Managing Crisis Communication via Social Media

Abstract

Social media is becoming omnipresent in everyone's daily life, which is changing the way consumers think, act and buy. Organizations are aware of the possibilities that may occur from developing social media communication strategies, but oftentimes forget to predict and block negative consequences. Information spreadability and bad communication practices are the perfect trigger of a social media crisis, which is why it is crucial for organizations to know what kind of communication, both internal and external, they need to implement. To explore consumers' opinions on social media crisis communication, an online survey was conducted. 125 participants gave their insight into their expectations of the types and tone of social media messages organizations should communicate during a time of crisis. These findings could be used as a guideline for crisis communication planning, considering they examine what types of messages consumers prefer, and which medium of communication they prefer. Even though it is recognized that crisis situations can have a huge impact on an organization's wellbeing, consumers' perspective on crisis communication still has not been researched thoroughly.

Keywords: public relations, crisis situation, social media, crisis communication, consumer perspective on crisis communication

Source: Anja Špoljarić, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350967862_Managing_Crisis_Communication_Via_Social_Media
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Introduction

As Strandberg and Vigsø said, "every organization will at one time or another face a crisis or a transformation, and therefore needs to be prepared to communicate with both external and internal stakeholders". Thanks to the internet and all the possibilities it offers, especially now that social media is taking over everyday lives with the usage of it being 144 minutes per day, crises are more likely to affect organizations negatively.

This is exactly what crises are; sudden events that happen unexpectedly and have a negative effect on organization's integrity and its employees with possible effects on societal wellbeing.

Social media democratizes information and turns content creation into a process among a group of people. It is a combination of mobile and web-based technologies that create platforms (which are first and foremost interactive) suitable for content creation, content sharing, and content discussion by each individual (that is interested to do so) or a group. Companies are now using these new media channels to interact with their consumers and build relationships. However, this two-way communication provides interactivity which can affect employee engagement, which is why social media has become one of the internal communication channels as well.

Libai et al. recognize the changes that appeared in customer to customer (C2C) interactions in the last few decades, especially the ones that occur thanks to social media networks. They include a new way of communicating, not only verbally, but also nonverbally, such as expressing consumption related attitudes on social media platforms. These changes gave an opportunity for customers to talk to each other and talk back to companies, but most significantly – an opportunity to offer their own content. Blažević et al. introduced a concept of customer-driven influence (CDI) and defined it as "the impact of customers' verbal and non-verbal communication on other customers' attitudes and behaviors".

All these changes are applicable in internal communication as well because social media is a superior channel option compared to previous ones, considering they bring the opportunity to communicate across distance, offer both verbal and nonverbal communication by allowing an exchange of pictures, videos and other forms of media, and are easily adjusted to fit the organization's (or more specifically, a group within an organization's) needs.

Social media platforms support idea sharing, information and knowledge distribution, promote innovation and creativity by allowing content creation. Taking this, as well as the concept of CDI and the fact there are 2.65 billion social media users, brings up an issue of adequately managing crisis communication through social media. Crisis can also be an opportunity for an organization, as it offers a chance to develop and improve (if problems and causes are adequately diagnosed), while also allowing a company's image to strengthen, provided the crisis is dealt with properly.

The aim of this study was to determine consumers' perspective on crisis communication management via social media. Today, it is important to determine what kind of communication is expected of organizations during a crisis, and whether there is a preferred form of it amongst consumers to ensure that consequences of a crisis are reduced as much as possible. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to give an indication on what crisis communication via social media should look like, and how it should be managed.

Literature Review

Crisis communication management

One part of crisis management is crisis communication in all its forms. "When crisis communication is ineffective, so is the crisis management effort". Fearn-Banks describes crisis communication as "the dialogue between the organization and its public(s) prior to, during, and after the negative occurrence", which can hurt the organization's image. The main goal of crisis communication is to reduce or eliminate the negative effects a crisis situation can cause. To prevent crisis communication from being ineffective, and simultaneously crisis management, it is crucial to manage crisis communication.

Bernstein offers ten steps to crisis communication management and divides them into pre and post-crisis actions. Pre-crisis actions include anticipating the crisis, followed by identifying a crisis communications team, identifying, and training a spokesperson, establishing notification, and monitoring systems, identifying, and knowing organization's stakeholders and developing preliminary messages. It is clear that effective crisis communication management depends on preparation. When a crisis develops, there is not enough time to be proactive, which leaves insufficient time to carry out all the necessary steps from the beginning.

Social media crisis communication

Considering that prompt and honest communication increases consumers' trust in an organization and its actions, social media is a more than acceptable channel to communicate through as well. Social media, and any other interactive communication media/tool, offers both one-way and two-way communication during a crisis, which is something organizations try to combine to maximize the outcomes. New media forms are especially effective during initial crisis events because sometimes, but notably in the beginning, the public perceives lower levels of crisis if exposed to social media communication than traditional communication via mass media, such as newspapers.

