Pertamina’s Crisis Communication Response Strategy in The Adulterated Fuel Case: A Quantitative Content Analysis of CNN Indonesia and Kompas.Com News
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Abstract
This study is motivated by a public trust crisis toward PT Pertamina following allegations of fuel adulteration from Pertalite to Pertamax. This incident triggered massive financial losses and a severe reputational threat. This research aims to describe Pertamina's crisis communication response strategy based on the Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) and analyze differences in tendency of implementing these strategies in CNN Indonesia and Kompas.com. The method used is quantitative content analysis with purposive sampling. The total sample includes 50 news articles (25 from CNN Indonesia, 25 from Kompas.com) during the peak crisis period of February-March 2025. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and the nonparametric Mann-Whitney U test. The results show a deviation from the ideal assumptions of SCCT. In a preventable crisis requiring a rebuild (accommodative) strategy, Pertamina predominantly used the Denial strategy at 60% (15 articles) in each media outlet. The Mann-Whitney U test yielded a significance value of 0.861 (Sig. > 0.05), thus the null hypothesis (H0) is accepted. In conclusion, there is no significant difference regarding the tendency of Pertamina’s crisis response strategies in both media. Both outlets uniformly display the dominance of Pertamina’s defensive communication approach (denial posture) in managing public perception.
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