Most crisis events generate explosions of data and communications.
Reports from the scene are often sketchy, ambivalent and need to be verified. Rumours emerge and may serve to mislead crisis management activities. The mass media and the public clamour for information. In this hectic information context, small groups of key decision makers need adequate staffing and clear information-processing and monitoring strategy; one that is often absent.
- Deutsch, 1982, p.6
Researchers (Robinson, 2001; Glaesser, 2003; Beirman 2003a) have highlighted the globalisation of media as presenting a challenge for tourism at the same time as the industry benefits from faster and cheaper travel options which make
50 destinations seem closer and the world smaller. Glaesser (p. 26) stated the obvious, that media generate awareness and exert influence on public debate, but claimed that negative events have an increased communication probability and a quicker dissemination process because they deviate from daily routine. Such is news. The globalisation of communication services gives these events a potentially unlimited audience and once they occur, they are difficult to hide. Robinson (2001, p. 941) noted that the proliferation of portable satellite dishes and electronic news-gathering equipment appeared to increase the immediacy of ―distant events‖, reducing the scope for calm deliberation and forcing a response to issues under pressure from journalists. International news reporting thus delivers the world‘s disasters to our TV living rooms, mobile phones, office desktop computers, netbooks and public screens, a reach the tourism industry now has to match when crisis strikes.
Writing extensively on this aspect of media, Beirman (2003a, pp. 12-13) noted that the globalised media‘s enhanced ability to report events as they occurred – as opposed to a lesser capability to do so before the advent of satellite transmission and digital media – posed a mixture of benefits and problems for tourism authorities. Beirman posited that media relations was one of the most critical elements of crisis management and ―supervision‖ of the media‘s coverage of both the crisis and its management was a core issue for tourism authorities and tour operators. In this context, Beirman said the role of effective public relations management was critical to ensure that recovery and restoration efforts were reported at all, let alone in proportion to coverage of the actual crisis. He noted
51 media relations extended beyond developing a network of contacts with local media and usually required the development of global contacts.
According to Beirman, failure to prepare for a crisis scenario placed a tourist authority on the defensive when responding to reporters‘ questions at media conferences. He counselled players to exercise maximum control during interviews and to initiate the agenda of the media‘s coverage of a crisis. He advised (p. 21) that by muting the response to a situation, it was possible to limit the attention drawn to it as a crisis. He found that the level of media exposure influenced the distinction between a tourist hazard and a crisis. For instance, terrorist attacks in the Middle East were routinely reported internationally but in Sri Lanka terrorism got little global media coverage unless occurring near the capital, Colombo, or directly affecting tourists. The global media thrived on the 9/11 and foot and mouth disease crises because of the open information culture of the host societies, he argued, claiming questionably that an incident of the scale of 9/11 would not have attracted extensive coverage had it occurred in any large city elsewhere in the world. He warned that magnification of a problem was the oldest trick in the news media's book, especially if the publication or program was heavily sales driven. He observed (p.25) it was a natural emotional inclination of destination authorities to treat the media as adversaries but it was essential to be as honest and open with them as circumstances permitted. However in circumstances where national or tourist security might be compromised, it was appropriate to be selective about what was revealed to the media. Conversely, Luhrman (2004) proposed an ―honest and transparent approach…in order to maintain credibility‖.
52 Tarlow (2002) warned the new climate of violence that followed the terrorist attacks in New York warranted the tourism industry and travel professionals to develop a code for dealing with the media, saying the lack of a policy, particularly in the case of emergencies such as 9/11, could prove ―fatal‖. He cited a list of basic principles and methods to follow to develop an honest and trusting relationship with the media. Faulkner (2001, p. 145) incorporated media and monitoring activities into his disaster management framework, noting it was essential that a media communication strategy with a centralised source be established early to stop the release of misleading and contradictory information and to co-ordinate responses. He acknowledged the central role of media in tourism disaster situations to provide public information during an emergency, and in the recovery stage to provide information to broader industry and community stakeholders about restoration of services.
