This presentation was for the RI Conference in Milan, Italy. The purpose of this presentation was to examine what makes a "good" crisis message via social media.

1. Karen
Freberg,
Kris-n
C.
Graham,
Kathleen
G.
Vidoloff,
&
Gina
Eosco

2. Researchers for Research Study
• Karen Freberg, Ph.D. – University of
Louisville
• Major Kristin C. Graham – United States
Military Academy at West Point
• Kathleen G. Vidoloff, Ph.D. – Oregon Health
Authority
• Gina Eosco – Cornell University & American
Meteorological Society (AMS)

3. OVERVIEW
• Advances in social media have opened a
world of opportunities for crisis
communication and reputation management
professionals.
• Emerging technology communication
platforms are transforming how risk and
crisis communicators reach their audiences
and partner agencies in emergencies and
disasters.
• Practitioners and reputation managers can
develop and disseminate timely and
consistent crisis messages across multiple
social media platforms.

4. Social Media within Reputation & Crisis Management Practices
“If communities depend on information for their survival in times of
crisis, then communication technologies are their lifelines,”
(“New technologies in emergencies and conflicts report,” 2010, p. 4).
• Emerging technologies have allowed people to feel they have more control
over the crisis as well as more connection to the community (Shklovski,
Burke, Kiesler, & Kraut, 2010).
• The speed of information sharing and the organic creation of viral key terms
and hashtags create new challenges for risk and crisis communicators
handling uncertainty and credibility issues in reputation management
practices.

5. Purpose of Research
"I cannot stress this highly enough: If you are in the projected path of this
hurricane, take precautions now. The federal government has spent the
better part of last week working … to see to it that we're prepared. All
indications point to this being a historic hurricane."
-­‐
President
Barack
Obama,
August
26,
2011
• Focuses on the social media analysis and modeling of Hurricane Irene,
which impacted most of the East Coast of the United States in August
2011.
• Determine what constitutes to have a “good” crisis message during a
disaster or crisis situation, such as a natural disaster.

6. Justification of Research
• Previous research within social media and crisis communications
has yet to delve into what constitutes a “good” crisis messages.
• For example, do emergency messages need to have a
hashtag and a photo?
• What if an emergency message only has a link?
• How effective are emergency messages that have a personal
touch(e.g., use of text, voice, or video).
RQ1: What are the main attributes constitutes what a “good” crisis
message appearing on social media?
RQ2: What are the best practices to effectively communicate via
social media in a crisis situation?

7. Method
• A total of 2,157 updates were collected from August 22 to September 1,
2011 from the social media monitoring site Social Mention during the
time Hurricane Irene hit the East Coast of the United States.
– Data was collected and downloaded into CSV files for analysis twice
a day at 8 am and 8 pm EST.
• Scale items were incorporated into model based on previous crisis
communication and social media literature
• Integration of qualitative and quantitative value modeling techniques
– A set of best practices and propose a simple baseline model for what
comprises a “good” crisis message, using the collected Hurricane
Irene data as a proof-of-concept model.
Review
of
the
Formulate
Scale
Qualita-ve
Value
Quan-ta-ve
Value
Best
Academic
Literature
Items
Model
Model
Prac-ces

8. Qualitative Value Model
• Objectives are phrased in the form of a goal with a maximum or minimum
value assigned to them that indicates the optimal result (Parnell et al., 2011).
• A good qualitative value model is one that is “collectively exhaustive and
mutually exclusive,” meaning that it is as complete as possible without
introducing redundancy.
• Figure displays the overall functional hierarchy of the system with function,
subfunctions, and qualitative value measures.