Researchers recognized that social media communication has a human (more personal) or corporate (more impersonal) voice which have a different effect on communication success, including in the time of a crisis. The research questions, based on these findings, for this study, were as follows:

RQ1 – What kind of communication do consumers active on social media expect from an organization when a crisis occurs?

RQ1a – Do consumers active on social media prefer a specific (social) media channel when it comes to crisis communication?

RQ1b – Do consumers active on social media prefer a specific tone to crisis communication messages that are shared via social media channels?

Method

Research design

Research ideas and survey questions were based on Jahng and Hong's 2017 research of "the role of human voice over corporate voice (…) on the public evaluation of corporate crisis communication on Twitter". The survey conducted for this research was an online survey made in Google Forms, shared on author's social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) to reach social media users. A survey link was shared in several different posts that included the author's Facebook status, regular Instagram posts, and Instagram stories and tweets. The link was also shared in the author's Instagram bio. Data for this research was collected in 2018 and analyzed in IBM SPSS Statistics, version 25.

The survey consisted of four different parts. The first part was designed to collect demographics on each participant; their gender, age group, and employment status.

The second part examined participants' social media usage habits. The participants were asked to share which social media they use, how much time they spend using their social media in a day, whether they follow any brands on their social media, and if so, why.

The third part of the survey presented a crisis situation that occurred on social media platforms (specifically, on YouTube). The participants were asked to watch a short video3 showing a delivery man throwing a package visibly containing a computer monitor over a fence. At some point this video went viral, thanks to social media, and caused a crisis for the delivery service provider. After watching, the participants were asked multiple choice questions, such as predicting their reaction if the video were showing a delivery man from a company they use. An open question to explain their reaction was also posed. Participants were also asked whether they would expect a response from this company, which was a single-answer question and which platforms they would deem suitable to be the company's reaction media, which was a multiple-answer question.

The fourth part of the survey showed a video4 of crisis communication for the aforementioned crisis situation – a senior vice president of the company gave a minute-and-a-half long speech to acknowledge the situation and apologize. The participants answered questions regarding their perception of this particular crisis communication. They evaluated appropriateness of YouTube as a media channel for this crisis communication, and also gave an overall grade (from 1 to 5, where 1 was the lowest and 5 was the highest grade) of the speech. Next was the participants' assessment of the crisis communication voice on a ten-point Likert scale (where 1 was extremely corporate and 10 was extremely personal). To make a comparison, they also shared, on the same scale, which tone of the message they would prefer. At the end of the survey, the participants decided, on a five-point Likert scale (where 1 was "I completely disagree" and 5 "I completely agree") whether they agree with statements regarding crisis communication from the example but also crisis communication in general.

Participants' characteristics

A total of 125 participants completed the online survey regarding a certain crisis situation and crisis communication. Sample demographics are presented in Table 1.

Table 1. Sample profiles on key demographic variables (N = 125)

Results

To answer research questions, it was important to determine participants' social media usage habits to see if their answers were relevant. In the survey, they shared which social media platform they use, how much they use it daily, whether they follow any brands on their social media accounts, and why. Their answers are shown in Table 2.

Clearly, participants are avid social media users who also predominantly follow some brands on their social media. This meant they were suitable to rate social media crisis communication seeing as they would, in the situation, be a target group for social media crisis communication.

After seeing a short video showing a situation that later turned into a crisis for a delivery service provider, participants shared their opinions. Their reaction to this kind of situation (if it happened with a delivery service provider that operated in their country), and what they seem to think would be a suitable reaction from the company itself are presented in Table 3.

Table 2. Social media usage habits among participants (N = 125)

Notes: SM = social media.

*Multiple-answer question. Participants could choose more than one answer and percentages could sum up to more than 100%.

**Upper values not included in the frequency and percentage of each row.

Table 3. Social media crisis perception (N = 125)

Table 4. Perceived and preferred tone of the crisis communication message (corporate versus personal) (N = 125)

Most of the participants would cease to use services from the particular delivery service provider. They elaborated their answers, and almost all of them (out of 74 participants who would stop using services) agreed that they would be afraid for their packages. One of them wrote: "If one employee does this, who will guarantee that my expensive monitor will be delivered undamaged?" Considering almost 60% of possible service users would never do business with a company due to a video going viral on social media, the impact of (possible or actual) crisis is undeniable.

More than 90% of the participants would expect a response, but mostly on social media excluding YouTube (which is the social media where the crisis occurred) and/ or on company's official website. It is curious that not even 20% of participants would expect a response in the form of a YouTube video – perhaps they deem this kind of media too extensive.

After seeing a video showing a response to the aforementioned situation, a video of a senior vice president of the company acknowledging the situation and apologizing for it, participants were asked to rate the specific crisis communication. The overall score, on a scale from 1 to 5 (where 1 was "Extremely bad" and 5 was "Extremely good") for the specific crisis communication, was 3.5. Their opinions on the tone of the message (corporate versus personal) are shown in Table 4.

