The Rhetorical Arena

The Rhetorical Arena (also referred to as RAT) is developed as a third step in crisis communication research to improve the existing crisis communication literature, as it is, according to Johansen &

Frandsen, suffering from the earlier mentioned weak points. Crisis communication is rarely the subject of more detailed textual or semiotic analyses, where both verbal and visual aspects as well as choice of media are treated, which is something the RAT is confronting and taking into consider-ation (Frandsen & Johansen, 2010).

Instead of seeing crisis communication as the communication of one particular sender (often the suffering company’s attempt to protect their image and reputation), crisis communication should be perceived as communications from multiple senders and receivers. The multiple senders and receivers include journalists accusing the company, angry employees who are creating rumors, and experts who mentions the crisis and thereby creates attention and put it on the agenda. Crisis

communication is, in other words, not only something that the suffering company participates in (Johansen & Frandsen, 2007).

RAT is based on two models; a macro and a micro model (Frandsen & Johansen, 2010). The macro model is the actual arena and tries to describe what is going on in the communicative processes between the multiple players in the RAT. The macro model purpose is to provide an understanding of the RATs complexity and dynamism (Frandsen & Johansen, 2011). The micro model attempts to describe the individual communication processes in RAT (Frandsen & Johansen, 2010b). In the following paragraphs the two model will be further described.

4.8.1 The macro model

When a crisis occurs or is triggered, a rhetorical arena opens up around the crisis, where the actors of the crisis communicate and act. This arena opens long before the crisis becomes a reality, which can be seen in the form of simmering crises - the danger signals that is often taking place before the crisis - and not necessarily closes in the exact moment, the crisis is over. The crisis is in other words, a process that starts before the actual event (Johansen & Frandsen, 2007).

RAT and its sub-arenas differs from the public sphere (Coombs & Holladay, 2014), although much of what is taking place in the arena, also takes place in the public. RAT stretches beyond the public because it also includes what happens in the semi-public in the form of networks (e.g. between the family and friends) and the private (e.g., the communications taking place within the company who is in a crisis) (Johansen & Frandsen, 2007).

Johansen and Frandsen lists a number of players that are often present in the RAT. The list includes the actual company, the media, politicians, activists, consumers, citizens and experts who are commenting on the crisis (Frandsen & Johansen, 2010). As mentioned the players communicate in several ways: they communicate to, with, against, past and about each other. Dialogue is just one form of communication, but not necessarily the most common. At the same time, given the many players, there is not just one sender and one receiver, but as mentioned earlier, multiple (ibid).

RAT expands the sender-receiver concept in crisis communication and makes all players in the arena to potential crisis communication practitioners (Johansen & Frandsen, 2007). All actors can act as both sender and receiver of a communication process. During a crisis, the actors' different voices in the arena enter different relations with each other (ibid). This underlines the model's multi

vocality; all stakeholders / actors can enter into relationships, which is why, there is only one sender or receiver of communication. At the same time, one actor can have more than one voice; a newspaper can have several journalists covering the subject, while a company can have several spokesmen and employees who is mentioning the case (ibid).

The relationship between the different actors is rarely equal. Some actors are often stronger in different parameters in terms of economics, political and symbolic capital. Additionally, the players' strategic position in the RAT and communication varies in relation to the public sphere and the semi-public networks involved in the Arena (Frandsen & Johansen, 2010).

RAT is commonly characterized by the communication processes forming specific patterns or chains when being combined. These are to some extent coded from the side of the senders, and decoded by the receivers in different ways. Johansen and Frandsen uses the press release as an example of this: A company in crisis sends out a press release to the media (which is also both an actor, a receiver and a sender), who interprets it and sends it out into the public sphere. It is then received by the readers / listeners / viewers, who will interpret the new message and forward it, when speaking about the crisis and / or the message. This communication process is called a discourse history (Frandsen & Johansen, 2010).

The meaning of the message can change many times from when the company is sending it out, to when the public sphere receives it, and on the way the different actors become both senders and receivers. There are also non-coded patterns or chains, which suddenly occurs in unexpected ways and surprise at least one of the players inside the arena (Frandsen & Johansen, 2010).

4.8.2 The micro model

Where the macro model serves as an overall framework in which an analytical overview of the arena actors is formed, the purpose of the micro model is to investigate the characteristics of each communicative process between senders and receivers (Frandsen & Johansen, 2010). The model contains three parameters which can be characterized as crisis communications, senders and receivers. The three parameters will be discussed in the following paragraph.

