Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication Research
The Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication Research (JICRCR) is the first scholarly journal dedicated to human and mediated communication issues associated with crises, risks, and emergencies around the world. The journal is supported by an international editorial board comprised of top crisis and risk communication scholars. JICRCR is a biannual peer-reviewed, open access publication, which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or institution. ISSN: 2576-0017 E-ISSN:2576-0025 Indexed in ProQuest, Scopus, EBSCO, Informit, Google Scholar, Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory, and other databases.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Balancing Accessibility and Confidentiality: Advanced Encryption Techniques for Health Records
In the modern era of digital health systems, maintaining a delicate equilibrium between accessibility and confidentiality of electronic health records (EHRs) is paramount. This paper investigates the use of advanced encryption techniques to secure health records while ensuring their timely accessibility to authorized healthcare professionals. We review the evolution of encryption in healthcare, assess contemporary cryptographic methodologies, and propose a hybrid framework tailored to health information systems. The research evaluates performance metrics such as encryption time, decryption time, data size overhead, and security levels, emphasizing the trade-offs between data usability and data protection. Furthermore, this study includes real-world use cases, a detailed risk assessment model, and practical guidelines for implementing encryption strategies in diverse healthcare environments.
Copyright (c) 2024 Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication Research
The Mediated Construction of Crises—Combining Automated and Qualitative Content Analysis to Investigate the Use of Crisis Labels in Headlines of Swiss News Media between 1998 and 2020
The recent accumulation of crises has led scholars to diagnose that crises increasingly dominate news headlines. However, there is little empirical evidence for this diagnosis because previous research often misses the longitudinal perspective. To address this gap in research, we used automated content analysis to investigate to what extent five Swiss newspapers used the crisis label in their headlines between 1998 and 2020. In the next step, we applied topic modeling to the dataset of 10,458 articles with crisis labels in their headlines to detect which topics were covered under the crisis label. Finally, we used a qualitative content analysis to name and describe the automatically identified topics. Our exploratory longitudinal design calls into question the diagnosis of the increasing use of crisis labels in media reporting. Instead, the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic stand out as strong drivers of crisis labeling in headlines.
The Anxiety Threshold: Exploring the Relationship Between Discrete Emotions and Information-seeking Repertoires During a Societal Crisis
Appraisal theory suggests that emotions with similar valence can lead to distinct information-seeking behaviors during crises, driven by unique cognitive appraisals. Previous research has predominantly concentrated on the role of affective states, focusing largely on how much time individuals spend seeking information about a threat. However, this approach overlooks the potential impact of specific emotions on source preferences. This study examines the link between particular emotions and the source combinations people use to gather information about COVID-19. It hypothesizes that anxiety is linked to broad repertoires including a wide variety of sources, while anger is associated with narrow repertoires including fewer sources. RQs address the relationship with sadness and happiness. Employing multinomial regressions on latent classes, the findings show that both anger and anxiety are positively associated with broader source repertoires, while low levels of anxiety are linked to narrower repertoires. Sadness and happiness appear to have limited significance in this context. The results suggest an “anxiety threshold,” indicating that both low and high levels of anxiety can pose challenges for crisis communication.
Instructional Risk and Crisis Communication at Higher Education Institutions during COVID-19: Insights from Practitioners in the Global South and North
During the COVID-19 pandemic, challenges at higher education institutions (HEIs) in managing public health crises were revealed globally. The literature on HEIs has focused on Western/Northern countries and lacks theoretically grounded studies of internal instructional risk communication. This article reports the results of interviews with HEI communication practitioners at 28 universities in 16 countries in the Global South and North regarding their practices of message design and distribution during COVID-19. Using the IDEA model of instructional risk communication, the results revealed that practitioners’ communication emphasized action and dissemination over internalization and explanation. Practitioners from the Global South were more likely to perceive personal relevance as important and integrate it into their messages than those from the Global North. Practitioners from the Global South also used credible sources and translated technical jargon for lay audiences more often than those in the Global North. Most of the practitioners’ risk messaging was informed by personal experience and intuition rather than by theory or best practice models.
