FBI vs. Apple: an unfair fight? Apparently not

Earlier this year, Apple and the US government got into an intense conflict about the security of the iPhone. Should the government, when national security is at stake, be able to hack into their products? The difference of opinion was heavily fought in media, by various stakeholders and even reached court.

What was going on?

On December 2, 2015, a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, took 14 human lives. The perpetrators caused this with a mass shooting and an attempted bombing. After this there was great uncertainty about whether the two had acted alone or had received outside help. The blessing in disguise was that one of the perpetrators had left an iPhone, so it was possible to ascertain whether he had reveived this help or not. The FBI was not able to unlock the phone, but with Apple's help this shouldn’t be a problem. Right?

It turned out differently...

Apple made itself at first, to put it mildly ‘unpopular’, when it stated that the company did not intend to crack the security of their product. ‘Was the security of an iPhone more important than our own patriotic homeland?’, expressed Donald Trump the opinion of many others, while calling for a boycott of the company. The response from Apple was as ingenious as it was effective, and should be seen as a clever piece of PR. Why? For three reasons.

Order of worth

Apple was handling the situation well by taking it directly to the consumer and to their stakeholders; the company quickly sent out a press release in which they declared it was not their own sensitive business information they were worried about, but rather the privacy of every consumer. Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices, by anyone. Research from Patriotta, Gond and Schultz concluded that when an organization want to justify an action for the public, they should think from an 'order of worth’. You can do this by providing arguments from a certain perspective of values that appeals to certain stakeholders. Many stakeholders felt engaged to the argument that privacy is very important, so this position was seen as very legitimate, since it joined the order of worth 'civic', which stands for fundamental rights. Apple created a real dilemma: privacy vs security.

Reduce ambiguity and uncertainty

Apple understood the power of frame alignment. According to Van der Meer, Verhoeven, Beentjes and Vliegenthart concerning the interplay between PR, media and the public, there are three crisis phases. In the first phase, each presents its own frame(s). Secondly, after an interaction of the initially provided frames, the domains collectively try to make sense of the complex crisis situations, to reduce ambiguity and uncertainty and to provide coherence. For that reason, in almost every crisis frames align, and only become more diverse again after the crisis: the third phase. Instead of responding on single accusations, Apple was clear and transparent about their frame: ‘we protect your privacy’.

Newsworthy

In accomplishing that, Apple was helped by plenty of media attention in which their frame was strongly emerged. Again, not coincidentally. Schafraad, Van Zoonen and Verhoeven concluded in their research that a number of news factors in corporate press releases influences the chance to be picked up by the press. These news factors are: ‘controversy’, ‘negative consequences’, ‘surprise’ and ‘elite organizations’. You see it? The press release from Apple satisfies all.

How it ended

An apotheosis of the battle in court between Apple and the FBI did not happen. The FBI unlocked the iPhone without Apple’s help. Fortunately for them, because this problem seemed easier to solve than Apple's great PR machine!

About the author:
Stefan (29) lives in Amsterdam, currently studying the Master Corporate Communication at the University of Amsterdam. Loves travelling, sports, techno, and is really enthusiastic about both internal and external communications of organizations in particular.