Furthermore, failures often offer vivid examples of how not to respond
to crises; as many lessons can be learned from the crisis response failures of Exxon as
can be gleaned from successes such as Tylenol’s response to product tampering.
In this study, the use of a case with mixed results will aid in demonstrating the
utility of the best practices in evaluating crisis response. To develop the context of this
study, news articles were retrieved from the Access World News database using the
search terms “Hurricane Katrina” and “Red Cross” from Hurricane Katrina’s landfall to
nine months later. The media dataset was supplemented by reports from a roundtable
discussion hosted by a charity watch organization in which Red Cross officials and
other non-profit leaders self-evaluated their responses and a Congressional review of
Red Cross’s response to the crisis, as well as information from the official American
Red Cross Web site. These documents were used to develop a thick description of the
case as it pertained to Red Cross and Hurricane Katrina. The purpose of this study was
not to count the number of articles on the case but to use the content of the articles and
other case evidence to determine the communication strategies used by Red Cross
when responding to Hurricane Katrina.
Case study: Hurricane Katrina and American