Time and Ethics in Delivering Bad News in Institutionalized and Social Media
The public is exposed to information through two types of communication: institutionalized (radio, newspapers, and television) and informal, which includes information obtained through social networks (Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Telegram) and mediated interpersonal communication (phone). In the case of institutionalized media, consumers are not active partners in content creation. Regarding social networks, the users are both content producers and content consumers. The two types of communication operate through different dynamics.
Making Sense of Disinformation in the Swedish Heterogenous Society: Understandings, Experiences, and Vulnerabilities
In this paper, we provide knowledge about how people make sense of disinformation in the Swedish heterogenous society. Departing from a bottom-up perspective, we draw on individual interviews and focus groups to capture the experiences and practices vis-à-vis disinformation. We analyze the results using the theoretical concepts of sensemaking and vulnerability. The results indicate that there are differences in how people make sense of and act in relation to disinformation depending on age, educational background, and previous experiences. Furthermore, the results indicate that crises and uncertain times make people more vulnerable to disinformation. We argue that disinformation can be viewed both as a risk and as a crisis in itself. We conclude that lack of adequate information from trusted sources during crises and disasters makes people more exposed to and more vulnerable to disinformation.
Applying the Anger Activism Model (AAM) to CSR Crises: From the Perspective of the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine
CSR crises occur when organizations fail to live up to publics’ expectation of their social responsibilities. The anger activism model (AAM) uses two variables, efficacy and anger, to explain people’s participation in social movements. Since CSR crises are often value-based and lead to consumer boycotts, AAM sheds light on explaining people’s behaviors in CSR crises. In applying AAM, this study aims to explore effective crisis response strategies and if conditional factors influence the effectiveness of these strategies, using a 2 (strategy: reform vs. refutation) × 2 (proxy efficacy: high vs. low) online experiment in the context of a company’s decision on whether to withdraw its business from Russia in response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. The results revealed that reform was a more effective strategy than refutation. In addition, anger moderated the influence of crisis responses on account acceptance, attitude, trust, and boycott intention. As anger increases, refutation becomes less effective.
Copyright (c) 2023 Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication Research
Changes with the Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication Research
In 2017, the Nicholson School of Communication (NSC) took the initial steps to launch the Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication Research because for more than 15 years, crisis and risk scholars had called for a dedicated journal focused on the growing interest in crisis and risk research. With a new NSC Director in place and an established International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference drawing scholars to the University of Central Florida since 2011, the decision was made for NSC to become the journal’s publisher and funds were earmarked to make its publication a reality.
Getting Lost In The “Realm Of Possibility”: Common Phrases Used To Communicate Rare Events Have Substantially Different Effects On Decision-Making
Communicating probabilities is challenging. Numbers are precise, but poorly understood by the public. Verbal phrases (“it is unlikely”) can be misinterpreted. The current study used a binary decision task (total n = 3207) to compare how varieties of verbal and numerical phrases impact decision-making. We identified “realm of possibility” phrases from real-world risk communications. These produced substantially higher risk perceptions compared to other formats. Verbally-formatted phrases increased risk perceptions compared to numerically-formatted ones. Contrary to previous findings, the “1-in-X” format did not uniformly increase risk perceptions compared to when percentages were used. When using the “1-in-X” format, risk perceptions decreased monotonically with the increased probability of negative decision outcomes. With percentages, risk perceptions instead showed a curvilinear (and contradictory) trend.
The Power of Style: Sincerity’s influence on Reputation
Crisis communication scholars have suggested that sincerity is critical to an effective crisis response, and a robust body of research suggests that certain mannerisms and communication styles can make a spokesperson appear more sincere. But what impact do perceptions of a crisis communicator’s nonverbal sincerity and verbal honesty have in impacting the organization’s reputation and also consumer behavior? Grounded on the revised model of reputation repair (REMREP) which emphasizes an organization’s perceived virtuousness and a crisis’s perceived offensiveness, this paper reports a study in which participants (N = 785) watch an interview of a spokesperson representing a scandalized company. The results indicate that a spokesperson’s perceived sincerity has a small, structural effect on reputation and behavioral intentions. However, the effects largely result from increasing perceived honesty of the spokesperson’s response.This research has been conducted in compliance with the guidelines of the APA and under supervision of an IRB.
