Master’s Thesis
Understanding Corporate Crisis Management on Social Media
An analysis of social media crises of 17 multinational organizations from an audience perspective Written by: Dennis Latz 12042684 Supervisor: Dr James Slevin 22.01.2020
Master’s programme Communication Science Graduate School of Communication
1 Abstract
With the exponential growth of internet-based communication and social networks as a tool for two-way communication between businesses and stakeholders many organizations have inaugurated social media use for their crisis communication. Little guidance exists in the literature as to how traditional crisis communication theory can best be adopted to these social networks. This study examined the crisis communication of 17 large for-profit organizations through the lens of Coombs Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) and the effectiveness with which they incorporated their crisis communication on social media from an audience perspective. A quantitative content analysis of 1263 user messages revealed a significant relationship between an organization’s online engagement in two-way
communication and the way stakeholders reacted. The results suggested that audiences were more positive in their comments when an organization showed interactive behaviour during the crisis. In addition, this study suggests that organizations can benefit from the two-way communication with its stakeholders during times of crisis in that they can make use of the input of the audience to further develop pro-active strategies for their future crisis
communication efforts. This paper provides a revised conceptual framework of the SCCT from which crisis managers as well as scholars can benefit.
2 Introduction
Incidents in organizations have the potential to turn into crisis, even more so in today’s digital era. Crises can then potentially either make or break an organization’s reputation amongst its stakeholders (Cornelissen, 2010). The effects on the reputation are dependent on the speed of response (Roshan, 2016). As such, in today’s globalized world the internet and social media have brought about new opportunities for organizations. In this paper the definition of social media by Austin is applied that “social media are digital tools and applications that facilitate interactive communication and content exchange among and between audiences and organizations” (Austin, 2012). On social media organizations can build their media reputation, which is associated with organizational performance, and enhance their media attention. This can be utilized to communicate crisis responses, build a good reputation among the public, or inform the public about events or changes inside the organization (Schafraad, 2016). Ever since social media has emerged, the global flow of information has changed drastically. The new media platforms have become a part of people’s everyday lives. Estimates from 2014 already showed that more than 1 billion users were registered on Facebook and 115 million active users were counted on Twitter (Sung, 2014). These numbers illustrate the importance for organizations to have a functioning and well-structured media strategy in order to actively communicate with their stakeholders. The growing significance of the social networks is demonstrated by its exponential growth. Compared to 2014, in 2019 Twitter counted more than 300 million active users while
Facebook counted 2.45 billion active monthly users (Clement, 2019). Especially on these two social networking websites users can post status updates, comments, tag users, and interact with people from all over the world who are interested in the same topics (Eriksson, 2018). These tools essentially increase the speed of information sharing and it allows for a real-time dialogue between different parties. For an organization such platforms are a tool to not only
3 communicate actively with its stakeholders and get to know about their concerns and
questions, but it also allows them to gain a better understanding of stakeholders needs (Zheng, 2018). In times of crises, it often provides more clarity which can be utilized to enhance organizational reputation. Nevertheless, a simple adaptation and usage of social media is unlikely to protect organizations from reputational damage in times of crisis, unless they are committed to use these new tools effectively for their crisis communication
management (Ki, 2014).
Despite the strategic importance of these social networks little research has been conducted on the usage of social media for crisis management and the applicability of existing theory. A study by Ki and Nekmat recommends undertaking further research into crisis
response strategies on social media and whether these strategies could help to minimize the negative effects of a crisis from an audience perspective (Ki, 2014). This research has not been conducted yet, which indicates that a gap concerning the effect of social media strategies on audiences exists in the scientific knowledge. To address this gap in the literature, the present study is therefore interested in the different relationships of crisis response strategies on audiences.
The findings from this study are significant for multiple reasons. First, they offer insights into social media practices and different factors that should be taken into
consideration when using social media as an effective tool for crisis communication. Second, this study examined leading for-profit organizations which are in almost all cases Fortune 500 companies that are usually leaders in the application of newer technologies. Understanding their social media efforts during times of crisis allows for a broader applicability as other organizations can also profit from the results of this study. Finally, this study brings to light important features of crisis communication on social media with the help of a revised SCCT
4 framework that not only practitioners and crisis managers, but also stakeholders, and scholars alike can benefit from.
