Cover not available
Part of
Crisis and the Media: Narratives of crisis across cultural settings and media genres
Edited by Marianna Patrona
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 76] 2018
► pp. 33–56

Chapter 2
Reconceptualizing crisis

‘Doing crisis’ as a (recontextualized) social practice

As a major socially significant phenomenon, crisis has been variously understood as an event, a moment of history, a turning point, a problem, a set of challenges, a paradox and so on. Drawing on third-generation practice theory and a range of case studies, the present study explores the possibility of reconceptualizing crisis as a social practice, i.e. as ‘doing crisis’. In addition, it considers whether a social practice approach can inform the analysis of crisis-related media practices and discourses. It is argued that a crisis-as-practice perspective is possible and also directly relevant to media discourse analysis, and that it can offer new and fresh insights.
Keywords: crisis, social practice, media discourse, recontextualization, sociomateriality
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Social practices
  • Crisis as a social practice
    • Crisis practice
    • Elements of crisis practice
      • Materials
      • Competences
      • Meanings
  • Crisis-as-practice, the media and media discourse
    • Crisis-as-practice and the media
      • Integration
      • Monitoring
      • Connections across practices
    • Crisis-as-practice and media discourse
      • Media discourse as a source of information
      • Media discourse as recontextualization
  • Concluding remarks
  • References
Published online: 22 February 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.76.03der
References (66)
References
Alonso Belmonte, Isabel, Daniel Chornet, and Anne McCabe. 2013. “Benefit or burden? Press representation of immigrant workers during the Spanish economic recession”. In Discourse and Crisis: Critical Perspectives, ed. by Antoon De Rycker and Zuraidah Mohd Don, 363–393. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Angouri, Jo, and Ruth Wodak. 2014. “They became big in the shadow of the crisis: The Greek success story and the rise of the far right.” Discourse & Society 25 (4): 540–565. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bickes, Hans, Tina Otten, and Laura Chelsea Weymann. 2014. “The financial crisis in the German and English press: Metaphorical structures in the media coverage on Greece, Spain and Italy.” Discourse & Society 25 (4): 424–445. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. (1980) 1990. The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
. 1986. “The forms of capital.” In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, ed. by John Richardson, 241–258. New York: Greenwood.Google Scholar
. 2005. “The political field, the social science field and the journalistic field.” In Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field, ed. by Rodney Benson and Erik Neveu, 29–47. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Brassett, James, and Chris Clarke. 2012. “Performing the sub-prime crisis: Trauma and the financial event.” International Political Sociology 6 (1): 4–20. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brunsma, David, David Overfelt, and J. Steven Picou. 2010. The Sociology of Katrina: Perspectives on a Modern Catastrophe. 2nd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Carlile, Paul, Davide Nicolini, Ann Langley, and Haridimos Tsoukas (eds). 2013. How Matter Matters: Objects, Artifacts and Materiality in Organization Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Case, Peter, Louisa Evans, Michael Fabinyi, Philippa Cohen, Christina Hicks, Murray Prideaux, and David Mills. 2015. “Rethinking environmental leadership: The social construction of leaders and leadership in discourses of ecological crisis, development, and conservation.” Leadership 11 (4): 396–423. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chalozin-Dovrat, Lin. 2013. “‘Crisis’ in modernity: A sign of the times between decisive change and potential irreversibility .” In Discourse and Crisis: Critical Perspectives, ed. by Antoon De Rycker and Zuraidah Mohd Don, 67–97. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chishti, Muzaffar, and Faye Hipsman. 2015. “The child and family migration surge of summer 2014: A short-lived crisis with a lasting impact.” Journal of International Affairs 68 (2): 95–114.Google Scholar
Chouliaraki, Lilie. 2017. “Symbolic bordering: The self-representation of migrants and refugees in digital news.” Popular Communication 15 (2): 78–94. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Corvellec, Hervé. 2009. “The practice of risk management: Silence is not absence.” Risk Management 11 (3/4): 285–304. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cottle, Simon. 2009. Global Crisis Reporting: Journalism in The Global Age. Maidenhead, Berkshire, UK: Open University Press/McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
