan to address the concerns of tax payers and voters, the city’s population, employees, and other stakeholders.

Book used for this class is
PLEASE REFER TO CHAPTER 10

• Sellnow, T. L., & Seeger, M. W. (2013). Theorizing Crisis Communication. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN: 978-0470659304.

OTHER RESOURCES YOU CAN USE
• Austin, L., Fisher Liu, B., & Jin, Y. (2012). How audiences seek out crisis information: Exploring the social-mediated crisis communication model. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 40(2), 188-207.
• Coombs, T. (2015). The value of communication during a crisis: Insights from strategic communication research. Business Horizons, 58, 141-148.
• van der Meer, T. G. L. A., & Verhoeven, J. W. M. (2014). Emotional crisis communication. Public Relations Review, 40, 526-536.
• Kim, H. J., & Cameron, G. T. (2011). Emotions matter in a crisis: The role of anger and sadness in the publics’ response to crisis news framing and corporate crisis response. Communication Research, 38(6), 826-855.
• Kim, S., & Sung, K. H. (2014). Revisiting the Effectiveness of Base Crisis Response Strategies in Comparison of Reputation Management Crisis Responses. Journal of Public Relations Research, 26(1), 62-78.
• Schultz, F., Utz, S., & Göritz, A. (2011). Is the medium the message? Perceptions of and reactions to crisis communication via Twitter, blogs, and traditional media. Public Relations Review, 37, 20-27.

You are the public affairs director of a major metropolitan transit authority. In the past decade, your city has been undergoing improvements in its light rail and bus transit system. It has also been under fire for careless accidents that, so far, have not resulted in any serious injuries. However, this morning one of your buses struck and killed a pedestrian. At the time of the accident, the pedestrian was helping a bicyclist who had been hit by a car. The pedestrian suffered severe injuries and was taken to the local hospital where she died an hour later. Media reports pin the blame on your bus driver, who could have avoided the collision.
Craft an appropriate communication response and plan to address the concerns of tax payers and voters, the city’s population, employees, and other stakeholders. Your response should address both the current crisis, and the transit authority’s reputation issues, and can draw on not only this week’s readings, but previous readings as well.