Fending Off Unverified Accusation with Narratives: The Role of Primary and Secondary Narratives in Organization’s Response Effectiveness in an Ongoing Crisis
This study integrates theories of metanarration and crisis narratives to identify optimal approaches to managing uncertain and high-pressure crisis situations. An online experiment used a U.S. adult sample to examine how (1) the primary narrative in a news story about the victim and (2) the secondary narrative with different crisis narratives used by the accused organization impacted the outcomes of the organization’s public communication about the ongoing crisis situation. Results showed that the secondary narrative, emphasizing renewal, played a significant role in (1) lowering perceived organizational crisis responsibility, (2) lessening organizational reputation damage, and (3) boosting supportive intention toward the organization. In addition, findings revealed that perceived organizational crisis responsibility and perceived organizational reputation functioned as sequential mediators for the relationshipbetween the secondary narrative (using renewal crisis narrative) and participants’ intended support of the crisis-stricken organization. Findings advance crisis narrative theory and offer prescriptions for effective and ethical organizational responses in managing an ongoing crisis triggered by an unverified sexual harassment accusation against its members.
When We Don’t Want to Know More: Information Sufficiency and the Case of Swedish Flood Risks
This study investigates the phenomenon of information (in)sufficiency in the context of flood risks. Individuals’ perception of how much risk information they need is a major trigger and driver of information-seeking behavior, and therefore it is an important part of creating effective preventive risk-communication campaigns. To understand factors that contribute to individuals’ sense of information (in)sufficiency, the roles played by prior experiences of floods and general risk sensitivity were analyzed using survey data from residents in flood-risk zones. The findings highlight that every third respondent reported a state of information sufficiency. Residents with prior experience evaluate their information sufficiency level based on their perception of consequences of future floods. But it is general risk sensitivity that best explains need for more information.
Emotional Responses to Wireless Emergency Alerts for COVID-19 and Predictors of Public Health Compliance
This study explored perceptions and effects of the Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system for COVID-19 public health messaging after a message was sent to Pennsylvania residents in November 2020. Survey and interview research were conducted to understand the targeted publics’ reactions to this message and factors impacting potential behavior change. Findings showed residents who received the WEA expressed greater feelings of anger and surprise about the COVID-19 threat compared to those who did not. Additionally, for participants who did not receive the WEA message, higher arousals of fear and perceptions of threat severity predicted a higher likelihood that they would have changed their Thanksgiving plans. Interview data suggested positive emotions toward using WEAs for public health crises in general.
The Mediation Effects of COVID Vaccine Anxiety, Safety, and Fear on the Relationships between COVID-19 Threat and Efficacy Levels with Parents’ Intent to Vaccinate Children
Given the updated, ongoing recommendations for the COVID vaccine series and booster for children ages 6 months and older yet vaccine coverage remaining at less than 50% among children, it is critical for public health communicators to understand sources of vaccine hesitance among parents. A national survey of parents identifies the mediating effects of vaccine anxiety, safety, and fear on the relationships between COVID-19 threat and efficacy with behavioral intentions to vaccinate. Anxiety mediated the relationships between both threat and efficacy with parents’ behavioral intentions to vaccinate their children. Vaccine anxiety, safety, and fear mediated parents’ decisions to vaccinate themselves. Theoretical and applied implications are reviewed.
Good Neighbors, Good Response: Roxas, Capiz Post-Haiyan
The Philippines’ risk communication system relies on information dissemination, which disregards local capacity for managing risk. This research aimed to examine risk communication in Roxas City, an important economic center working on capacitation after damage by Supertyphoon Haiyan. Guided by Encoding–Decoding theory, the researcher interviewed government officers and facilitated discussions at coastal and inland communities. The researcher found that local government viewed communities as audiences who intuitively knew what to do with scientific information. The coastal community had indigenous knowledge but acted based on fear of sanctions. The inland community discussed information from media, which led to community decision-making. These findings imply that local governments should consider the role of social networks unique to different communities when planning risk communication and hazard response.