De Rycker, Antoon, and Zuraidah Modh Don. 2013a. “Discourse in crisis, crisis in discourse.” In Discourse and Crisis: Critical Perspectives, ed. by Antoon De Rycker and Zuraidah Mohd Don, 3–65. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(eds). 2013b. Discourse and Crisis: Critical Perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fairclough, Norman. 2005. “Critical discourse analysis in transdisciplinary research.” In A New Agenda in (Critical) Discourse Analysis, ed. by Ruth Wodak and Paul Chilton, 53–70. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. (1995) 2010. Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. 2nd ed. Harlow, UK: Pearson.Google Scholar
Georgakopoulou, Alexandra. 2014. “Small stories transposition and social media: A micro-perspective on the ‘Greek crisis’.” Discourse & Society 25 (4): 540–565. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Giddens, Anthony. 1979. Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradictions in Social Analysis. London: Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Gherardi, Silvia. 2012. How to Conduct a Practice-Based Study: Problems and Methods. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hay, Colin. 1996. Narrating crisis: The discursive construction of the ‘Winter of Discontent’. Sociology 30 (2): 253–277. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Holton, Robert. 1987. “The idea of crisis in modern society.” The British Journal of Sociology 38 (4): 502–520. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jangdal, Lottie, Lars Nord, and Eva-Karin Olsson. 2015. Crisis reporting in the digital age: A study of Swedish news editors’ perceptions. Paper presented at the NordMedia conference, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, August 2015.
Jjuuko, Margaret, and Jeanne Prinsloo. 2014. “The representation of the environmental crises on Lake Victoria in Uganda’s media: A critical analysis of the Victoria Voice radio documentaries.” Journal of African Media Studies 6 (2): 213–229. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jones, Erik. 2009. ‘They have no idea …’: Decision-making and policy change in the global financial crisis. LSE ‘Europe in Question’ Discussion Paper No. 4.Google Scholar
Jones, Matthew. 2013. “Untangling sociomateriality.” In How Matter Matters: Objects, Artifacts and Materiality in Organization Studies, ed. by Paul Carlile, Davide Nicolini, Ann Langley, and Haridimos Tsoukas 197–226. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kitis, E. Dimitris. 2013. “The 2008 urban riots in Greece: Differential representations of a police shooting incident.” In Discourse and Crisis: Critical Perspectives, ed. by Antoon De Rycker and Zuraidah Mohd Don, 323–362. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kleinnijenhuis, Jan, Friederike Schultz, and Dirk Oegema. 2015. “Frame complexity and the financial crisis: A comparison of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany in the period 2007–2012.” Journal of Communication 65 (1): 1–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Koselleck, Reinhart. (1982) 2006. Crisis, trans. Michaela Richter. Journal of the History of Ideas 67 (2): 357–400. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Liu, Helena. 2015. “Constructing the GFC: Australian banking leaders during the financial ‘crisis’.” Leadership 11 (4): 424–450. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lynch, Michael. 2001. “Ethnomethodology and the logic of practice.” In The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory, ed. by Theodore Schatzki, Karin Knorr Cetina, and Eike von Savigny, 131–148. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Milonas, Yiannis. 2014. “Crisis, austerity and opposition in mainstream media discourses of Greece.” Critical Discourse Studies 11 (3): 305–321. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Olsson, Eva-Karin. 2010. “Defining crisis news events: How news organization managers drew upon history when handling the terror attacks September 11.” Nordicom Review 31 (1): 87–102. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Olsson, Eva-Karin, and Lars Nord. 2014. “Paving the way for crisis exploitation: The role of journalistic styles and standards.” Journalism 16 (3): 341–358. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Olsson, Eva-Karin, Lars Nord, and Jesper Falkheimer. 2015. “Media coverage crisis exploitation characteristics: A case comparison study.” Journal of Public Relations Research 27 (2): 158–174. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Orlikowski, Wanda, and Susan Scott. 2008. “Sociomateriality: Challenging the separation of technology, work and organization.” Academy of Management Annals 2 (1): 433–474. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pink, Sarah. 2012. Situating Everyday Life: Practices and Places. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Porter, Amanda. 2012. “Emergent organization and responsive technologies in crisis: Creating connections or enabling divides?” Management Communication Quarterly 27 (1): 6–33. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Postill, John. 2010. “Introduction: Theorising media and practice.” In Theorising Media and Practice, ed. by Birgit Bräuchler and John Postill, 1–32. Oxford/New York: Berghahn.Google Scholar
