When is silence golden? The use of strategic silence in crisis communication

Abstract

Purpose

Scholars have discouraged using silence in crises as it magnifies the information vacuum (see Pang, 2013). The purpose of this paper is to argue for its viability and explore the type of silence that can be used.

Design/methodology/approach

Eight international cases were analyzed to examine how silence was adopted, sustained and broken.

Findings

The findings uncovered three intention-based typologies of strategic silence: delaying, avoiding and hiding silences. Among such, avoiding/hiding silence intensified crises and adversely affected post-silence organizational image when forcefully broken, while delaying silence helped preserve/restore image with primary stakeholders if successfully sustained and broken as planned.

Research limitations/implications

First, these findings may lack generalizability due to the limited number of cases studied. Second, local sentiments may not be fully represented in the English-language news examined as they may be written for a different audience. Finally, a number of cases studied were still ongoing at the time of writing, so the overall effectiveness of the strategy employed might be compromised as future events unfold.

Practical implications

A stage-based practical guide to adopting delaying silence is proposed as a supporting strategy before the execution of crisis response strategies.

Originality/value

This is one of the few studies to examine the role of silence in crisis communication as silence is not recognized as a type of response in dominant crisis theories – be it the situational crisis communication theory or the image repair theory (An and Cheng, 2010; Benoit, 2015; Benoit and Pang, 2008; Xu and Li, 2013).

Citation

Le, P.D., Teo, H.X., Pang, A., Li, Y. and Goh, C.-Q. (2019), "When is silence golden? The use of strategic silence in crisis communication", Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 24 No. 1, pp. 162-178. https://doi.org/10.1108/CCIJ-10-2018-0108