Crisis Communication: A Specialist Course

This course teaches you how to plan, write and lead communication when an organisation faces a crisis. It's written for communication and PR staff, managers who may one day speak for their organisation, and people in hospitals, schools, NGOs, government offices and companies who want to be ready before something goes wrong. It builds on the crisis lessons in the school's courses on public relations, social listening and self-regulation, and goes further.

You'll start with the theory behind crisis communication, explained in plain words: Coombs's Situational Crisis Communication Theory, Benoit's image repair theory and the difference between risk communication and crisis communication. You'll learn the CDC's Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) approach for public-health emergencies and how to talk about uncertainty and numbers.

Later modules cover message mapping, holding statements and statement libraries, dark sites and pre-approved content, choosing spokespeople and media training in depth, and working with lawyers, regulators and insurers. You'll study crises across borders and languages, misinformation and coordinated attacks, employee-led crises, leaders' personal crises, elections and political sensitivity, and crisis communication for governments, NGOs, schools and hospitals. The final module covers scenario planning, drills, running a tabletop exercise, measuring a response and after-action reviews. The course ends with a capstone crisis communication plan and drill script, and a toolkit of templates and checklists.

A running case follows Bulamu Hospital, a made-up private hospital in Kampala, through a patient-safety crisis.