Situational crisis communication theory (SCCT), experimentally produced by W. Timothy Coombs in 2007, is made to help crisis managers evaluate an emergency situation and craft a highly effective response strategy in line with the organization’s crisis history, the crisis type, and prior status with stakeholders.This thesis examined the November 2015 questionable guide policy update in the Church of Jesus of Latter-day Saints, which ruled same-sex marriage as cause for excommunication. Going through the policy change like a crisis poor SCCT and evaluating the Church’s crisis response strategies using the suggested tricks of SCCT exposes a niche in current SCCT literature—the theory doesn’t lend itself well to crises where an organization’s values or guiding morals they are under attack. During these scenarios, the business is not likely to apologize for or acknowledge the crisis. The research results demonstrate substantial shifts in stakeholder attitudes following certain proper statements in the Church although the Church didn’t strictly stick to SCCT’s guidelines. Based on SCCT’s guidelines, since the stakeholder groups presented the guide change like a crisis of business misdeed with injuries a lot of the time, the Church must have responded with third-tier strategies that bolstered its status and apologized or compensated individuals injured through the policy. Rather, the Church hasn’t apologized for that policy change and particularly advised stakeholders of their past policies regarding same-sex marriage. Even though the Church used exactly the same strategies through the entire crisis, the Church’s relatively bigger utilization of crisis basics, justification, and protection in the second wave of statements on November 13, 2015 shifted the crisis framing and sentiment of bloggers and John Dehlin from negative sentiment with frames of high-level crisis responsibility to neutral and positive sentiment with most blogs and social networking posts not framing the insurance policy change like a crisis.

Fine Arts and Communications Communications

Tripp, Natalie Marie, “Standing Ground: Situational Crisis Communication Theory and also the Church of Jesus of Latter-day Saints Guide Policy Change” (2016). All Theses and Dissertations. Paper 6068.
scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/6068