More Than a “Bad Apple”: Expanding Care Considerations for Strategic Communication in a Collective Crisis

The Larry Nassar case is one of many abuse stories within and beyond sports. Although conventional strategies of image repair such as identifying one “bad apple” are considered effective within an ethics of justice perspective, we argue that crisis responses must adopt an ethics of care when physical and emotional harm has occurred. Using a case study approach, we qualitatively analyzed organizational responses from Michigan State University (MSU), U.S.A. Gymnastics (USAG), and the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC), as well as media coverage of Nassar’s sentencing hearing, through Fraustino and Kennedy’s (2018) Applied Model of Care Considerations (AMCC) framework. We theorize how the media landscape creates a space of resistance for survivors that facilitates ethics of care in a collective crisis.