Who can speak in a crisis? : legitimacy, power and thelimits of crisis communication in a fragmented health system

Terseglav, Saša (author), Lamut, Urša (author), Kropivnik, Samo (author)

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.

• Language: English
• Keywords: Bourdieu, institutional fragmentation, legitimacy misalignment
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Geographic coverage: Slovenija
• Organization: FDV - Faculty of Social Sciences
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Publication date: 22.06.2026
• Year: 2026
• Number of pages: Str. 1-11
• Numbering: Vol. 34, iss. 2
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-184405
• UDC: 316.77:004.774.1(497.4)
• ISSN on article: 0966-0879
• DOI: 10.1111/1468-5973.70181Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
• COBISS.SI-ID: 283014659
• Publication date in RUL: 06.07.2026

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Journal of contingencies and crisis management
• Shortened title: J. conting. crisis manag.
• Publisher: Blackwell Business
• ISSN: 0966-0879
• COBISS.SI-ID: 1565461

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: Javno zdravje, Krizno upravljanje

Projects

• Funder: ARIS - Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency
• Project number: V5-24042-2024
• Name: KrizKom: Krizno komuniciranje v primerih javnozdravstvenih kriz in aktivno poslušanje