The crisis recognition problem: Reconceptualizing crisis and explaining denial in the age of uncertainty

The thesis premise is that empirical realities have outpaced the conceptual and communicative tools we use to see and govern crises, producing fragmented vocabularies and competing morphologies that stall recognition. Contemporary crises increasingly manifest as persistent, networked disruptions that defy tidy stages and boundaries, while also triggering cognitive and emotional dynamics that lead to a recognition problem. The resulting gap is both theoretical (siloed, partial maps of “crisis”) and practical (the perception of urgency does not reach the activation thresholds for crisis). Chapter 1 conducts an integrative literature review and proposes the Crisis Spectrum Framework as a multi-axis morphology of crisis that allows to integrate theoretical and empirical knowledge to fight conceptual fragmentation and gain a comprehensive view of what a crisis is and all the downstream implications of its definition. Chapter 2 theorizes Crisis-Existence Denial (CED), the refusal of the crisis state itself, as a second important obstacle for crisis recognition, and analyzes discourse on X during the H5N1 virus outbreak in dairy cattle in the U.S. (U.S., Mar 2024–Jun 2025). 529 explicit-denial posts were examined using Social Network Analysis (SNA), topic modeling, sentiment analysis, computational text analysis, and Reflexive Thematic Analysis (RTA) to understand the forms of crisis denial, its functions and motivations, and the implications of this phenomenon for crisis communication. Chapter 3 investigates how to overcome apathetic crisis denial in the same H5N1 virus context. (RTA) was conducted on 21 semi-structured interviews with practitioners who work in direct or indirect contact with risk-bearers in dairy cattle industry to reveal that engaged learning communication strategies are key to overcome apathetic crisis denial and achieve desired affective, cognitive, and behavioral learning outcomes, such as following biosecurity practices and guidelines. The key results of this thesis include: a new crisis conceptual framework that integrates crisis literatures and builds interdisciplinary conceptual order, so that crisis recognition is improved across sectors; evidence that CED operates as ontological control in platformed arenas and has specific implications for crisis scholarship; and instruction-as-engagement principles that convert recognition into action. Collectively, the thesis reframes crisis communication as applied recognition-work.