Pred, Allan. 1981. “Social reproduction and the time-geography of everyday life.” Geografiska Annaler, Series B: Human Geography 63 (1): 5–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Reckwitz, Andreas. 2002. “Toward a theory of social practices.” European Journal of Social Theory 5 (2): 243–263. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Robson, Colin. 2002. Real World Research. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Roitman, Janet. 2014. Anti-Crisis. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Røpke, Inge. 2009. “Theories of practice: New inspiration for ecological economic studies on consumption.” Ecological Economics 68 (10): 2490–2497. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ryghaug, Marianne, and Marit Toftaker. 2014. “A transformative practice? Meaning, competence, and material aspects of driving electric cars in Norway.” Nature and Culture 9 (2): 146–163. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Samman, Amin. 2015. “Crisis theory and the historical imagination.” Review of International Political Economy 22 (5): 966–995. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schatzki, Theodore. 1996. Social Practices: A Wittgensteinian Approach to Human Activity and the Social. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2001a. “Introduction: Practice theory.” In The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory, ed. by Theodore Schatzki, Karin Knorr Cetina, and Eike von Savigny, 1–14. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 2001b. “Practice mind-ed orders.” In The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory, ed. by Theodore Schatzki, Karin Knorr Cetina, and Eike von Savigny, 42–55. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 2002. The Site of the Social: A Philosophical Exploration of the Constitution of Social Life and Change. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
. 2010. The Timespace of Human Activity: On Performance, Society, and History as Indeterminate Teleological Events. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Schatzki, Theodore, Karin Knorr Cetina, and Eike von Savigny (eds). 2001. The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Searle, John. 1995. The Construction of Social Reality. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Shove, Elizabeth, Mika Pantzar, and Matt Watson. 2012. The Dynamics of Social Practice: Everyday Life and How It Changes. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stones, Rob. 2005. Structuration Theory. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Triandafyllidou, Anna, Ruth Wodak, and Michał Krzyżanowski (eds). 2009. The European Public Sphere and the Media: Europe in Crisis. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Leeuwen, Theo. 2008. Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wacquant, Loïc. 1989. “Toward a reflexive sociology: A workshop with Pierre Bourdieu.” Sociological Theory 7 (1): 26–63. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wagner-Egger, Pascal, Adrian Bangerter, Ingrid Gilles, Eva Green, David Rigaud, Franciska Krings, Christian Staerklé, and Alain Clémence. 2011. “Lay perceptions of collectives at the outbreak of the H1N1 epidemic: Heroes, villains and victims.” Public Understanding of Science 20(4): 461–476. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wodak, Ruth. 2009. The Discourse of Politics in Action: Politics as Usual. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zelizer, Barbie. 2015. “Terms of choice: Uncertainty, journalism, and crisis.” Journal of Communication 65 (5): 888–908. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Žižek, Slavoj. 2010. “A permanent economic emergency.” New left review 64 (July/August): 85–95.Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Marsili, Andrea & Anya Shchetvina
2022. Laugh in Case of Emergency: Framing the Pandemic Through Memes in Italy and Russia. Baltic Screen Media Review 10:1 ► pp. 52 ff. DOI logo
Martínez García, Ana Belén
2021. Memories of War and the COVID-19 Crisis in Spain. Human Arenas 4:3 ► pp. 366 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.