DAVID W. GUTH
Associate Dean/Associate Professor
200-D Stauffer-Flint Hall
Office: (785) 864-0683
dguth@ku.edu
J-School profile

Community of Science: http://myprofile.cos.com/dguth 

Expertise

Guth has expertise in crisis communication. It can be said that health and science related crises -- Three Mile Island and Tylenol among the most prominent -- propelled crisis communications into an important area of research in the 1980s. The need to communicate during periods of heightened stress has intensified in the years since. As a reporter, Guth covered a variety of health and science-related stories, including the 1984 Warren County (NC) protests over a state-established PCB waste site. In his role as a state government public information officer, he was involved with a wide range of issues, including an effort to attract the Superconducting Supercollider to North Carolina. As a private consultant, he advised the nuclear power industry on its crisis response. As a scholar, he is presently researching the use of the Internet as a communications tool among state emergency management agencies.

Keywords

Public relations, crisis communications, emergency management

Education

M.A. (1990). University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill: Journalism (Public Relations emphasis). Thesis: Crisis and the Practitioner: Organizational Crisis Experience as It Relates to the Placement of the Public Relations Function.

B.A. (1973). University of Maryland-College Park: Radio-Television-Speech.

Funding

Guth, D. (PI). $65,514 grant from the KU Transportation Research Institute. Nationwide study of the effectiveness of state emergency management agency Web sites. Received Jan. 2008.

Selected Publications

Guth, D. (summer 1995). “Organizational Crisis Experience and Public Relations Roles.”  Public Relations Review 21 (2):123-136. http://people.ku.edu/~dguth/PRJCrisis.pdf

Guth, D. (October 2007). “Untapped Potential – An Analysis of Online Newsrooms on State Emergency Management Agency Web Sites.” Public Relations Society of America International Conference.  Philadelphia, PA. http://people.ku.edu/~dguth/EMAs.pdf

Selected Honors

Guth, D. (October 2007). Top Faculty Paper: “Untapped Potential – An Analysis of Online Newsrooms on State Emergency Management Agency Web Sites.” Public Relations Society of America international conference. Philadelphia, PA. http://people.ku.edu/~dguth/EMAs.pdf