Madoff Madness: A Textual Analysis of the SEC's response to the Madoff Ponzi Scheme

On December 11, 2008, the financial world was in a panic as the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced the arrest of Bernard L. Madoff of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, LLC, for orchestrating a $65 billion Ponzi scheme. An investigation took place into Madoff's practices, and as a result, it was revealed the SEC failed to catch Madoff years earlier as a result of its business practices. After this became known, the SEC faced reputational harm. This qualitative analysis seeks to discover through identification and analysis of themes and sub-themes of response strategies, the extent to which the SEC applied Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) in its crisis response, in order to examine SCCT's merit as a theory in government crisis communication research. This study also offers additional response strategies imposed by the SEC to suggest further expansion of SCCT in a government context.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Communication

Department dc:contributor.department

Communication

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• McDaniel, Caitlin Christine

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Myers, Marcus Cayce

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Tedesco, John C.
• Woods, Chelsea Lane

• SCCT
• SEC
• Crisis
• Bernard Madoff

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:20107

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/89486