Local Organization Responses to Black Lives Matters Protests: Embracing an “Ethic of Care” When Engaging Community Crises by Convention Visitors Bureaus
Since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, at least 140 cities across the United States have experienced protests resulting in vandalism, looting, shootings, and other violence. These protests represent a challenge for community organizations such asconvention and visitors bureaus (CVBs), whose responsibility is to promote their local community as a place for tourism, meetings, conferences, and other activities. This study explores the response of Visit Aurora, a Colorado CVB to engage their local protestsinspired by the BLM movement, and a local case—the death of Elijah McClain. Within the paper a model for crisis engagement will be discussed, including the ethical responsibilities of institutions to support stakeholders even when they may not be directly responsible for the harms they have experienced.
Copyright (c) 2022 Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication Research
Templated Crisis Communication for People With Disabilities, Access and Functional Needs
Despite the Americans with Disabilities Act being more than 30 years old, many government institutions fail to fully support their constituents, and provide understandable and actionable crisis communications before, during, and after emergencies and disasters. When residents do not effectively receive, understand, and act on crisis communications in a timely manner, life safety issues can occur. People may choose not to evacuate when necessary or lack the information for properly sheltering-in-place. These and other bad decisions can be deadly. Crisis communications, as a subset of risk communications, should be aligned with all the disaster phase cycles—the before, during, and after stages of disasters and crises—so that impacted residents obtain complete information they can use. U.S. government websites, including posted crisis communications public releases, must be compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) under Title II and they should use templated crisis communications available in other languages, English-only audio recordings, and videos of American Sign Language.
AI Clusters and Elastic Capacity Management: Designing Systems for Diverse Computational Demands
We present an architectural framework for AI clusters and highlight diverse computational demands from four target industry areas. We argue for elastic capacity management due to the dynamic nature of clusters to accommodate these diverse demands. We discuss key challenges and opportunities related to the design of elastic systems for managing diverse workloads based on AI clusters. The choice of system architecture and low-level orchestration mechanisms is guided by capacity planning requirements. We survey and contrast two distinct industry-driven architectural patterns for building AI clusters. We: (1) describe a logical architecture for managing dynamic AI clusters that is flexible and agnostic about the execution daemon; (2) propose two workload models based on the harvesting of real usage data from state-of-the-art AI clusters; (3) provide a proof-of-concept implementation of the proposed latency-QoS optimum placement methodology and analyze its performance.AI dominates computation today and presents unique system design and management challenges. This paper’s contribution is to espouse the idea that one-size-fits-all AI systems cannot work, precisely because AI computations are diverse. They can be computationally expensive, requiring a specialized GPU, or use modern software tricks to perform deep learning on a traditional CPU with reasonable latency. They may be high-performance, real-time, or high-batch throughput. They may demonstrate multi-modal steady-state behavior or varying degrees of start-up and steady-state variance. There are two design challenges: (1) what is the best AI cluster design with a blend of CPU and GPU platforms that satisfies the diverse AI computation needs of the above four scenarios? (2) How best to manage capacity in an AI cluster? We propose answers that critically also utilize data analytics and AI training to understand usage patterns and customer requirements. The system architectures we espouse are elastic; they can increase or decrease capacity in a serverless fashion. A diverse elastic system nicely pairs with elastic capacity management to manage clouds with AI workloads.
Ravi Kumar Vankayalapati, Rama Chandra Rao Nampalli
Communicating Mental Health Coping Resources Among College Students of Color: A Resilience Approach to COVID-19 Response
The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected African American college students and put them at high risk of mental health concerns. Guided by the community resilience model, this study examined how Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) communicated mental health resources during the COVID-19 pandemic. An analysis of HBCUs’ website-based communication showed that mental health received minimal importance in response to the ongoing pandemic. Although larger and advanced degree-granting institutions provided a relatively greater amount of mental health resources than smaller institutions, those resources might not be sufficient to buffer against the COVID-19 induced stressors. Providing such inadequate mental resources indicate that many HBCU institutions were unable to provide a necessary supportive environment for the campus communities. HBCUs may establish formal and informal networks with local and regional mental health support organizations and share resources. Specifically, smaller institutions would benefit from such networked support. Additionally, HBCUs need to prioritize mental health in their response to COVID-19 to promote resilience among the student community.
