Elina Tachkova is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication Studies at Hong Kong Baptist Univeristy. Her research focuses on crisis communication and especially the concept of ’scansis’, the unique intersection between an organizational crisis and a scandal, which is a new theoretical concept in crisis communication research.

W. Timothy Coombs is the George T. and Gladys H. Abell Professor in Liberal Arts at the Department of Communication at Texas A&M University, USA. His primary research area is in crisis communication, where he has been developing and testing the Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) which provides theory ground and empirically tested strategic advice for the selection of crisis response strategies.