Communication Strategies
In the clip (2:02 minutes), President George W. Bush is addressing the construction workers and firefighters at Ground Zero only three days after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. In the middle of his remarks, someone from the crowd yelled that he can’t hear him.
Notice Bush’s spontaneous framing of “the situation here and now” from that point, and discuss the following questions:
What is President Bush’s task at hand? More generally, in times of crisis, what are the core framing tasks of a leader?
Does his framing accomplish that task? What is good or bad about it?
Does Bush have more than one audience in this speech? If so, who might also be making attributions of leadership?
How does President Bush use that information to frame his message?
Clip:
