Patterns of Apologia
Research conducted by Kevin A. Stein, Ph.D. and Matthew H. Barton, Ph.D.
Southern Utah University
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The data provided here comes from a grant-funded project to conduct a content analysis of apologia occurring over the last several decades. The data is an open-access educational resource and is offered here for educational purposes only. Research on apologia, or image repair, is extensive and remains one of the most popular areas in the communication discipline when it comes to public address. Scholars often examine each case in isolation because individual offenses tend to be unique and the insights extracted from those contexts can be illuminating.
Study Snapshot
Total apologetic statements coded: 409
Total contexts represented: 351
Primary focus: Public apologia and image repair strategies across different contexts and time periods
Method: Content analysis of themes using William Benoit’s image repair framework
Texts Used in the Analysis
Our intention, at least in the beginning stages of the project, was to include every prominent defense ever offered. This became difficult as we discovered that many apologies are not archived online, purchasable videos are expensive, and certain public figures have an interest in their embarrassing moments disappearing from cyberspace. However, we believe our sample of texts is fairly comprehensive in light of these difficulties.
In the end, we collected 409 apologetic statements from 351 different contexts. Transcripts of the texts were accessed from websites, newspapers, magazines, and library databases. Fifty-nine apologia statements were only available in video form and had to be transcribed prior to coding. The reason for the disparity between number of contexts and total texts coded is that some contexts contained multiple instances of apologia for a single offense.
Coding Framework and Procedures
The coding framework included a variety of variables that we believed might have an impact on the content, structure, and overall effectiveness of the apologia. These included:
1. Decade of apology: Whether it was issued pre-1950, in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, or post-2000.
2. Context of apology: Whether the context was political, organizational, celebrity, athlete, international, religious, media, or other.
3. Gender of apologist: Whether the apologist was male or female.
4. Medium for delivery: Whether the apology was issued via press release, television interview, press conference, social media, or website.
5. Self-apology or surrogate: Whether the statement was delivered by the person accused or by another representative. Although many statements are likely written by people behind the scenes, the rhetor takes ownership of those words once he or she delivers them. Only when someone else quite literally spoke for the accused did we code it as a surrogate apology.
6. Type of offense: Whether the person was accused of sex/infidelity, violence, racism/bigotry, deception/fraud, drugs, inappropriate comments, or another type of offense.
7. Apologia strategy: Which strategy within Benoit’s image repair framework the accused utilized. These categories included denial, shifting blame, provocation, defeasibility, accident, good intentions, bolstering, minimization, differentiation, transcendence, attacking the accuser, compensation, corrective action, and mortification. We also added an additional category called the non-apology, where the accused specifically articulates an intention not to offer a defense.
During the analysis, we coded by theme, rather than by word, sentence, or paragraph. The reason for this is that a great deal can occur rhetorically in one sentence or, conversely, nothing of consequence can occur in an entire paragraph. We were careful not to double code, or assign two different classifications to a single theme.
Once coding was completed, we checked for intercoder reliability using Cohen’s kappa on a randomly selected 10% of the total texts. The results were as follows: decade of apology (1.00), role of apologist (.92), gender of apologist (1.00), medium for delivery (.95), self-apology or surrogate (1.00), type of offense (.84), and apologia strategy (.82).
Results of the Study
