Crisis Communication as a Socio‐Technical Safety Barrier: A Symbiotic Risk Analysis of Organisational Crisis Escalation

Abstract

Crisis communication is often examined as a reputational, informational, or public‐relations function. In safety‐critical and crisis‐prone systems, however, some communication events may also perform safety‐control functions by supporting detection, warning, coordination, public protection, mitigation, recovery, accountability, and learning. This article develops an exploratory safety‐barrier framework for analysing crisis communication across organisational crisis cases. Drawing on a comparative event‐sequence dataset of 60 coded communication events across six cases—Deepwater Horizon, Boeing 737 MAX, Fukushima Daiichi, Grenfell Tower, East Palestine, and BP Texas City—the study codes communication actors, crisis phases, message types, safety‐control functions, communication quality, uncertainty handling, relational dependencies, barrier effects, and escalation effects. The analysis identifies three communication‐barrier states: protective communication, degraded communication, and pathologic communication. Protective communication supports safety control through timely, transparent, coordinated, uncertainty‐aware, and actionable messaging. Degraded communication provides partial or delayed support and leaves safety‐control functions incomplete. Pathologic communication actively contributes to crisis escalation through contradiction, false reassurance, defensive framing, distorted feedback, or suppressed dissent. The article contributes to crisis communication and safety studies by proposing communication as an event‐level safety‐control function embedded in interdependent actor networks. It also offers a Communication Barrier Review Matrix for crisis preparation, real‐time coordination, post‐crisis investigation, and safety‐management review.