4.8.3 Crisis Communications

Communication is both a product in terms of a message, a picture or an action (but not limited to one of these) and the decoding process sender and receiver use to create meaning for themselves

and / or other actors. In this model where one partial element is crisis communication, the focus is on messages and decoding processes regarding crises (Frandsen & Johansen).

4.8.4 Senders and receivers

Senders and receivers include not only the company in a crisis and its primary stakeholders, but also other types of actors as previously mentioned. Common for them is that they all influence each other, and they have four different qualities or skills they act by: 1) They all have an interest or stake, which defines the individual sender / receiver as a member of either one or more primary and secondary stakeholder groups, 2) they all interpret the (crisis) situation, which is resulting in a certain perception of the crisis e.g. how it started, how it ends, if it will provoke any consequences and who is responsible for the crisis 3) all actors have a strategy for their communicative behavior which involves their ability to plan what brings them closer to their strategic goals and 4) their communicative behavior can both be verbal and non-verbal through words, images, actions and behavior (Johansen & Frandsen, 2007).

The crisis communication that takes place in the RAT is always mediated. This is the process where the communicative process is being formed. According to Johansen and Frandsen crisis communi-cation in the RAT is being formed by four parameters; context, media, genre and text (see figure 4).

This means, according to Johansen and Frandsen that each communication process is determined by specific choices made by the actors within the four parameters. These choices will be important for the crisis communication and work as a format for the creation and receiving of a crisis message (Frandsen & Johansen, 2010, p. 435). The four parameters will be further discussed in the next paragraph.

4.8.5 Context

The context is the frame for the actual communication and setting for the communication and includes both external (sociological) and internal (psychological) factors affecting the communica-tion. The external, sociological factors are seen as three different types; sociocultural, organization-al and situationorganization-al context. The socioculturorganization-al is referring to e.g. nationorganization-al culture, politicorganization-al and sociorganization-al culture, the organizational deals with e.g. private or public organizations, while the situational context is about who says what, when, where and how to whom (Johansen & Frandsen, 2007).

The internal, psychological factors are seen as the cognitive systems that affect the crisis expecta-tions of the actors, their views on the cause and the outcome, and their interpretation of the crisis.

Together they frame each communication process (Frandsen & Johansen, 2010). This means that a crisis type is not just taking place in the outside world, but it will also create a learning system and frame how the various actors in the RAT interpret a crisis. The crisis type creates, in other words, a framework for the interpretation of the crisis (Frandsen & Johansen, 2010).

4.8.6 Media

Media refers to the characteristics of each type of medium in relation to the communication. At the same time, it refers to its ability to fulfill certain expectations of the senders’ stakeholders. The choice of medium affects the framework for the production and reception of a crisis communica-tions message (Frandsen & Johansen, 2011).

The medium can be the Internet, electronic media, but is not limited to be one of those. Johansen and Frandsen do not refer to actors as journalists or specific organizations, but to the actual speaker of the message (Frandsen & Johansen, 2010). The choice of media type has a great influence on how, where, when and why a crisis message is being produced and how the actors in the arena perceive it, as each media type has its own characteristics: a medium has some communicative characteristics (ability to create for instance attention or interaction). A medium is connected to different sets of attitude variables, e.g. how reliability a medium is. Furthermore, each media type is a part of specific behavioral patterns with the actors, which is based on the situation and the characteristics of the sender (ibid).

4.8.7 Genre

Genre refers to a collection of texts that have some common characteristics in connection to structure, content and rhetorical strategies and serves the same purpose: “[…]a recognizable communicative event characterized by a set of communicative purpose(s) identified and mutually understood by the members of the discour community(s) in which it regularly occurs.” (Frandsen &

Johansen, 2010, p. 436) Genres can for an example be press releases, press conferences, news articles and internal company meetings, intranet and so on (Frandsen & Johansen, 2010). The collections are based on some conventions of the genres, which ensure the communication to be as efficient as possible. You can also try and break with the conventions to see if it creates an effect with the receiver - for an example by singing an entire press conference instead of responding normally (Johansen & Frandsen, 2007). Genre conventions are also helping to create genre identification and a mutual understanding among senders and receivers of the text (Frandsen &

Johansen, 2010).

4.8.8 Text

The last parameter in the RAT is text (or textualization). This is the micro level of crisis communi-cations, and is the discursive and textual tactics, the sender consciously or unconsciously use to express themselves. A text only becomes a fully finished text when: “[…]it has been communicat-ed in a specific situation and has been interpretcommunicat-ed by receivers activating their cognitive schemes and their contextual knowledge, i.e. their stakes, interpretations, strategies, and communicative behavior.” (Frandsen & Johansen, 2010, p. 437).