This research paper is therefore guided by the following overarching research question:
RQ: Which features, and strategies can best be utilized by organizations to restore their reputation on social media during times of crisis?
Theoretical Framework Crisis
A crisis is defined as the “perception of an unpredictable event that threatens important expectancies of stakeholders and can seriously impact an organization’s performance and generate negative outcomes” (Coombs, 2007). During a crisis, proper crisis communication can reduce the reputational damage on an organization (Claeys, 2010). Coombs invented the Situational Crises Communication Theory (SCCT) as a guide towards media practitioners to follow certain guidelines that allow to understand the situation at hand and make the right choices in terms of choosing from a set of different crises response strategies that are meant for keeping reputational damage at a minimum. In today’s new media landscape,
practitioners, however, not always tend to follow these guidelines (Claeys, 2016). Business crisis are in the news almost daily and some say that in the lifetime of an organization there will also be a crisis (Lippitt, 1967). Some of the largest corporate crisis such as the
Volkswagen Diesel scandal, the Toyota pedal scandal, or the BP oil scandal can be taken as examples of how an organizational reputation can suffer during times of crisis. It is
noteworthy that a scholar-practitioner divide exists where certain types of crisis response strategies are used more frequently than others no matter which crisis the organization is
5 facing. As a result, this study is interested in what traditional crisis response strategies have been employed by organizations on social media.
RQ1: Which traditional crisis response strategies have been used on social media? Organizational reputation and Attribution of Responsibility
The SCCT is utilized as a framework for better understanding how one can maximize the reputational protection afforded by post crisis communication (Coombs, 2007). In order to understand how the theory works in practice it is necessary to define both organizational reputation and stakeholders. According to Luoma-Aho, stakeholders are defined as any group that can affect or be affected by the behaviour of an organization (Luoma-Aho, 2000). Cheng in her article “How Social Media is Changing Crisis Communication Strategies: Evidence from the Updated Literature” criticized this definition used by Coombs as it is a rather general definition to describe the different party (Cheng, 2018). By using this definition in his theory, Coombs ignored the strategies and crisis response forms of stakeholder desired strategies (Cheng, 2018). According to Fombrun and Gardberg reputation is rooted in the aggregated perceptions of the organization’s stakeholders (Fombrun, 2000). Furthermore, Fombrun and van Riel suggested that organizations with a good reputation attract positive stakeholder engagement (Fombrun, 2003). Coombs, additionally, noticed that a good reputation can captivate customers and new talent, generate investment interest, and create a competitive advantage (Coombs, 2007). The reputation of an organization continuously develops through information stakeholders receive about the organization (Fombrun, 2003). Many stakeholder groups receive their information on social networking sites (Lin, 2016). Accordingly,
organizations should maintain their social media feeds in order to keep their stakeholders in the loop about organizational developments.
6 In times of crisis, stakeholders can either be harmed physically, emotionally, or
financially. In 2007 Coombs argued that stakeholders then make sense of a situation with attributing the level of responsibility (Coombs, 2007). According to the theory an organization can identify the responsibility by identifying the type of crisis an organization is facing. Moreover, the SCCT posits that by understanding the crisis situation managers can determine which crisis response strategy will maximize reputational protection. There is a total of three different characteristics that need to be taken into consideration to understand the crisis. Firstly, crisis managers are encouraged to identify the initial crisis responsibility, that is how much stakeholders think an organizations actions caused the crisis, secondly, crisis history must be determined, and lastly prior relational reputation.
RQ2: How often did the initial crisis responsibility according to the crisis type differ from the responsibility awarded by stakeholders?
