Reputation management during a public health crisis: Overcompensating when all else fails

Abstract

AbstractAlthough reactions to reputational threats have been studied before, there is still an opportunity to understand the dynamics of reputation management facing a crisis. This study seeks to understand how the legal‐procedural, moral, performative, and technical dimensions of reputation change during the management of an extended crisis in a public health organization. We explore the communication of the Mexican Health Secretariat by analyzing its press conferences and releases before and during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Building on the situational crisis communication theory and considering public interest, we conducted two exploratory examinations based on text‐as‐data methods to capture reputation‐related language. Our analysis suggests that factors influencing reputational threat, such as crisis severity, legitimacy, leaders' individual reputation, and coalition support, may be important for choosing between strategies. We argue that the Secretariat radically changed its reputation management strategy during the pandemic—they first stressed the technical and, as damage rose, the performative dimensions.