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)
What Motivates Information Seeking and Sharing During a Public Health Crisis? A Combined Perspective From the Uses and Gratifications Theory and the Social- Mediated Crisis Communication Model
Combining the uses and gratifications theory (U&G) and the social-mediated crisis communication model (SMCC), this study examined why and how Chinese publics sought and shared information during a public health crisis in China—the Quanjian crisis. Through a survey of 309 Chinese adults, we found that Chinese publics sought and shared crisis information to gratify socializing, guidance, medium appeal, mood management, and habitual diversion gratifications. In addition, publics sought medium appeal gratification through information seeking and sought competence and reciprocity gratifications through information sharing. Moreover, the study examined the relationships between gratifications-sought and forms (i.e., traditional media, social media, offline word-of-mouth communication) and sources (i.e., government, news agency, health professionals, Quanjian company, other public members) of information that Chinese publics sought and shared during the Quanjian crisis.
Buffer or Backfire? Effects of Corporate Social Responsibility Activities in Organizational Crises
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities can help an organization to build a favorable reputation; such activities can thereby serve as a buffer in times of crisis. However, research also suggests that these activities can backfire and reinforce the reputational damage caused by a crisis because they can lead to elevated expectations among the stakeholders. Drawing on prior research on buffering and backfire effects, this study examines the possible moderating effects of crisis type and severity. Two experiments show that CSR activities positively affect the perceptions of a company’s affective image. In times of crisis, this image boost indeed serves as a buffer in a victim crisis and in a preventable crisis (contrary to our expectations). However, in the case of a very severe crisis, CSR activities can also backfire and a company that engages in CSR activities matching the field of the corporate crisis is perceived morenegatively.
Editorial Essay: Innovation in Risk and Crisis Communication: Toward New Topics, Theories, and Methods
Climate change, emerging diseases, population migration and dislocation, breakdowns in civil society, aging infrastructure, risingexpectations, limitations and competition for critical resources—food, water, energy—technological complexity and collapses, andmany other forms of natural, human-caused, and interactive events will challenge and, in many cases, overwhelm our communicationprocesses and capacities.
Commemorating Disorder in After-Action Reports: Rhetorics of Organizational Trauma after the Las Vegas Shooting
After-action reports are important texts that make sense of moments of crisis and restore organizational order. We add to existing research on these reports by incorporating the rhetorical concepts of terministic screens and the pentad to understand how reports commemorate disorder and organizational trauma. Analyzing the multiple reports created after the 2017 Las Vegas Shooting, we find that reports from different professional fields commemorate crises in disparate ways that select and deflect memories of trauma. This study extends risk and crisis studies of crisis documentation by highlighting the emotional role reports play in making sense of organizational trauma and considering how professional fields influence post-crisis rhetoric of renewal.
“I Thought about It and I May Follow What You Said”: Three Studies Examining the Effects of Elaboration and Source Credibility on Risk Behavior Intentions
The induction of cognitive elaboration on information concerning risks may facilitate compliance with messages encouraging audiences to mitigate against risks. Nevertheless, cognitive elaboration and its relationship with other key variables in risk information processing have been largely understudied. Revisiting data from three experiments, this study examined how cognitive elaboration influences behavioral intentions associated with a risk, and the relationship between cognitive elaboration and behavioral intentions, as mediated by perceptions of source credibility. Results consistently found that cognitive elaboration directly predicted increases in both source credibility perceptions and behavioral intentions, along with an indirect effect of cognitive elaboration on behavioral intentions through credibility. Together, the comparative analyses suggest that cognitive elaboration may be a robust factor to aid risk information processing and can be examined in different risk contexts. Practical and theoretical implications, future directions, and limitations are discussed.
COVID-19 Dialogue on Facebook: Crisis Communication Relationship between Ghanaian Authorities and Citizens
The paper explored how the Ministry of Information (M.O.I.), the official mouthpiece of the government of Ghana, interacted with citizens during the COVID-19 outbreak within the context of crisis communication as a tool for authority-citizen engagement on Facebook. Content analysis of COVID-19 comments on the Ministry of Information’s official Facebook page showed higher participation in the discussion from citizens. However, authorities only provided information by being inactive participants in the interaction. The dominant issues focused on Ghanaian authorities and their actions, the course of events surrounding the pandemic, infected cases and deaths, and Ghana’s recovery efforts. The active publics provided information, asked and answered questions, and expressed their opinions as the discussions were ongoing. The comments portrayed negative, positive, and neutral tones. The paper also revealed diverse challenges that are likely to hinder crisis communication during the pandemic, from the inflexibility of action, quality of information, and disparity of knowledge.
