Media and Crisis: Media Representation of Massive Power Outage Crisis in Khuzestan Province (Febuary 2017)

This paper is about the crisis of massive power outages in Khuzestan province in February 1395, which was affected by environmental problems. There was many social, economical and security consequences due to this incident, so the purpose of this paper is analyzing the media representation of the crisis in order to provide the basis for developing guidelines for crisis management to similar incidents.
The news of the incident in national and local IRIB channels, news agencies, social Medias as well as statements by the Ministry of Energy and its affiliated organizations were used as statistical population in this study. The news selected by available and targeted sampling means, then analyzed in a thematic analysis method. The adequacy point to define sample volume in each group was the theoretical saturation.
Findings: The analysis of the data along with drawing up the thematic maps, showed that IRIB as a national media conforming to the point of view of the sovereignty has addressed the subject; the narrative of the news agencies reflects civil society's view of the incident, the social media indicated the point of view of the affected and hurt people in the crisis, as well as the Public relations’ statements have also been in the line with organizational policies.
This study showed that IRIB have paid more attention to the information and demanding functions and neglecte cultural functions as well as national coherence and public partnership. News agencies reflect the incident in a comprehensive manner according to their organizational policies. Social media had shown mostly protests and demands instead of its potential to cohesion, inform and resource preparation. The public relation’s statements often reflect activities related to incident and description the reasons of the crisis.