Communication Ethics and Crisis: Negotiating Differences in Public and Private Spheres [Paperback]

This collection of essays extends the conversation on communication ethics and crisis communication to offer practical wisdom for meeting the challenges of a complex and ever-changing world. In multiple contexts ranging from the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and family to the political and public, moments of crisis call us to respond from within particular standpoints that shape our understanding and our response to crisis as we grapple with contested notions of the good in our shared life together. With no agreed-upon set of absolutes to guide us, this moment calls us to learn from difference as we seek resources to continue the human conversation as we engage the unexpected. This collection of essays invites multiple epistemological and methodological standpoints to consider alternative ways of thinking about communication ethics and crisis.

S. Alyssa Groom is assistant professor of communication & rhetorical Studies at Duquesne University.

Janie M. Harden Fritz is associate professor of communication & rhetorical studies at Duquesne University.

In this unified collection, Groom and Fritz (both, Duquesne Univ.) feature prominent and rising American ethics scholars. In three distinct sections, these essays establish that crisis reactions can be understood through the presentation of a narrative; investigate the idea of a productive distance between a crisis and the responder, despite the impossibility of mastering the crisis; and distinguish the differences between public and private contexts. The editors assert that a banal view of crisis has developed due to its increased permeation of public and private spheres. Celeste Grayson Seymour confirms this position in her essay, 'Understanding Anxiety: The Crisis of Ethical Choice'; she explains that this universal human crisis is due to the restless state of existence. In 'The Crisis Fallacy: Egoism, Epistemology, and Ethics in Crisis Communication and Preparation,' Pat Gehrke (Univ. of South CarolinlS2