Crisis type
Pearson and Mitroff identified three different types of crisis (Pearson, 1993). There are three clusters, namely the victim cluster, the accidental cluster, and the preventable cluster. Each of these clusters are directly linked to the initial crisis responsibility. According to Coombs who drew upon previous research recognized that crises that fall into the victim cluster have weak attributions of crisis responsibility and an organization is viewed as the victim of the crisis (Coombs, 2002). Coombs names natural disasters, workplace violence, and rumour as some examples of crisis that are part of the first cluster. Crises that fall into the accidental cluster also only have minimal attribution of crisis responsibility. Here, examples mostly include technical issues, such as technical errors which are unintentional or
uncontrollable. Finally, crisis that fall into the preventable cluster have a very strong attribution of crisis responsibility. Here examples include human-error or organizational misdeed (Coombs, 2007).
7 Coombs and Holladay have found empirical evidence for their theory and suggest that using certain crisis response strategies depending on what crisis type the organization is in will help protect the reputation. Similarly, a study conducted by Sheldon & Sallot in 2008 found empirical evidence for this hypothesized relationship between crisis type and
organizational reputation (Sheldon, 2008). In the existing literature there are also other types of crisis mentioned, such as social media crisis. This term is used for crises that either
emerged on social media or were intensified by social media (Coombs, 2007). These types of crisis, however, most often result from customer service problems and in these cases,
organizations will not bring together their crisis management team to address customer service issues (Coombs, 2014). The next research question of this paper is linked to the crisis types offered by Pearson, Mitroff, and Coombs.
RQ3: To what extent are the observed crisis types and the tone of the comments related? SCCT posits that organizational reputation is strongly associated with the attributed responsibility. Therefore, the first hypotheses of this research paper are the following: H1: Preventable crisis will predominantly receive negative reactions from stakeholders on social media.
H2: Accidental crisis will predominantly receive either neutral or positive reactions from stakeholders on social media.
H3: Victim crisis will predominantly receive neutral or positive reactions from stakeholders on social media.
Traditional crisis response strategies
Crisis communication is the capability of an organization to communicate in a professional manner under pressure to their stakeholders (Marra, 1998). There are several crisis response strategies that can be utilized in order to repair the organizational reputation,
8 reduce negative affect of a crisis, and prevent negative behavioural intentions (Coombs, 2007). For each of the crisis types, Coombs and Holladay propose three sets of response strategies. For crises in which the organization is seen as the victim, rather than the
perpetrator, denying strategies are suggested to have best effects on protecting the reputation. These response strategies are an attempt to remove the connection between the organization and the crisis at hand. The crisis manager can choose from a set of three denying strategies, namely attack the accuser, denial, or scapegoat. If stakeholders accept this frame presented by the organization, the organization is spared any reputational harm (Coombs, 2007). For crises that are part of the accidental cluster diminishing crisis response strategies are meant to help the organization. Crisis managers can either use excuse strategies or justification strategies. These lessen the connection between the crisis and the organization and the crisis in general is seen less negatively. Finally, Coombs suggests that in crises that fall into the preventable cluster, rebuild crisis response strategies should be used. Here, crisis managers can choose between compensation and apology. In addition, managers should try to present positive information about the organization of past good deeds to offset the negatives of the crisis (Coombs, 2007). Utz and Schulz in their article “Crisis communication online: How medium, crisis type, and emotions affected public reactions in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster” incorporated the information strategy (Utz, 2013). The information strategy is one in which the organization does not necessarily present a certain traditional crisis response strategy but rather provides information only.
It is noteworthy at this point that the SCCT is already more than 10 years old and relies on a one-way communication model. In addition, scholars have criticized that the model has not integrated the full influence of media, and in detail the influence of social media on crisis communication (Cheng, 2018).
9 In the literature mixed findings are presented about the influence of the crisis response strategies put forth by the SCCT on the reputation of an organization. Grappi & Romani and Sung reported that matched and mismatched response strategies did not differ in terms of protecting the reputation (Grappi, 2015, Sung, 2014). Additionally, Verhoeven, van Hoof, ter Keurs, and van Vuuren found in their paper “Effects of apologies and crisis responsibility on corporate and spokesperson reputation” that organizational reputation suffered to the same degree whether a corporation used apology or not (Verhoeven, 2012). Research by Ki & Nekmat, and Bradford, however indicated that by issuing an apology, audiences tend to react more positively and consequently minimizes the damage to the reputation (Ki, 2014,
Bradford, 1995). The next hypothesis can be derived.
