Crisis Analysis Report

Each student will produce a brief report of approximately three pages that describes a corporate crisis from the past five years. Students will identify a crisis and position themselves as part of the affected corporation's (or other entity’s) PR team in the period immediately following the crisis, depicting it for executives. The document should follow the general format for informal reports outlined in The Essentials. It should contain the following sections:

1. Summary of the crisis (the situation and its causes)
2. Discussion of how specific stakeholder groups (customers, employees, investors, partners, etc.) are being affected
3. Characterization of the media's depiction of the crisis
4. Brief recap of the current situation

You may use AI search tools to help research your report, but sections 1–3 must reference specific sources (newspaper and periodical articles, television reports, YouTube videos, blog/Medium/Substack posts, Facebook groups/pages, X [formerly Twitter] trends, etc.) to provide evidence for the document's claims. Sources should be referenced in the text by identifying their authors, titles, and publications; a separate bibliography should not be included.

Effective Crisis Analysis Reports will portray the situation succinctly in a comprehensible, professional format suitable for a corporate management readership (including appropriate grammar and mechanics).

These commented student drafts may be useful examples:

• 2016 City of Fairfax mayor arrest Download 2016 City of Fairfax mayor arrest
• 2018 Southwest Airlines accident Download 2018 Southwest Airlines accident
• 2017 United passenger removal Download 2017 United passenger removal
• 2021 Colonial Pipeline hack Download 2021 Colonial Pipeline hack

Student will upload their Crisis Analysis Reports here as an electronic file in a common format (.doc, .docx, .pdf, .rtf, .pages).