Managing a legitimacy crisis: Airline Sensemaking in the Context of Flight Shame

TY - CHAP

T1 - Managing a legitimacy crisis

T2 - Airline Sensemaking in the Context of Flight Shame

AU - Ravazzani, Silvia

AU - Maier, Carmen Daniela

AU - Pollach, Irene

PY - 2024/1/1

Y1 - 2024/1/1

N2 - This chapter develops a framework suitable for understanding how generative sensemaking and interpretive sense-giving processes get materialized in corporate crisis communications. More specifically, it examines the discursive strategies adopted by airline companies when engaging in processes of crisis sensemaking and sense-giving on social media in the context of the “flight shame” legitimacy crisis. The airline industry and in particular low-fare airlines, in fact, are increasingly stigmatized as a key contributor to global warming due to emissions from airplanes, with environmentally concerned consumers promoting alternative and “greener” means of travelling. After reviewing relevant literature on flight shame and on discursive sensemaking and sense-giving, the chapter presents a systematic and in-depth discourse analysis of social media content posted by the European airline Ryanair in the period 2020–2022. Findings show that, while Ryanair never mentioned explicitly flight shame in their social media discourse, they strived to avert the intensification of this legitimacy crisis by using a series of sensemaking and sense-giving processes aimed at framing a green corporate identity, sustainable activities and their significance, and respectable relationships and connections. While deepening the relevant contemporary phenomenon of flight shame and how affected companies respond with their corporate crisis communications, this chapter also contributes a discourse analysis as a methodological approach, which is an alternative to more common quantitative and qualitative content analyses in crisis communication research, and by applying Gee’s framework to the analysis of corporate social media communication. The chapter also offers implications for both scholarship and practice in this area.

AB - This chapter develops a framework suitable for understanding how generative sensemaking and interpretive sense-giving processes get materialized in corporate crisis communications. More specifically, it examines the discursive strategies adopted by airline companies when engaging in processes of crisis sensemaking and sense-giving on social media in the context of the “flight shame” legitimacy crisis. The airline industry and in particular low-fare airlines, in fact, are increasingly stigmatized as a key contributor to global warming due to emissions from airplanes, with environmentally concerned consumers promoting alternative and “greener” means of travelling. After reviewing relevant literature on flight shame and on discursive sensemaking and sense-giving, the chapter presents a systematic and in-depth discourse analysis of social media content posted by the European airline Ryanair in the period 2020–2022. Findings show that, while Ryanair never mentioned explicitly flight shame in their social media discourse, they strived to avert the intensification of this legitimacy crisis by using a series of sensemaking and sense-giving processes aimed at framing a green corporate identity, sustainable activities and their significance, and respectable relationships and connections. While deepening the relevant contemporary phenomenon of flight shame and how affected companies respond with their corporate crisis communications, this chapter also contributes a discourse analysis as a methodological approach, which is an alternative to more common quantitative and qualitative content analyses in crisis communication research, and by applying Gee’s framework to the analysis of corporate social media communication. The chapter also offers implications for both scholarship and practice in this area.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85204201923&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.4324/9781003375296-11

DO - 10.4324/9781003375296-11

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 9781032437132

SP - 143

EP - 158

BT - Risk and Crisis Communication in Europe

PB - Routledge

CY - London

ER -