H4: When an organization uses Apology as a strategy on social media, the tone of the comments of stakeholder messages is predominantly positive.
Even though mixed findings are presented in the literature, the most important piece of evidence comes from a meta-analysis by Ma (Ma, 2016). In the end of their study they
combined all research and found that in general organizational reputation is in fact strongly associated with attributed responsibility and the reputation is also weakly associated with SCCT identified crisis response strategies (Ma, 2016). Therefore, they find clear support for the most important propositions of Coombs theory. Coombs, however, treated the audience differently than is the case today (Coombs, 2007). Trying to find links between response strategies and how the media views an organization in times of crisis, Coombs saw the audience as passive and receiving. Today, however, the audience has more influence and became an active recipient of firm dominated messages.
H5: An organization that is interactive with its stakeholders on social media will have fewer negative comments from the audience.
10 Social media characteristics: immediacy and interactivity
Coombs research should not entirely be standing by itself in the digital era. Coombs wrote his theory in the early 2000s and focused on news media frames. Hence, the theory partly misses aspects of social media that dominate today’s information sharing world. At this point it is important to define stakeholders once again. The definition used earlier by Coombs that stakeholders are defined as any group that can affect or be affected by the behaviour of an organization can now be specified towards social media use. In social media stakeholders can now be defined in more detail, namely as customers of an organization. This definition helps organizations to narrow down the precise needs of this group of stakeholders.
One of the shortcomings of the SCCT is the interactivity happening in online
communication. Besides interactivity, social media is instantaneous, serves both to individuals and masses, there is no requirement of professionalism, one is beyond space and time, and messages can be altered (Civelek, 2016). These characteristics of social media pose certain risks to organizations in crisis. While Coombs theory is based on the public being a passive receiver of firm-dominated crisis communication, the new age of the internet has brought about new challenges to crisis managers. Since everyone has access to the networks, new frames of a crisis can immediately be created by audiences all around the world. With new technologies, first-hand reporting by people on scene possessing nothing more than a mobile phone provides almost instant news which then spreads rapidly among people’s networks (Veil, 2011). Here, not journalists create the frames that organizations lay out to them, but rather individuals make sense of a situation, often before an organization can even react to an event. A set of 10 best practices has been developed by Veil in order to help organizations use the potentials of social media. Some of the important aspects of these practices are to plan ahead, partner with the public, listen to the public, communicate with honesty and openness, and meet the needs of the media and remain accessible (Veil, 2011). Roshan in his work
11 “Understanding the use of social media by organizations” also acknowledges that both
consumers and customers expect the organization to communicate about the crisis in a timely manner (Roshan, 2016). In their research about Australian organizations in crisis they in fact found that many organizations fail to listen to these demands and that they did not reply to stakeholders during times of crisis (Roshan, 2016).
The next hypothesis is the following:
H6: The immediacy in which organizations issue a statement about a crisis predicts how stakeholders react to the crisis.
Conceptual Framework
Figure 1: Conceptual Framework (retrieved and modified from Coombs 2007) The underlying theoretical framework of this study is Coombs Situational Crisis communication theory. The conceptual framework created in this study shows a modified version applicable to crisis communication management on social media. This study hypothesized that some new key elements play a role in shaping the reputation of an
12 organization in times of crisis. The crisis response strategies influence the organizational reputation and the immediacy in which they issue a statement on social media has an impact on this relationship. Therefore, this study hypothesized that the immediacy in which an organization acts predicts the organizational reputation. Generally, this study measured reputation by identifying the tone of the comments of active stakeholders of the organization. In addition, this study hypothesized that the crisis types and accordingly the level of
responsibility influence organizational reputation as well. Lastly, an organizational engagement in interactive behaviour with its stakeholders is also associated with organizational reputation.
