Abstract
Municipalities face community activists because of poor service delivery, poor communication and accountability, which results in weak relationships with these communities. In turn, this poses a reputation risk for municipalities. Therefore, this research explores how community activism affects the reputation of municipalities by investigating how community activism is enacted in response to failures in municipal service delivery; exploring how activist communities affected by service delivery issues pose municipal reputation risk and studying how municipalities can mitigate this risk. To explore the impact of community activism on reputation; the conceptual framework composing of community activism, reputation risk and reputation risk mitigation, as well as the theoretical framework consisting of stakeholder and situational crisis communication theories and the impressional approach to reputation, were studied through a literature review. Data was gathered using semi-structured interviews with communicators from selected Northern Cape municipalities and thematically analysed using Braun’s six-phase framework. The study revealed that the use of complaints shared through letters, or memorandums, complaints or suggestion boxes or media; protests, marches, denial of access to public facilities, vandalism and rates withholding comprised some of the ordinary means of community activism within selected municipalities. Visual activism is rare in the province, while communities having private meetings with municipal leaders seems unique to the Northern Cape. The reputation risk posed by these forms of activism enactment includes loss of integrity for the municipality and its leadership as perceived by local communities and other stakeholders and further perceptions that the municipality is failing to deliver services. Municipalities could mitigate this reputation risk through several tactics that this study suggests, and it further recommends that future researchers test these tactics.
M.A. (Strategic Communication)