Narratives of Crisis

THE MARCH II, 2012, Fukushima Daiichi crisis was a catastrophic failure of complex, high-risk technology following the magnitude 9.0 Great East Japan Earthquake. This crisis was so profoundly disruptive that Japanese officials and members of TEPCO, the Daiichi nuclear power plant owners, were deeply confused and unclear about how to respond and what to tell the public. The Japanese Nuclear Regulatory Authority originally classified the event leak as a level 1 or "anomalous" event according to the International Nuclear Event Scale. In response to international pressure, the regulatory authority revised the classification to a level 3: "serious radiation incident." The technical and engineering response might best be described as trial and error as technicians and emergency managers sought solutions for containing the damage. The communication response was also confused, resulting in incomplete and inaccurate information, which ultimately undermined public trust and compounded the harm. Even months after the initial accident was under control, TEPCO continued to minimize the risk and deny that radioactive water was leaking from the damaged facility into the Pacific Ocean. Fish caught hundreds of miles from the facility show high levels of contamination, but little information has been available about the potential risk to human health.

Within this context of high uncertainty, an ongoing crisis that is rapidly changing, and official channels that are limiting their response, media, watchdog groups, and members of the community began filling the informational void. The story was also closely followed by international media organizations. The leak has the potential to affect Japan's neighbors and international events, including the 2020 Olympics. Environmental groups such as EcoWatch and Greenpeace have also participated in the Fukushima narrative, calling for action and warning of widespread environmental harm. In addition, the disaster led to the development of event-specific groups such as Fukushimaresponse.org and fukushima-diary.com. These and many other groups have added to the larger Fukushima story and offer competing stories. These narratives of what is probably the worst nuclear accident in history are complex and dramatic.

Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans, Louisiana, on August 27, 2005. Initially the community appeared to have managed the storm's impact, using well-established technologies and approaches such as levees, pumps, evacuations from low-lying areas, and family emergency kits. As the storm progressed, however, several key levees failed, resulting in catastrophic flooding of more than 80 percent of the city. The devastation was so widespread that it overwhelmed response capacity, which was further crippled by bureaucratic and governmental infighting and general lack of preparedness. In the end, Katrina was the most expensive disaster in U.S. history, costing over $108 billion and resulting in more than seven hundred deaths. The storm has become a powerful symbol of lack of preparedness, the disproportional impact of crises on poor and minority communities, and broader beliefs about government's role in disaster response. Hurricane Katrina was also a significant event for larger social, political, and economic issues in the United States. It brought up issues of race and class, and failures with the subsequent response undermined the administration of President George W. Bush. The widespread destruction in a major American city shocked the nation.

Communication allows feedback and adjustment, and during a crisis, these adjustments can help refine a response or correct mistakes. The media-produced feedback of the Hurricane Katrina response is an example of this. Media, serving their traditional watchdog function, identified deficiencies in the government response through posts on blogs and other electronic media, prompting government correction. Despite being forced to abandon their offices due to flooding, many journalists, photographers, and editors of the New Orleans–based Times Picayune remained in the surrounding area to report on the aftermath of Katrina. With their presses inoperable, they published online editions until temporary offsite presses could be set up.

Journalists at the Mississippi Sun Herald also used electronic media to provide coverage of Hurricane Katrina before, during, and after by posting updates and stories on the blog Eye of the Storm. In addition to providing essential information regarding Katrina's progress and subsequent instructions for citizens, they attempted to confirm or dispel various rumors and unconfirmed reports that began circulating as a result of the mass confusion and communication breakdown. One of the more interesting functions that blogs served during and after the storm was relating personal stories of not just the journalists who remained to cover the storm but also of emergency responders and regular citizens coping with the trials that Katrina brought.

While the ability to provide these journalistic functions in a nontraditional format during a crisis is interesting in itself, blogs provide a unique opportunity for rebuilding connections and empowering crisis participants. For a blog dedicated to a crisis, such as Eye of the Storm, posts range from real-time information and updates to personal accounts of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances and even observations about the quality of the response. These posts then become communication hubs for further information and elaboration related to the topic. Readers who are also experiencing the crisis can add their individual experiences, thus creating a rich narrative accounts of the situation from a variety of perspectives. For those not directly experiencing the crisis, these posts provide opportunities to connect and empathize with individuals and communities they have no prior exposure to.

