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Article

Open Access

The NFL and Its Concussion Crisis: Adapting the Contingency Theory to Examine Shifts in Publics’ Stances

Author(s)

Douglas Wilbur, Dani Myers

Full-Text PDF Download XML 1704 Views

DOI:10.17265/1548-6591/2016.03.005

Affiliation(s)

The University of Missouri-Columbia, Columbia, USA

ABSTRACT

The National Football League (NFL) is immersed in a serious conflict involving a disease called Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), and conflict appears to have manifested into a crisis with the release of Sony Motion Picture’s film Concussion. This study uses the contingency theory of conflict management, which explains how an organization adopts toward a given public. No research has been done to identify if various unorganized publics can develop stances like an organization. A quantitative content analysis of 1,035 tweets about the movie and the NLF concussion issue was done immediately before and after the movie’s release. Findings revealed some initial evidence that publics can develop a stance. In particular, most of the publics favored the movie and assumed a hostile stance toward the NFL. Only the health community revealed a stance suitable for cooperating with the NFL on the issue.

KEYWORDS

crisis communication, contingency theory of conflict management, public relations, sports communication

Cite this paper

Journal of US-China Public Administration, March 2016, Vol. 13, No. 3, 181-188

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