Reading Mats Heide’s article I had the opportunity to get a clear view point about the social constructionist perspective that Berger (with Luckmann) introduced in social science, connected with PR area, aims to explain the reasons of communications crisis, sustaining the idea that the main cause is an insufficient communicative relation between people and institutions, since school’s age. Act to solve a crisis means analyze all the external facts responsible of its origin and intervening on time. The basement of Heide analysis is traceable in two book of Berger: “The construction of reality” (1966) and “Invitation to sociology” (1963).
Understanding our society is surely an hard work, because all the new changes (social, economical etc..) modifies and alters the structure of human relations, institutions, media, determining everyday a different scenario, and the crisis is one of the perfect example. Heide supports the sociology as the way to understand these transformations, because it’s focused on comprehending people’s mind and if we understand the needs and the wishes of the people, we surely are able to interpret this “global society language”, multiform and quickly changeable, that represent the key of research in crisis communication.
I think it is necessary to define what exactly means “crisis”. I agree with Bergen when he says that organizational crisis is not an anomalous situation, but a particular stage in the never-ending development of an organization. A social constructionist perspective on crisis gives a more holistic understanding, and emphasizes that both crisis and "business as usual" are normal parts of an organization's life cycle. In contemporary research on crisis communication, crisis is a part of organization’s life cycle, a good opportunity for development and learning.
An other good point is about “institutions”: Berger describe them as support, regulation, help, promoter, that direct people’s behavior in a certain way. For Berger, institutions aren’t only the first ones that comes in our mind (like Government, University, Police, Tribunal, Church etc.) but also all the conventions, the beliefs and the unconsciously rule that people create and follow. The example of Paivi during one lecture was about Police figure. Not because there is an agreement created to let us be controlled and protected from Police, means that this “agreement” give them the power: people’s behavior gives them the power and the opportunity to protect us, if most of the people don’t agree it couldn’t exist this institution, even if there is an “agreement”. But also time, money, language, marriage are institutions, cause they define our life and direct our behavior ( 1 hour is composed of 60 seconds because people decided that).
I really appreciate this article of Heide, he explains in a really clear way the point of view of Berger, and he made a careful summary of Berger social perspective. Even if there wasn’t enough criticism in Berger theories, I think it helped us to understand an important aspect of communication’s sides, that’s a good step to become, in the future, expert of PR and communications strategies.
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