Methodology Design and Sample
To address the research question, a quantitative content analysis on Twitter and Facebook was conducted. Seventeen different crises ranging from the years 2010 to 2019 were taken into the analysis. This study used a purposeful sampling technique to select the organizations in crisis with the following criteria: (1) presence of a Twitter and Facebook account, (2) an active social media feed with almost daily posts, (3) at least 50 available comments underneath a crisis statement, (4) the data is freely accessible. The crisis responses on the Twitter homepage of the organizations and the comments below these were reviewed. A total of 17 crisis statements and 1263 comments were manually reviewed. The crises were chosen according to the crisis clusters put forth by Coombs. The crises all fit the criteria of the different crisis types (victim, accidental and preventable). Some of these clusters offer far more examples than others, but still each cluster has been represented by several cases. To be more specific, there were 5 crisis of the victim cluster, 8 accidental crises, and 4 preventable
13 crises. There were an additional 2 crises for the preventable cluster, however, these were not taken into the analysis as these two organizations did not offer a statement on their social media feed.
Measures
Based on the research questions and hypotheses, the codebook shown in the Appendix focused on the following variables: crisis type, crisis response strategies, immediacy,
interactivity, initial crisis responsibility, and the tone of the comments. Crisis response strategies
To identify which crisis response strategy had been used by the organization, the researcher manually reviewed all crisis statements according to the codebook. This study used the following crisis response strategies: Attack the accuser, Denial, Scapegoat, Excuse,
Justification, Compensation, Apology, and Bolstering. Besides, the information strategy was also incorporated into the analysis. Bolstering was defined as an additional strategy that indicated that an organization reminded stakeholders of past good deeds and in the coding process information strategy and Bolstering were coded as one variable named Bolstering.
14 Table 1 (retrieved from Coombs)
Crisis types
The different crisis types were coded according to the crisis clusters which indicate families of crisis that show the level of responsibility attributed to the organization. Ranging from a low to a high crisis responsibility, the crises are victim, accidental, and preventable (Coombs, 2007). Table 1 provides examples of the different crisis types and the associated crisis response strategies.
Immediacy
This study measured the level of immediacy with which an organization replied to a crisis. The initial date of the crisis was taken as a starting point. To access the level of immediacy the date of the press release was taken. The amount of time it took for an
15 organization to reply to their stakeholders was then categorized by immediacy. The longer it took for an organization to reply, the less immediate the organization replied.
Audience response tone
To examine the overall audience reactions to the organizations chosen crisis response strategy delivered via social media, this study analysed the first audience comments in
reaction to the original organizational crisis message. The researcher reviewed a total of 1263 audience messages on Twitter and Facebook. After reviewing the comments according to the codebook, the overall tone of the audience responses was noted. In general, more positive messages were represented by comments that signified support for the organization in addition to other keywords found in the codebook. Negative comments were those in which audiences indicated that they were either angry, unhappy, or offended by the organization (Ki, 2014). In addition, negative comments were those in which users directly made clear that they would not use the services of the organization anymore. Messages that could not be coded in any of the two categories, for instance messages in which individuals expressed that they were not affected by the crisis, were coded as neutral responses. Each of the individual messages in the comments were coded according to the different tones.
Interactivity
This variable measured the level of contingent activity by organizations in crisis and its stakeholders. Contingent activity was then operationalized as any “expression of the extent that in each series of communication exchanges, any third message is related to earlier
16 Initial crisis responsibility
This variable was used to determine how stakeholders view the responsibility of the organization. Depending on the comments of the audience one could determine how much responsibility they awarded the organization. When the comments suggested that the audience actively put blame on the organization and saw the organization at fault for the crisis it was coded as high initial crisis responsibility. In cases where sympathy to the organization was shown the level of responsibility was lower.
