4. Driving questions
• What is a social media crisis?
– What does it mean to use social media in a crisis?
• What are tactical implications for crisis
communication?
• What are the strategic implications for crisis
communication?
6. Central Concerns of
Organizational Crises
• Public safety (physical health)
• Public welfare (psychological health)
• Public perception (reputation)
• Operations (business continuity)
7. Taxonomy Part 2
Organizational
Crises
Traditional Social Media
Crises Crises
10. a concern that arises in or is amplified
by social media resulting in negative
legacy media coverage, changes in
business operations, or threatens
financial loss
a rhetorical construction
11. Sources of social media crises
Organizational
Misuse
Dissatisfied
Challengers
Customers
Social
Media
Crisis
12. Taxonomy Part 3
Social Media
Crisis
Stakeholder Organizational
Actions Actions
Customer Misuse of
Challenges
Complaints Social Media
14. Dissatisfied Customers
• Customer relations, not a crisis
– Resolve the concern (opportunity & transparency)
Crisis Connection
• Warning of a product harm
15. Challenges
• Stakeholder claims organization is acting in
irresponsible manner
– Threat to CSR claims
– Threat to reputations
16. Social media as risk
• Stakeholders take control of organization’s
social media
– Planned
– Spontaneous
• Creates negative messages
33. Paracrisis
• Publicly visible crisis threat that
charges an organization with
irresponsible or unethical behavior
• Associated with challenge crises
35. Assessment: Origins of challenges
• Organic: values evolve and organization may
fall behind
• Expose: disconnect (deception) between
organizational words and deeds for
responsibility
• Villain: repeated efforts to attack a particular
organization or industry
37. Response choices: Rhetoric
• Accommodation: incorporate challenge into
organizational operations
• Adaptation: incorporate some variation of the
challenge into the organization
• Rejection: maintain status quo with rationale
• Redemption: apologize for the deception and
validate new actions (expose only)
38. Channel selection
• Indiscriminant: wide dispersion (small seed)
– Low cost
– Fast and easy
– Overlap and repetition
• Selective
– Need for cognition by stakeholders
• Public safety driven (why useful in disasters)
– Channels used by stakeholders
– Focus monitoring on reactions in select social media
39. Online memorials
• Promote grieving and healing (public welfare)
• Should organization create one?
– Uni- or multi-vocal
• Should organization link to one?
– Contact creators first
• Informed by memory studies
40. Order?
• New channels = change
– Evolution NOT Revolution
• Are “social media” crises (paracrises)
• Existing theory appropriate platform
– Map tactical use of social media
– Understand strategic implications
– Add “new” theories and concepts as needed
• Effective strategy never goes out of style
41.
42.
43. Challenge dynamic: Strategy
Stakeholder
Challenge
Quiescence or
Stakeholder
Assessment
Support Reaction
Organizational
Response Constraints
48. Constraints
• Financial costs of change
• Consistency with organizational strategy
• Potential benefits from change
• Potential damage from status quo