Peiritsch's Starbucks crisis response paper published

Oct. 28, 2019

Allison Peiritsch, a Slippery Rock University assistant professor of communication, recently had a paper published in the Journal of Media Ethics.

Peiritsch's paper, "Starbucks' Racial-Bias Crisis: Toward a Rhetoric of Renewal," examines the coffee company's crisis response to the April 2018 arrests of two black men waiting for a friend in one of the chain's Philadelphia locations. In her paper, Peiritsch asserted that Starbucks enacted the rhetoric of renewal in its crisis response. She goes on to reframe the crises as moments of organizational opportunity instead of moments of organizational threat.

The Journal of Media Ethics publishes original essays that explore ethics and morality among practitioners in journalism, broadcasting, public relations, advertising and other mass communication disciplines.

Another of Peiritsch's papers, "Gillette's 'We Believe' Campaign: When Values-Driven Branding Creates Consumer Crises," has been accepted for presentation at the National Communication Association's annual conference in Baltimore in November.