In summary, this section has explored the ramifications within tourism of the global media environment. The popular categories of news reporting are identified and the nuances of what is reported and why are assessed. The inter-dependence of tourism and media, their operating environments and interaction during crisis have been demonstrated revealing the importance to the tourism industry of developing an honest, trusting relationship with the media alongside a dedicated media management strategy to be implemented in times of crisis. In the next section we look at chaos theory and its relevance to general crisis management as a prelude to introducing disaster management models specific to tourism.
53 2.8. Chaos Theory
Every little thing counts in a crisis.
- Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964)
In its scientific context, the word chaos has a different meaning than it does in its general usage as a state of confusion, lacking any order. Chaos, with reference to Chaos Theory, refers to nonlinear complex systems, the behaviour of which exhibit an apparent lack of order. It is thus not a descriptor but rather a characterisation of unpredictable, albeit evolving, behaviour that leads to a new state of order (TechTarget, 2007).
It is not difficult to see that complexity in the shape of dynamic irregularity characterises many real-world situations. Chaos-based ideas have been influential in the social sciences realm for some time, with models for business cycles, voting and financial markets all demonstrating the potential for chaos and raising the possibility that well-understood theoretical models may contain a hidden rich, dynamic structure (LeBaron, 1998). It has been observed that ―based on theoretical principles of chaos theory, customary social science goals of ‗prediction‘ and
‗control‘ of systems‘ behaviour are sometimes, if not usually,unobtainable‖
(Gregersen and Sailer, 1993, p. 177). As a complex system, Chaos Theory lends itself well to understanding crises which exhibit complex and nonlinear behaviour (Sellnow et al., 2002). Butz (1997) characterised crisis events as being not predictable, subject to small variances and with the chance of a multitude of outcomes. Thietart and Forgues (1997) suggest that crises, as systems of
inter-54 organisational relations, are chaotic situations, created by the numerous transactions between actors as they attempt to find a satisfactory ―outcome‖.
Applied to social situations such as crisis management and intervention, the theory takes on an evolutionary aspect, seeing systems as dynamic and changing, with new systems emerging out of crisis (Butz, 1997). Postrel (1998, p. xv) noted the
―emergent complex messiness‖ that characterised chaotic situations would evolve in a self-organising manner even if patterns could not be identified or pre-planning could not be applied to solve the crisis. The principles of Chaos Theory encourage a view of the world as an elaborate system of flux and change (Kiel, 1994). What the actors in a crisis may perceive as unpredictable and spontaneous events in fact result from the interplay of numerous uncoordinated independent factors that form an ever-shifting pattern, which can actually help them to make sense of the crisis (James, 2007). While the evolution of a system cannot be fully predicted due to the possibility of one of an infinite number of variables acting upon the system, the overall system behaviour can be predicted in that the system will continue to evolve past the point of disturbance (Ibid). This is illustrated by the periods of renewal that follow times of crisis.
Murphy (1996) supports the relevance of Chaos Theory as a good model for crisis situations as, typically, a crisis forms as a series of events that seem, over time, to gather volume and complexity with increasing speed. The crisis‘s dynamic resembles, therefore, that of a chaotic system as it iterates through increasingly complex phases towards a disordered state. At the onset of a crisis an organisation
55 may have the power to influence the situation, but after a certain point it often loses this capacity. The multiplication of voices and solutions follows a dynamic similar to a chaotic system where, during the initial few phases, some order remains, but subsequently complexity overruns the system and it passes beyond control. At that point, Chaos Theory suggests that an organisation cannot manage an outcome but must allow events to sort it themselves out while trying to fit into the emerging aftermath.
In their examination of turbulence in tourism systems, Faulkner and Russell (2001, p. 332) looked at the role of disasters, crises and entrepreneurial activity as three types of events that tended to inflict turbulence. They proposed that these events exhibited characteristics that aligned with concepts of a chaos perspective as opposed to the steady state characteristics of order and equilibrium. Events were deemed to exhibit sensitive dependence on initial conditions as well as concepts of
―edge of chaos‖ and ―phase shift‖. Edge of chaos is where a system is in a state of tenuous equilibrium and phase shift is the movement from stasis to change that occurs in response to significant events such as crises and disasters.
