Title
Understanding the use of social media by organisations for crisis communication.
Abstract
Many businesses have commenced using social media for crisis communication with stakeholders. However there is little guidance in literature to assist organisational crisis managers with the selection of an appropriate crisis response strategy. Traditional theories on crisis communication may not adequately represent the social media context. This study took a qualitative approach and explored organisational use of social media for crisis communication at seventeen large Australian organisations. An analysis of 15,650 Facebook and Twitter messages was conducted, drawing on the lens of Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) (Coombs & Holladay, 2002). Findings suggested that when large Australian organisations responded to crises via social media, they lacked an awareness of the potential of social media for crisis communication. Organisations often did not respond to stakeholder messages or selected crisis response strategies that may increase reputational risk. The paper contributes important understandings of organisational social media use for crisis communication. It also assists crisis managers by providing six crisis response positions and a taxonomy of social media crisis messages that stakeholders may send to organisations. Key implications are discussed.
Year
DOI
Venue
2016
10.1016/j.chb.2016.05.016
Computers in Human Behavior
Keywords
Field
DocType
Social media,Crisis management,Crisis communication,Crisis response strategy
Social psychology,Social media,Reputational risk,Stakeholder,Situational crisis communication theory,Psychology,Crisis management,Crisis communication,Crisis response
Journal
Volume
ISSN
Citations 
63
0747-5632
4
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.40
12
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Mina Roshan140.40
Matthew J. Warren217450.28
Rodney Carr391.18