Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to demonstrate how rhetorical arena theory (RAT), also known as the multivocal approach to crisis communication, has developed over the past two decades. Twenty years ago, RAT was presented as an attempt to understand the communicative complexity of organizational crises. Crisis communication, we argued, did not only include the voice of the organization in crisis. Also the voices of the customers, the employees, the investors, the news media, etc. had to be included if we wanted to have a comprehensive and realistic idea of what is going on in a crisis situation. The chapter is divided into two parts. In part 1, we provide a general introduction to rhetorical arena theory. In part 2, we demonstrate how other crisis communication researchers have applied RAT including the two root metaphors arena and voice in various ways. The idea is to further theory building through a process where the ideas of others, and not necessarily our own ideas, are the driving force.