Clearly, perceived and preferred tone of the message differ by quite a bit. The participants would want a personal message, but the company opted (according to them) for one a bit more corporate in tone. Ideally, the tone would be slightly more personal than corporate (average score = 6.2). But, in reality, it was slightly more corporate (average score = 4.3).

The participants were also asked to determine whether they agree with statements regarding the specific situation and crisis communication they saw, and crisis communication in general. Average scores (on a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 was "Strongly disagree" and 5 was "Strongly agree") are shown in Table 5.

All of the statements regarding the specific crisis situation and communication got an average score between 3.2 and 3.6. The participants obviously are not too satisfied with it, but they are also not dissatisfied. However, some stronger opinions are visible for the statements regarding crisis communication in general. They disagree that organizations should choose only one social media channel to communicate during a crisis, which leads to believe they feel organizations should choose more than one social media channel to communicate during a crisis. The participants also disagree that crisis communication should be corporate, and somewhat agree it should be personal. However, the strongest disagreement is noticeable for the statement "Crisis communication should offer only an apology", while simultaneously, the strongest agreement is noticeable for the statement "Crisis communication should, besides an apology, offer a strategy for future prevention of similar situations". Somewhat similar scores to these were given by the participants to the statements "Organizations should communicate at all times during a crisis", which they agree with, and "Organizations should wait until the crisis is over to communicate", which they disagree with.

Table 5. Average scores regarding a specific crisis communication event and crisis communication in general (N = 125)

Discussion

Even though the exact content of the message may not be the most important, the participants would still want more than just an apology. Sturges agrees, stating that crisis communication content should be oriented toward instructions. This, of course, includes both an internal public that demands more extensive information, and an external public that needs reassuring. The participants somewhat agree that this crisis communication said everything that needed to be said but would have preferred it be said in a more personal tone of voice – one of the aspects they agree should be changed. Jahng and Hong's research concluded that a more personal tone of voice in crisis communication is more efficient for consumers that are not familiar with the organization, because it stimulates an emotional connection. On the other hand, consumers who were familiar with the organization prior to the crisis, wish for the communication to be both personal and corporate – the right amount of personal tone reinforces their relationship to the organization, while a corporate tone of voice should be used to deliver facts about the course of action designed to reduce the negative effects. This is the information they need to communicate rationally with other consumers while defending the brand they support. This explains why participants felt communication should have been more personal – they needed to connect emotionally because this delivery service provider does not operate in their country. Therefore, they are not really familiar with the brand and do not use their services, and so there is no reason for them to need rational information they could use for defense.

Social media provides emotional support during a crisis, which is perhaps why participants feel organizations should choose more than one social media platform for crisis communication. Relationships formed on social media go beyond organization-consumer ones and continue on to form consumer to consumer bonds, and sometimes even end up in creating groups of consumers, creating a virtual community.

One of the most crucial aspects of crisis communication is coherence between activities, where one of the major problems is linking internal and external communication efforts. For crisis communication to be seen as a management task, it should be carried out on different levels – societal level, organizational level and level of messages. The biggest part of an organizational level is internal (crisis) communication management, which can also be seen externally. Consumers agree with Bernstein that communication should occur prior to, during, and post crisis, a task that, according to his crisis management steps, has to be managed internally to be visible externally.

Social media has changed the way consumers communicate, which ultimately changed the way organizations communicate, and finally, operate. Even though social media offers an abundance of opportunities for organizations, such as customer relationship management, evolution in business models, internal communication management and so on, it is not free of risk. Not only has social media become a channel for corporate communication, but it has also become a form of media that connects consumers. Consumers are now able to influence each other's opinions and behavior and social media communication. If not managed properly, it can provoke negative attitudes towards specific organizations. When a crisis occurs in the age of social media, it has a greater reach than it used to have, but so does social media crisis communication. It is a risk, as much as an opportunity.

To minimize the risk, crisis communication needs to be managed. Social media requires a special approach, which means there also needs to be social media crisis communication management. If done properly, it can even improve an organization's reputation. Crisis communication management includes preparation prior to the crisis itself. It also includes proper internal crisis communication, because employees are the best advocates, and when they know what is going on, they are more motivated to solve the problem. Once the internal public (which includes all employee groups, investors, board of directors and more) are aware and informed, the external public should be too. Perhaps there are not enough information at the beginning, but any information is better than none. Crisis communication should be an integrated process that offers brief acknowledgment of the situation at the beginning – something social media channels are excellent for, but also an extensive course of action that is developed in order to minimize negative effects – type of information that should be shared via many different channels. Those first messages should be reassuring and personal, but the more extensive ones require a more professional tone of voice.

Customers also want to be informed after the situation settles down and business returns to a new normal state. Crisis communication management is a course of action prior to, during, and post crisis situation. It combines both internal and external activities, and social media, when properly managed, is a great channel to help reduce negative impacts.