They noted both the feasibility of a single event to precipitate major change across a system, as well as the accompanying evolutionary change leading to a new, more complex order. In light of these findings, it was suggested that the predisposition to research tourism in the context of stable systems provided an incomplete picture of turbulent phases in tourism development (C. M. Hall, 1995a; Laws et al., 1998) and that understanding tourism systems from a chaos perspective may enable
56 change to be better anticipated and managed. The following discussion outlines how the main components of chaos theory can be applied to the analysis of crises.
Edward Lorenz, credited as being the first experimenter in the area of chaos in the early 1960s, described the phenomenon whereby small changes in a recursive system can drastically change the results of running that system (Gleick, 1998). As a result of this sensitivity, the behaviour of chaotic systems appears to be random because of an exponential growth of errors in the initial conditions. Very simple, or small, systems and events can influence very complex behaviours or events.
This is known as sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Lorenz‘s butterfly effect vividly illustrates this essential idea of Chaos Theory (see Figure 3 below).
He drew on the example of a single flap of a butterfly‘s wings in Brazil as being enough to set off a tornado in Texas by way of disruption to the atmosphere system (TechTarget, 2007). The example of such a small condition as a flapping butterfly being responsible for creating such a large and distant outcome as a tornado in Texas illustrated the impossibility of making predictions for complex systems. Despite the fact that system behaviour is influenced by underlying conditions, precisely what those conditions are can never be sufficiently articulated to allow long-range predictions.
57 Figure 3: The Lorenz Attractor, resembling an owl’s mask or butterfly’s wings, revealed the fine structure hidden within a disorderly stream of data. Traditionally the changing values of any one variable could be displayed in a so-called time series, top left, but to show the changing relationships among three variables required a different technique. At any instant in time, the variables fix the location of a point in three-dimensional space; as the system changes, the motion of the point represents the continuously changing variables. Because the system never exactly repeats itself, the trajectory never intersects itself (Gleick, 1998, p.28).
It is not too difficult to recognise that a small, insignificant factor can trigger a crisis. Conversely, it is at times difficult to identify one single cause of a crisis.
What often exists is the interweaving of a number of factors and/or variables, any one of which has the potential to alter the course of events. There are many examples of crises that were propagated by this sensitive dependence on initial conditions whereby the slightest change in initial conditions might have resulted in drastically different outcomes. It is therefore deemed impossible to exactly predict the state of a system; however it is generally quite possible to model the overall behaviour of a system. Herein lies another key characteristic of chaos, that of unpredictability. Specifically, long-term projections become problematic because
58 of the multiple variables that may act upon a system as it evolves, yet short term predictions based on anticipation of system behaviour are possible. Further, it also becomes apparent a system could never return precisely to its original state, but instead a new form of order is formed out of chaos.
Moving through a crisis, there are an infinite number of possible decisions, actions or events that could alter long-term outcomes, as well as a myriad of variables subsequent to, and possibly unrelated to, the crisis that may serve to alter the trajectory of a system. While some level of preparation can be accomplished by anticipating behaviour or planning for it, the long-term outcome remains unpredictable.
Changes in the qualitative dynamics of the system, or bifurcations, result as the parameters of a system change, thus leading to system evolution (Rich, 1997, p.
28). In considering the implications of Chaos Theory for public relations, Murphy (1996) saw crises themselves as acting as bifurcation points, leading to organisational change. For a crisis itself, bifurcations can be identified as the defining moments, those points in the life of a crisis when events escalate or alter the course of events, bringing about changes to the system, or shifts in phases (Crandall, et al 2009). It is possible that the changes lead to a new arrangement within the system very different from that preceding the moment of change. The nature of this new order cannot be predicted, however recognising that these defining moments exist to be found can be of great benefit to operators enduring crisis.
