Ministermordet - RIB Bibliotek

Some Swedish authorities (e.g. municipal
and county councils) currently
have web pages prepared for emergency
and disaster information. By having
these pages available on an everyday
basis, the idea is for visitors to learn to
find their way to the page if something
disastrous should really happen. In the
case of the murder of Lindh none of
the authorities studied made use of the
prepared crisis pages but gave the event
a prominent place on their ordinary
web pages instead.
At the Gothenburg disco fire in
1998 many people with a foreign background
sought information via the
municipal web site, which led to language
difficulties. In connection with the
Lindh murder there was some regard
for linguistic matters on central authorities'
websites, but at local level web
sites visitors were restricted to the
Swedish language. The Lindh outrage
also shows that the news media's websites
are not just an interactive forum
for disseminating news and advertisements,
etc, but are also a central site for
views and opinions in connection with
major social emergencies. The local
paper's discussion forum on the web
for example has become a well-visited
virtual meeting place where people can
discuss what has happened.
The murder of Anna Lindh also
shows that the Net has taken on an
ever more important role in internal
crisis management work within authorities
and organisations. E-mail, the
Intranet and other tools linked to networked
computers are amongst the
most important channels for the dissemination
of internal information and
guidelines on the occasion of what has
occurred.
Crisis communication
at local level
The Lindh outrage did not cause any
notable communication between central
and regional/local government. The
county authorities (the administrative
board, police, county council) which
were studied in Örebro County were
informed by the media about the
stabbing and told that Lindh had died.
The murder did not lead to any formal
plans for crisis management being produced
by the county bodies in Örebro
even if the event gave rise to local contacts
and activities. The situation was
probably different in Stockholm where
contacts can be expected to have been
set up by both county and municipal
bodies, but the matter has not been
investigated in this study apart from
what applies to legal authorities.
The crisis management and bereavement
counselling organised at local
level are felt by the social actors involved
to be well-functioning. The good results
have been adduced to the channels
provided and the long-running good
relations between authorities, local
media and other organisations which
came to be involved.
Local proximity and previous experience
of extraordinary crisis management
are specific factors linked to successful
crisis work by those involved.
130 | ministermordet