While algorithms are busy predicting the next bull market and diagnosing your heart in real-time, crisis communication still fumbles in the dark — reactive, not proactive and increasingly outdated. Why be content to remain bystanders in our own narrative, letting crisis define us, rather than seizing innovative technologies that could redefine the future of strategic messaging?
Picture a stockbroker on Wall Street, epitomizing urgency in action. For them, algorithms sift through chaotic market ebbs and flows to precisely dictate the next best move. Then there’s Cardisio— an advanced machine learning algorithm distilling over 3.2 million data points in mere minutes, rendering a nuanced heart risk assessment that healthcare practitioners can use to effectively help their patients. Yet, the sphere of crisis communications, enmeshed in public sentiment, real-time news and corporate imperatives, has yet to harness the full capabilities of this groundbreaking technology.
Call it inertia or lack of imagination, the result is a field entrenched in reactivity. Teams scramble post-crisis, crafting messages, framing responses, and mitigating damage always after the storm, never before. We need an algorithm that doesn’t just sense tremors but understands the seismic patterns well enough to give us a fighting chance to stabilize the ground beneath us before it splits open.
The real potential lies in predictive analytics, a facet of machine learning that can forecast potential crises by analyzing previous trends, media cycles, and real-time data. By doing so, predictive analytics can offer an accurate risk assessment on what logically might occur, and devise a proactive strategy, arming communication teams with the data necessary to formulate countermeasures and even prevent a crisis before it happens.
What if, before the ink dries on a salacious headline, an algorithm could have already alerted you, drafted an optimal response, and even sketched out a media strategy? The proposition is no longer science fiction, rather an ethical and operational imperative. No longer confined to the theoretical, the future stares us in the face, questioning our readiness and challenging our adaptability as PR professionals.
The blueprint for this new reality will start at the intersection of crisis management professionals in dialogue with data scientists and machine learning experts, collaborating to fuel an evolving algorithm with a rich diet of past crises, real-time human variables and human intuition. This algorithm anticipates, evolves, and advises— blending crisis communication into an art and science.
Consider the Cardisio¹ example — a health-tech startup out of Europe starting to bridge the diagnostic gap in cardiovascular health. One moment, the human heart can function perfectly; the next, a long built-up condition previously undiagnosed strikes, severely damaging the organ. At the earliest stages, and even if patients display no symptoms, these changes in electrical current are measurable, and the condition can be preemptively treated before it strikes. To screen for early warning signs, Cardisio’s AI algorithm calculates 290 parameters per heartbeat, effectively evaluating metrics like length, width, distance, height, and even angles. Utilizing vectorcardiography, the spatial representation of electromotive forces generated during cardiac activity measured in three planes, the AI can show your heart health in three dimensions, providing physicians with nuanced risk assessments.
Likewise, imagine a machine learning system dedicated to crisis communications: a robust algorithm trained on decades of public relations case studies, media cycles, and real-time public sentiment analysis. The algorithm wouldn’t merely react but anticipate emerging crises by sifting through social media chatter, netnography data, news reports, and even internal corporate data to identify early tremors before a potential crisis. Then, determine the most dangerous crises via a risk factor scale, providing PR professionals with actionable insights.
Now, imagine the landscape with this ultimate decision-making tool in hand: reputations preserved, public trust maintained, and a monumental shift from being eternally reactive to strategically proactive. We live in an era where markets can crash with a single tweet and public opinion can swing like a pendulum at the smallest thread of information. The perils have become existential and ethical implications profound.
While the capacity for anticipatory crisis management promises to revolutionize public relations by bringing ethical dilemmas to the fore, we work in a gray field. The power to preemptively shape narratives also comes with the responsibility to be discerning, avoiding manipulative tactics that veer into propaganda.
So, here we are, equipped with technology that will usher in a new era, personalizing our own narratives with more freedom to make our own choices, but bound by ethical implications just as complex as compelling. The world will never be the same. But we cannot be spectators to the risks or opportunities that lie ahead. It’s become our time to embrace this new change, navigate these ethical challenges and become strategic visionaries. It’s no longer just a choice between reactivity and proactivity; it’s now a choice about the kind of professionals — and even people — we want to be.
1. Disclosure: Burghardt Tenderich is co-founder of Frankfurt, Germany-based Cardisio GmbH which aims to steeply improve heart health by screening non-invasively for coronary artery disease and other dangerous heart conditions.
Burghardt Tenderich, PhD, is a professor of practice at USC Annenberg in Los Angeles, where he teaches and researches about strategic communication, the emerging media environment, media entrepreneurship and brand purpose. Tenderich is associate director of the USC Center for Public Relations, and is co-author with Jerried Williams of the book Transmedia Branding, USC Annenberg Press (2015). He has over 20 years experience in communication and marketing in the information technology and internet industries.
Michael Kittilson is a first-year graduate student at USC Annenberg studying public relations and advertising, Kittilson aspires to help solve the world’s toughest messaging and communication problems. His background spans 5 years in various roles that intersect strategic communications, tech, and policy.