Mass Media and Crisis: Realities and Challenges for Public Institutions and e-Citizens

Mass media plays an important role in conveying information to large public audiences especially in situations of crisis or conflict in which the main actors are the public institutions mainly because the mission of any organization of this type serves the public interest. The present study is a content analysis of news and press releases published between 2004 and 2009 about education and health crisis coverage in the main fifteen Romanian newspapers. A total of 724 news stories (325 about health and 399 about education) and 74 press releases (59 from Ministry of Health and 15 from Ministry of Education) were analyzed to develop a model of assessing crisis situations and highlight the relationship between public relations and mass media speeches. The main aim of this comparative research was to study the information about the conflicts and crises in health and education from the point of view of journalists, on one side, and from the one of experts in public relations, on the other side. The organizations selected for this research are the two ministries that manage the social areas fundamental to any country, Ministry of Public Health and the Ministry of Education. Management of crisis implies journalists and experts in public relations, newspapers and press releases, social media, new media technologies or internal communication.