Lucinda Austin, an assistant professor in the School of Communications, co-authored a published article titled "How publics respond to crisis communication strategies: The interplay of information form and source" for Public Relations Review.
According to the manuscript’s abstract, the article completed an experiment with 162 college students to evaluate the social-mediated crisis communication model. “As part of a series of studies testing the SMCC model, this study focuses on two of the SMCC model’s components: the effects of crisis information form (traditional media, social media, and word-of-mouth) and source (third party and organization) on publics’ acceptance of crisis response strategies and publics’ crisis emotions.”
The paper will be published in November, but it is available now online HERE.
Austin wrote the paper with colleagues from the University of Maryland and Virginia Commonwealth University. Austin began teaching in Elon’s School of Communications this semester, after having just earned her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland last year. She teaches courses in strategic communications.