20.500.12556/RUL-184405 Who can speak in a crisis? legitimacy, power and thelimits of crisis communication in a fragmented health system Crisis communication in public health systems is constrained not only by the availability of communication models, but also bythe dispersion of legitimacy across multiple actors. While existing literature often assumes a coherent organisational actorcapable of unified strategic action, this article shows that in institutionally fragmented systems, formal authority, expertlegitimacy and public credibility may be distributed across different actors. Drawing on Bourdieu's theory of social fields, thestudy introduces the concept of legitimacy misalignment to analyse how power relations and distributed sources of legitimacyshape crisis communication in the Slovenian public health system. The study combines contextual survey data with qualitativematerial from three focus groups and six in‐depth interviews (N = 29). The findings show that institutional fragmentation,hierarchical filtering and the misalignment between formal authority, expert legitimacy and public credibility constraincoherent communication. The article contributes to crisis communication research by demonstrating how legitimacy mis-alignment limits the practical feasibility of organisation‐centred models in multi‐actor public health contexts. It shifts analyticalattention from strategy selection to the structural conditions of communicative action. Bourdieu institutional fragmentation legitimacy misalignment Javno zdravje Krizno upravljanje true false true Angleški jezik Slovenski jezik Slovenija; Članek v reviji 2026-07-06 14:13:49 2026-07-06 14:13:55 2026-07-16 06:24:36 0000-00-00 00:00:00 2026 0 0 Str. 1-11 iss. 2 Vol. 34 2026 0000-00-00 Zaloznikova Objavljeno NiDoloceno 0000-00-00 0000-00-00 2026-06-22 316.77:004.774.1(497.4) 0966-0879 10.1111/1468-5973.70181Digital Object Identifier (DOI) 283014659 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-5973.70181 1 0b9c3b00-7934-11f1-9b0d-0050569b8976 https://repozitorij.uni-lj.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=237137 RAZ_Terseglav_Sasa_2026.pdf RAZ_Terseglav_Sasa_2026.pdf 1 3E12213E4C3CA51C59B43647953EA7C3 9dbb32bac7f6ba5a0f30339403636c2a54dacaa92c6a017ea5d744a553dd8b22 5567ac9b-7934-11f1-9b0d-0050569b8976 https://repozitorij.uni-lj.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=237139 Fakulteta za družbene vede 0 0 0