Each student will produce a brief report of approximately three pages that describes a corporate crisis from the past five years and its effects. Each student will identify a crisis (not including the GM recall the class is using as a case study) and position themselves as part of the affected corporation's PR team in the period immediately following the crisis, depicting it for corporate management. The document should follow the general format for informal reports outlined in The Essentials and include the following elements:

1. Summary of the crisis (the situation and its causes)
2. Discussion of how specific stakeholder groups (customers, employees, investors, partners, etc.) are being affected
3. Characterization of the overall media response, citing specific texts (newspaper and periodical articles, television reports, YouTube videos, blog posts, Facebook groups/pages, Twitter trends, etc.) as evidence (identified in text—a separate bibliography is not required)
4. Brief recap of the current situation

Effective Crisis Analysis Reports will portray the situation succinctly in a comprehensible, professional format suitable for a corporate management readership (including appropriate grammar and mechanics).

These commented student drafts may be useful examples:

• 2014 GM ignition switch recall
• 2015 TLC Duggar molestation accusations
• 2011 FedEx package damage
• 2015 Volkswagen emissions discrepancies 

Each student will submit his or her Crisis Analysis Report to the instructor as an email attachment.