Managing Crisis Communication via Social Media

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)