59 Attractors are defined as points within a nonlinear system around which other system points oscillate (Rich, 1997, p. 28). When the behaviour of a nonlinear system is plotted, patterns exhibited by attractors can be found. The strange attractor is a complicated pattern that emerges when a nonlinear system is in chaos (Crandall, et al, 2009). Within a chaotic system, such attractors do not operate in a linear way or from a fixed point. They move unpredictably but still provide some sense of structure to the system. Such attractors therefore have the capacity to create seemingly contradictory and paradoxical forces and outcomes (Seeger, 2002). Various descriptions have been applied to attractors in the social sciences field with examples including styles of management and an organisation‘s values or culture (Murphy, 1996). They are fundamentally aspects that may serve as a binding point or be instrumental in bringing some form of stability to a situation that is in chaos. Murphy (1996) suggested that major crises marked the loss of an organisation‘s attractor – whether it be management competence, social responsibility or technological skill – and were followed by a period of disorder until a new attractor emerged. She suggested that media coverage after such disasters typically reflected this groping for a new attractor, with conflicting coverage of facts and competing interpretations of the event‘s meaning that eventually settled around a new attractor. By looking at the lifecycle of a crisis, this research will be suggesting that media operations may function as an attractor, a point within the system that provides stability for other system points.
The identification of attractors within complex systems is a useful task and helps to interpret the multiple trajectories of change within the evolving new order. An
60 attractor is comprised of the elements it governs, with the potential to bifurcate into new systems and to mediate the expansion of new systems (Seeger, 2002).
The capacity to identify attractors is affected by the scale of the system but the complexity inherent in chaotic systems makes it impossible to identify patterns of behaviour from an isolated point. Awareness of the phase space, in which all possible states of a system are represented, is needed to discern behavioural patterns as they occur throughout the evolution of the system. Understanding the whole of the system helps to identify and understand the parts, although it must be remembered that chaos is not a single isolated event but rather a system of events (Crandall, et al, 2009).
Crises are complex systems and thus are in need of more sophisticated methods of analysis. Recent attempts have looked at the application of Chaos Theory principles to both crisis and tourism systems (McKercher, 1999). By recognising the potential for industry systems to operate in nonlinear ways, and for a crisis to act as a system exhibiting chaotic behaviour, this opens the door for deeper exploration of the ramifications for industry, such as tourism. Inherent in the analysis of real world systems is that they operate as dynamic disequilibrium systems and that their evolution cannot occur in isolation. Therefore models which interpret systems as closed must only be considered as a basis for understanding, something to be compared to in order to comprehend real world systems (Rich, 1997, p. 32).
61 In many cases, simple, well-understood models have also been shown to exhibit chaotic dynamics (LeBaron, 1998), putting into question the accuracy and reasonableness of original models. LeBaron (1998) observes that theory has left us with many possible roles for chaos in social systems, but none of these has been rigorously demonstrated to offer a good picture of how they may enhance understanding of system behaviour. In the very least, Chaos Theory offers practical perspectives that are useful in managing crises: little things matter; long term predictions are not feasible; key turning points and opportunities can be identified and capitalised upon; hidden patterns exist; and, ultimately the process can lead to learning, growth and adaptability which all contribute to organisational strength. Chaos research indicates that despite the multiple components of the theatre of crisis during its height of intensity, order exists within the chaos. It will be concluded from the findings of this research that tourism needs to understand this order inherent in the chaos. Only then can it realistically influence the chaotic environment in its favour and better influence the post crisis environment. Gleick (1998, p. 43) notes that students of chaotic dynamics discovered that the disorderly behaviour of simple systems acted as a creative process. It generated complexity:
richly organised patterns, sometimes stable and sometimes unstable, sometimes finite and sometimes infinite, but always with the fascination of living things.
Chaos Theory suggests that chaos ―may be the necessary precursor of a higher level of [system] order‖ (Kiel, 1994, p. 7). The argument that disorder is necessary
Chaos Theory suggests that chaos ―may be the necessary precursor of a higher level of [system] order‖ (Kiel, 1994, p. 7). The argument that disorder is necessary