Dr. Matthew Seeger

Matthew W. Seeger (Ph.D., Indiana University 1982) is currently Professor and Chair in the Department of Communication. His teaching and research are in communication ethics, crisis and emergency risk communication, organizational responses to crisis and disaster, interagency coordination and informational needs.

Dr. Seeger also served as Associate Dean of the Graduate School at Wayne State. He has advised 35 doctoral dissertations in the areas of organizational communication, crisis communication, and related topics. He has served as a consultant to AT&T, DaimlerChrysler, Blue-Cross/Blue-Shield, General Motors, K-Mart Corporation, and the State of Michigan among others.

He has worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the State of Michigan on issues of crisis communication and the public health, cross-border coordination, and crisis leadership. He participated in the CDC's debriefing and critique of its response to the anthrax episode and in developing the CDC’s crisis communication protocols. He has worked very closely with the CDC on issues of pandemic influenza preparedness. Seeger also worked with the USDA on issues of risk communication. In 2002, he participated in a US Department of State grant to train Russian government officials in effective crisis communication.

His work on communication risk and crisis management has appeared in the Handbook of Crisis and Risk Communication, International Encyclopedia of Communication, Journal of Health Communication Research, Communication Yearbook, the Handbook of Public Relations, Public Relations Review, Communication Studies, Journal of Business Communication, Journal of Change Management, Management Communication Quarterly, the Southern Communication Journal, Journal of Business Ethics, the Journal of Applied Communication Research, Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, Health Promotion and Practice, and Communication Research Reports and in several edited collections and proceedings. His books include Effective Crisis Communication (Sage, 2007) Crisis Communication and the Public Health (Hampton, 2008), Communication and Organization Crisis (Preager, 2003), and Risk Communication: A Message Centered Approach (Science Press. Forthcoming). He also wrote, Ethics in Organizational Communication (Hampton, 1998), a comprehensive treatment of ethical issues of communication faced by organizations.

Professor Seeger has received research support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Science Foundation, the National Center for Food Protection and Defense, and the State of Michigan.

Dr. Seeger's current research interests focus on informational needs during crisis, crisis and public health, communication and natural disasters, crisis discourse, and the application of chaos theory and learning theory to crisis. He recently completed Communication, Organization and Crisis for Quorum Press. He is currently working on a book dealing with crisis communication for Sage and is editing Crisis Communication and the Public Health for Hampton Press.

Paper presented at the Division of Emergency and Environmental Health Services of the National Center for Environmental Health Risk Communication Workshop on Effectively Communicating Protective Actions and Exposure Information During an Incident Involving a Release of Radioactive Material

Functional Decision-making Under Crisis Conditions
Matthew W. Seeger
Department of Communication
Wayne State University
&
Dennis S. Gouran
Departments of Communication and Labor Studies
Penn State University

Crisis Links

Emergency Maganement Laboratory
http://orise.orau.gov/nsem/

Disaster Research Center
http://www.udel.edu/DRC/

Federal Emergency Management Administration
http://www.fema.gov/

Erik Auf der Heide’s book Disaster Response: Principles of Preparation and Coordination
http://orgmail2.coe-dmha.org/dr/flash.htm

Risk and Crisis Communication Project
http://risk-crisis.ndsu.nodak.edu/

Center for Food Safety and Defense
http://foodindustrycenter.umn.edu/Food_Safety3.html

Center for Risk Communication Research, University of Maryland
http://www.comm.riskcenter.umd.edu/

Institute for Information Technology and Culture, Wayne State University
http://www.iitc.wayne.edu/

Natural Hazards Center, University of Colorado, Boulder
http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Pandemic Preparedness Communication Guidance
http://pandemicflu.gov/news/rcommunication.html

Ethics Links

NCA Commission on Communication Ethics
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/comethics/?v=1&t=search&ch=web&pub=groups&sec=group&slk=1

Poynter Center for Journalism Ethics
http://www.poynter.org/subject.asp?id=32

communication ethics, crisis and emergency risk communication, organizational responses to crisis and disaster, interagency coordination and informational needs, informational needs during crisis, crisis and public health, communication and natural disasters, crisis discourse, application of chaos theory and learning theory to crisis

Seeger, M. W., Reynolds, B. & Sellnow, T.  (In Press)  “Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication in Health Contexts:  Applying the CDC Model” In R. Heath & D. O’Hair (Eds.). Handbook of Risk and Crisis Communication.

 Seeger, M. W., Sellnow, T., Ulmer., R. R., & Novak, J.  (In Press).  “Applied Communication Research Ethics.” Handbook of Applied Communication Research, K. Cissena and L. Frey (Eds.)  L. Erlbaum:  Mahwah, New Jersey

 Seeger, M. W.  (2006). “Best practices in crisis and emergency risk communication.” Journal of Applied Communication Research,  34, 3  232-244

 Reynolds, B. & Seeger, M. W. (2005). Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication as an integrative model.  Journal of Health Communication Research. 10, 1  43-57.

Spence, P. R., Westerman, D., Skalski, P., Seeger, M., Sellnow, T., & Ulmer, R. R. (2006). Gender and age effects on information seeking after 9/11. Communication Research Reports, 23, 217-223.

 Seeger, M.,  Novak, J.,  Ulmer, R.,R., and Sellnow (2005). Post crisis discourse and organizational change:  Failure and renewal.    Journal of Change Management, 18, 1, 78-95.

Johnson. C.E., Sellnow, T. L., Seeger, M. W., Hasbargen, K (2004). "Blowing the whistle on the diet drug: An exploration of MeritCare's reporting of linkages between Fen-Phen and valvular heart disease." Journal of Business Communication, 41, 350-370. 


Seeger, M., & Ulmer, R. R. (2003). Explaining Enron: Communication and Responsible Leadership. Management Communication Quarterly, 58-85 
Seeger, M. W. (2002). Chaos and Crisis: Propositions for a general theory of crisis communication. Public Relations Review. 1-9. 


Sellnow, T., M. Seeger & Ulmer, R. R. (2002). Chaos theory, informational needs and the North Dakota floods. Journal of Applied Communication Research, 30, 269-292 




Seeger, M. (2003). "Organizational Communication Ethics: Directions for Critical Inquiry and Application" In Dennis Tourish & Owen Hargie (Eds.). Key Issues in Organizational Communication. pp. 220-234. Routledge: New York. 


Seeger, M. W., Venette S. Ulmer, R. R. & Sellnow, T. (2002). Patterns of media use, information seeking, and reported needs in post-crisis contexts. In B. Greenberg, (Ed.). Communication and terrorism. pp. 53-63. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. 



Seeger, M., Sellnow T., & Ulmer., R. (2001). Public relations and crisis communication: Organizing and chaos. In R. R. Heath (Ed.). Handbook of public relations. pp 155-166. Sage: Thousand Oaks, CA.

Seeger, M. (2001). Ethics and communication in organizational contexts: Moving from the fringe to the center. American Communication Journal,5 1 [On Line] http://www.acjournal.org/holdings/vol5/iss1/special/seeger.htm

The one that didn't get away.