The luxury ocean liner RMS Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, after colliding with an iceberg in the North Atlantic. The ship, on its maiden voyage from Southampton in the United Kingdom to New York City, was carrying many of the nation's powerful and elite, including John Jacob Astor and Benjamin Guggenheim. More than 1,500 of the 2,224 passengers and crew died. The disaster shocked the world in terms of the scale of the loss and the fact that the most technologically advanced vessel of its time could suffer such a catastrophic failure. The Titanic has taken on almost mythic proportions in popular culture and has been the subject of numerous motion pictures and several museum exhibitions. The 1997 film Titanic is one of the highest-grossing film ever, at over $2 billion. The hundredth anniversary of the sinking in 2012 spawned several events, including the concert performance of The Titanic Requiem, candlelight vigils, and interfaith memorial services. The touring exhibition Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition featured more than three hundred objects recovered from the disaster site. The RMS Titanic has become a broad cultural symbol of risk, tragedy, loss, and arrogance.

Like many other disasters, the Titanic tragedy promoted official inquiries in both Great Britain and the United States. The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee conducted an extensive inquiry that included eighteen days of testimony from more than eighty witnesses. The committee concluded that design, operation, and regulatory failures were compounded by failures in response, including the iceberg warnings, the ship's speed, distress calls, and the evacuation as the ship sank. The committee also specifically noted a lack of preparation for a potential disaster and, most important, inadequate numbers of lifeboats and life preservers. The investigations initiated the creation of the 1914 International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea. The provisions recognized the power of the Titanic tragedy and the need for action:

The High Contracting Parties undertake to give effect to the provisions of this Convention, for the purpose of securing safety of life at sea, to promulgate all regulations and to take all steps which may be necessary to give the Convention full and complete effect. Having recognized the desirability of determining by common agreement certain uniform rules with respect to the safety of life at sea, have decided to conclude a Convention to that end, and have appointed as their plenipotentiaries who, having been duly authorized to that effect, have drawn up by common consent the following Convention. (Safety of Life at Sea, 1914)

The longevity and popularity of the RMS Titanic story may be attributed to a number of factors. The story appeals to many larger themes of culture, class, and hubris. Passengers were segregated according to economic class: the wealthy in first class, professionals and middle-class passengers in second class, and primarily poor immigrants in steerage. Thus, the disaster struck all classes of society and created a kind of social equality of tragedy and loss. The disaster's theme of hubris is reflected in the failures of the industry and ship operators to invest in appropriate safety equipment. The safety of the passengers was compromised in favor of economic considerations. At the same time, some crew members and passengers gave up their seats in lifeboats to women and children and thus became heroes of the Titanic story. The Men's Titanic Society, a group of television producers and directors, meets annually on the anniversary of the sinking at the Washington, DC, memorial, where they offer toasts to the men who gave up their seats in the lifeboats to women and children.

These and many other examples illustrate the power of large-scale crises and disasters to shape our culture, beliefs, lives, and institutions. Disasters and the stories told about them carry meaning, encode lessons, and frame larger public and societal understanding of risks, warnings, and potential harm. In some cases, crises take on mythic status and are commemorated in public ceremonies and memorials as ways of reifying specific meaning and lessons.

Disasters create significant confusion. Often leaders, members of the public, and those experiencing a crisis are unable to make sense of what is happening. This paralysis often compounds the damage. The loss of individual sense-making capacity following a crisis has been described as a cosmology episode by Karl Weick (1993). Cosmology episodes occur when "people suddenly and deeply feel that the universe is no longer a rational, orderly system." In normal circumstances, "people ... act as if events cohere in time and space and that change unfolds in an orderly manner. These orderly cosmologies are subject to disruption. And when they are severely disrupted, I call this a cosmology episode" (Weick 1985, pp. 51–52). Moreover, "What makes such an episode so shattering is that both the sense of what is occurring and the means to rebuild it collapse together. Stated more informally, a cosmology episode feels like vu jàdé — the opposite of déjà vu: I've never been here before, I have no idea where I am, and I have no idea who can help me." Many crises create profound confusion and disorganization for those experiencing the event firsthand as normal conditions are radically and rapidly disrupted. The fundamental sense of personal meaning may be lost as a person's life story takes a sudden and unexpected turn.

