Each student will produce a brief report of approximately three pages that describes a corporate crisis from the past five years and its aftereffects. Students will 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:

• 2013 Target Corporation data breach
• 2013 incapacitation of a Carnival Cruise ship

Each student will submit his or her Crisis Analysis Report to the instructor as an email attachment before Tuesday, Feb. 2.