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How to respond to a crisis in the media : Case study of crisis communication by the Chinese multinational enterprise Huawei

Fu, Yaling

(2020)

Details

Supervisors

Dr. Paul Arblaster

Faculty

Faculté de philosophie, arts et lettres

Degree label

Master [120] en communication multilingue

Abstract

Nowadays the rapid economic development and the close connection of the Internet and media have made more and more enterprises face the challenge of crisis especially in emerging market. It is of great significance for new international companies to study how to deal with crises in the complex international environment. As one of the most representative and influential high-tech enterprises in China, Huawei has sustained continuous growth while experiencing the biggest crises in its history in 2018 and 2019. The paper takes Huawei as a case study of how an internationalizing company from an emerging economy can deal with an international media crisis. This article first discusses the definition, characteristics, and types of crisis and introduces two theoretical frameworks for crisis communication strategies: situational communication theory and reputation recovery theory. Based on the introduction of the two crises encountered by Huawei, this study then conducts quantitative and qualitative analysis on 50 English reports from seven English media outlets and 50 French reports from four French media outlets. Comparatively, it followed the crisis communication strategy analysis by examining Huawei’s 69 media reports in response to the crisis. It is found that Huawei’s crisis has very strong ties with the political factors. Therefore, the paper further analysed Huawei’s external influencing factors, including political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal, using the PESTEL framework and Porter's Five Forces model. The results showed that political factors have had an adverse impact on the internationalization of Chinese companies. As a result, Chinese companies should adopt a depoliticization strategy as much as possible to reduce the impact of the international geopolitical pattern on the development of enterprises. When multinational technology enterprises face a crisis within a complex political environment, avoiding political conflicts is an effective strategy. It is also necessary to analyse the situation of crisis in a rational and localized way according to different social and political context.