Sorting out the long network of intersecting factors, decisions, variables, and mistakes that cause a crisis like the Fukushima Daiichi accident or the Titanic tragedy is often a slow, tedious, and inevitably incomplete process. A crisis is always the consequence of multiple factors and decisions interacting in complex ways, often without being fully observed or understood. Katrina may be explained by decades of development and environmental policies. The Fukushima Daiichi disaster can be attributed to engineering practices, growing energy demands, and social norms that dissuade questioning of authority. During the postcrisis stage, various stakeholders advocate for specific explanations and may seek to shift blame and responsibility in strategic ways to restore or defend their image (Benoit, 1995). Various explanations and accounts of crises can lead to very different structures of liability, understandings of risk, and policy decisions. Moreover, crises often disrupt, overwhelm, and, in some cases, destroy established channels of communication, including television, print, and community-based networks. This strains communication capacities at the very time when more capacity and information are needed to tell the story. Natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods often disrupt local media as well as cell phone and Internet capacity. This reduced capacity may further impede the ability of crisis participants to tell the story of the crisis and make sense of what happened. This information vacuum can create particularly fertile conditions for the development of rumors. Stories of rapes and murders at the New Orleans Superdome were widely reported in the media but later were found to be incorrect.

Often this extreme disruption, loss, and general confusion result in a loss of ability to make sense of the events, contextualize them, and then create and connect with larger systems of meaning. The sudden loss of highly valued processes, possessions, and relationships often creates existential questions not easily answered. These losses may continue to affect individuals and communities for years. Seeing one's entire home consumed in a fire, facing the cleanup from floodwaters contaminated with chemicals and sewage, or losing family members and friends in a disaster can create deep psychological and social harm. The economic impact can be quite extreme as well, with businesses destroyed, supply chains disrupted, and employees lost. These losses often leave individuals and communities struggling not just to recover but, more fundamentally, to make sense of what has happened. This meaning deficit may be manifest in psychological problems, social struggles, and larger disruption of communities and institutions.

Crises can create the need, perceived or real, for significant social, economic, and political change. In fact, crises are arguably the most powerful force in social change contributing to ongoing systemic adaption and evolution. The events of 9/11 precipitated a wholesale rethinking of security norms and procedures, resulting in the most extensive overhaul of U.S. federal bureaucracy in decades through the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Hurricane Katrina called into question fundamental assumptions about development, the environment, and social equality. Katrina also helped change basic assumptions and approaches to disaster response and a movement from centralized to decentralized "whole community" frameworks.

One of the most important features of crises and disasters is the increasing frequency and expanding impact of these events. According to normal accident theory, crises are often systemic failures involving complex interactive subsystems that are tightly coupled such that failures are compounded. Failures may become cascading events, with each step compounding the harm. Charles Perrow, the theory's founder, also argued that such failures may be programmed into many large, technologically intensive systems such that complexity and tight coupling are dominant characteristics of these systems (Perrow, 1984). Many modern high-risk systems such as transportation, energy, and food are characterized by both complexity and tight coupling. Moreover, aging infrastructure; growing, aging, and mobile populations; greater centralization and technological dependence; more reliance on high-risk technologies; and environmental changes, including climate change, all contribute to a greater probability of crises creating more harm for more people.

Few social phenomena are as complex, multifaceted, and dynamic and carry as much potential impact as large-scale crises and disasters. These events bring together psychological, social, economic, political, technological, and environmental factors within the context of high uncertainty, high risk, and severe harm. The subsequent tapestry of stories, accounts, and explanations of these events is a narrative process necessary to make sense and determine actions. All crises generate these narratives, and within them are patterns and relationships that can help explain their larger impact.