9. Quantitative Value Model
Func;ons:
Value
ques;on
Scale/Values:
F01
Communicate
Quickly
Max
comm
speed
VM01_1
Quick
and
honest
response?
High
quality
and
quick
10
Medium
quality
and
quick
5
Low
quality
and
quick
2
High
quality
and
slow
Max
value
of
comm
VM01_2
Reporter
present
on
ground
during
crisis?
On
site
10
At
agency
8
Not
local
5
Func;ons:
Value
ques;on
F02
Be
Credible
Max
credibility
scale
VM02_1
Internal
or
external
crisis
origin?
Internal
origin
10
External
origin
8
VM02_2
ATribu;on
of
crisis
responsibility?
Good
crisis
responsibility
response
10
Medium
crisis
resp.
response
5
Bad
crisis
responsibility
response
0
VM02_3
History
of
similar
crises?
No
history
10
One
event
8
Two
events
6
Three
or
more
events
VM02_4
Level
of
consistency?
High
ra;ng
10
Medium
ra;ng
5
Low
ra;ng
0
VM02_5
Tradi;onal
media
outlet?
News
personality
7
News
agency
8
Government
agency
10
Other
Func;ons:
Value
ques;on
F03
Be
Accurate
Max
accuracy
scale
VM03_1
Presence
of
topical
keywords?
10+
words
with
references
(hashtag)
10
5-­‐9
words
with
references
8
1-­‐4
words
with
references
5
No
references
VM03_2
Real
;me
monitoring
links,
graphics
etc?
Link
to
updates
+
good
graphic
10
Link
to
updates
+
graphic
8
Link
to
sta;c
info
+
good
graphic
7
Link
only
Func;ons:
Value
ques;on
F04
Be
Simple
Max
value
of
comm
VM04_1
Conversa;onal/"real"
voice?
High
conversa;onal
ra;ng
10
Medium
conversa;onal
ra;ng
5
Low
conversa;onal
ra;ng
0
Func;ons:
Value
ques;on
F05
Be
Complete
Max
#
of
resources
VM05_1
Info
about
safety
given?
Good
info
+
link
to
updates
10
Info
only
7
No
info
0
VM05_2
Info
about
sources
of
relief?
Good
info
+
link
to
updates
10
Info
only
7
No
info
0
Link
to
facebook
VM05_3
Secondary
messages
in
different
medium?
Link
to
video
8
Link
to
website
10
Link
to
TwiTer
account
8
account
VM05_4
Relevant
response
and
rescue
user
data?
High
relevance
10
Medium
relevance
5
Low
relevance
0
Func;ons:
Value
ques;on
F06
Communicate
Broadly
Max
follow/RT
VM06_1
Presence
of
hashtag?
Yes
10
No
0
VM06_2
Presence
of
URL?
Yes
10
No
0
VM06_3
Ability
to
forward
message
during
crisis?
TwiTer
Retweet
op;on
10
Facebook
share
op;on
10

10. Descriptive Statistics
• Researchers took first 480 updates from Social Mention sample
to analyze initial coding of the crisis messages.
• The top expert mentions via Twitter included the following Twitter
accounts: @breakingnews (N=39), @cfnews13 (N=37), and
@atlanticwatch (N=43).
• Other statistics
– 209 had embedded URLs
– 262 had graphics
– 22 had @ twitter references
– 9 had hashtangs (#keyword)

11. Best Messages

12. Results
RQ1: What are the main attributes constitutes
what a “good” crisis message appearing on social
media?
• Several of the updates had hashtags associated
with them that was related to the Hurricane
Irene crisis
• Majority had links associated with update (ex.
photos, news articles, videos, etc)
• Link that was most popular was to YouTube
videos.
• Messages concerning safety, confirmed
information, and including credible Twitter
usernames in crisis (ex. Weather Channel)

13. • RQ2: What are the best practices to effectively
communicate via social media in a crisis situation?
– Integrating multimedia and links into updates.
– Proper use of hashtags and tagged keywords.
– Coordinating efforts with relative parties and
agencies in crisis with social media messages and
hashtags.
– Focus messages on self efficacy, safety, and
provide additional resources of information
– Communicate in a transparent manner and have a
“real voice.”
– Balance between official and conversational
updates in crisis.
– Provide updates educating how followers and
others should communicate needs and questions
to authorities (ex. Project EPIC and Tweak the
Tweet application)

14. Discussion
• Social media offers many benefits for organizations, including
daily monitoring and crisis management both of which impact
reputation management and issues management (Heath &
Palenchar, 2009).
• Inconsistency across agencies and news regarding the use of
hashtags.
• Use of Twitter and YouTube as primary references to crisis
messages.
– Breaking news and Visual components necessary for
effective crisis messages
• Understanding what constitutes as being a “good” crisis message
• Further research needs to explore this across different platforms

15. Future Recommendations for Research &
Practice
• Implications for this research include
guidelines for effective crisis
communication and reputation
management monitoring through social
media platform.
• Implications to tiers & sub categories for
key terms within social media
• Convergence of social media and mobile
technologies in communicating during
crisis.
• Real-time implications for brand,
individual, and corporate reputation via
social media.

17. Questions or Comments?
Thank you very much.
Karen
Freberg,
Ph.D.
Email:
karen.freberg@louisville.edu
Assistant
Professor
Website:
www.karenfreberg.com
University
of
Louisville
Blog:
www.karenfreberg.com/blog
TwiYer:
@kfreberg
Louisville,
KY
40292