Editorial Essay: A Reflection on Methodological Diversity in the Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication Research
In our previous editorials, we have touched on different aspects of diversity and diversification in crisis and risk communicationresearch. We have argued that while the field is starting to expand from its focus on Western corporate perspectives to includenon-Western countries, non-corporate crises, and more broadly embracing different perspectives, we also suggest that diversificationneeds to continue to develop and be supported (Diers-Lawson & Meißner, 2021a). Furthermore, we have reviewed the multidisciplinary character of crisis and risk communication research, involving researchers from fields like public relations, political science, sociology, journalism, public health, and others suggesting this is not only healthy for the continued development of crisis and risk communication research but also necessary to more fully understand the phenomenon (Diers-Lawson & Meißner, 2021b).
“I Lose” “I Gain” vs. “They Lose” “They Gain”: The Influence of Message Framing on Donation Intentions in Disaster Fundraising
Grounded in the 2018 California Camp Fire context, this study explores how message framing in charitable appeals influences individuals’ donation intentions. A 2 (firstperson imagery perspective vs. third-person imagery perspective) × 2 (gain frame vs. loss frame) between-subject online experiment was conducted via Amazon’s MTurk (n = 475). Results showed that gain/loss framing and imagery perspectives interactively influenced participants’ donation intentions. Specifically, when a message is lossframed, a first-person imagery perspective (“I lose”) message is more effective than a third-person imagery perspective (“they lose”) message in enhancing participants’ perceived issue relevance, induced empathy, and donation intention. In addition, when the message is framed with a third-person imagery perspective, a gain-framed (“they gain”) message is more persuasive than a loss-framed (“they lose”) message.
first vs. third-person imagery perspective
Gift im Bier: A Context-Sensitive Analysis of Culturally-Rooted Messages and Humor in Risk Communication on Glyphosate in Germany
Glyphosate is the world’s most used and controversially debated herbicide. Its approval in the European Union (EU) is expiring in 2022. At the time of its last approval procedures in the EU in 2016/2017, there was a heated public debate in Germany about the carcinogenic risk of glyphosate. In this context, the Munich Environmental Institute published a study which concluded there were chemical residues of glyphosate in the 14 most-popular German beers. In this article, I analyze the “Gift im Bier” (poison in beer) case by examining central stakeholders’ reactions using a message-centered approach for risk communication and reflect on culturally-rooted messages, including the use of humor, within risk communication. Ultimately, I will argue for a contextsensitive and message-centered approach to risk communication analysis.
Copyright (c) 2021 Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication Research
Unintended Effects of Risk Communication: Impacts of Message Fatigue, Risk Tolerance, and Trust in Public Health Information on Psychological Reactance
How individuals experience unintended effects of risk messages is an understudied area. Focusing on three types of unintended effects (i.e., message fatigue, risk tolerance, and psychological reactance) associated with health risk communication, we conducted an online survey among Italian adults (N = 507) to investigate how perceived message fatigue and risk tolerance might induce psychological reactance and whether trust in public health information might mediate this relationship. Results from mediation models revealed: (a) greater message fatigue and risk tolerance increased psychological reactance; (b) greater message fatigue and risk tolerance led to distrust in government-shared health information; (c) trust in public health information mediated the effects of message fatigue and risk tolerance on psychological reactance. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
unintended effects of health risk communication
Evolving Best Practices in Crisis Communication: Examining U.S. Higher Education’s Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic started in December 2019 and has rapidly spread around the globe. Among the institutions at the forefront of responding to COVID-19 are U.S. colleges and universities. These institutions frequently face crises, but they have not always managed these episodes successfully. Given the gravity of the pandemic, best practices research can help higher education institutions combat public health crises and other threats. This study examines and assesses the crisis communication of U.S. colleges and universities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic using the best practices framework. Findings indicate that higher education institutions have employed communication consistent with best practices, with some important modifications. Findings also answer calls to contextualize crisis communication best practices within specific organizational contexts and as a values-based framework.