Inter-coder reliability
This study used the Krippendorff’s alpha coefficient to test inter-coder reliability. This decision was inspired by research on reliability testing which makes clear that Krippendorff’s alpha is a satisfactory measure (Krippendorff, 2004). Since the coding of the dataset was performed by one coder, one additional coder was hired to test for reliability. Approximately 10 percent of the sample size was selected randomly. The reliability calculated for each variable was in all but 1 case above .8. The following inter-coder reliability scores were measured per variable: crisis response strategy .93, crisis type .91, interactivity .93, initial crisis responsibility .88, and tone of comments .79.
Results
During the coding process of the content analysis most of the variables were coded as categorical variables or dichotomies and Chi-Square tests of independence were conducted to test the different relationships between crisis type, response strategy, interactivity,
17 Research question 1
The first question sought to address which traditional crisis response strategies were used by the organizations on social media. The descriptive statistics of the dataset showed that not all the response strategies have been used. Namely, Attack the accuser and Denial were not employed by any of the organizations. Justification, on the other hand was executed most frequently followed by Apology, Bolstering, Compensation, Excuse, and Scapegoat (Table 2).
Table 2
Research Question 2
This question aimed at understanding whether there is a relationship between crisis type and initial crisis responsibility and how often these two variables differed. Crisis in the victim cluster were associated with low level of responsibility, crisis in the accidental cluster were associated with medium level of responsibility, and crisis in the preventable cluster were associated with high level of responsibility. A Chi-Square test of independence showed that there is a strong and statistically significant association between crisis type and initial crisis responsibility, Chi-Squared (4, 17) = 23.07, p < .001, Cramer’s V = .82. Table 3 indicates that only in the victim cluster the initial crisis responsibility differed. To be more specific, there
18 were a total of 7 victim crises, but in three cases the level of initial crisis responsibility was high instead of low.
Table 3
Research Question 3
This question aimed at examining whether there is a statistically significant association between crisis type and the tone of the comments. A Chi-Square test of
independence displayed that there is a statistically significant but weak association between crisis type and the tone of the comments, Chi-Squared (4, 1263) = 50.59, p < .001, Cramer’s V = .14 (Table 4).
Hypothesis 1, 2, 3
The first hypothesis makes a total of three different claims about the different crisis types and the tone of the comments. The first hypothesis states that in crisis that fall into the victim cluster, the tone of the comments is more positive. The second hypothesis claims that crisis that fall into the accidental cluster will predominantly receive positive or neutral comments, and finally the third hypothesis states that crisis that fall into the preventable cluster will predominantly receive negative comments. In order to test these three different claims a Chi-Square test of independence was conducted to test the relationship between
19 crisis types and the tone of the comments. The Chi-Square test revealed that there is a
statistically significant but weak relationship between crisis types and the tone of the
comments, Chi-Squared (4, 1263) = 50.59, p < .001, Cramer’s V = .14. To be more specific, the results were in line with the second and third hypothesis. For the victim cluster, however, the results indicated a different result with predominantly negative comments. H1 is partially supported.
Table 4
Hypothesis 4
This hypothesis tested the relationship between a certain crisis response strategy and the tone of the comments of the stakeholders. It claims that when apology is used as a strategy the tone of the comments is more positive. A Chi-Square test of independence was conducted to identify the relationship between the crisis response strategy apology and the tone of the comments. The test showed a statistically significant but weak relationship between apology and the tone of the comments, Chi-Squared (2, 1263) = 27.33, p < .001, Cramer’s V = .15. When looking at the frequency table (Table 5) one can identify that when apology was used
20 as a strategy more than 60% of the comments were negative and only 20.3 % of the comments were positive. H4 is not supported.
Table 5
Hypothesis 5
The next hypothesis claims that organizations during crisis on social media receive fewer negative comments when they are interactive with their stakeholders and reply to their messages. In order to test the association between interactivity and the tone of the comments a Chi-Square test of independence was conducted. The test revealed that there is a statistically significant but weak relationship between interactivity and the tone of the comments, Chi-Squared (2, 1263) = 38.00, p < .001, Cramer’s V = .17. Table 6 shows the frequencies and signals that while the organization was interactive it received fewer negative comments. H5 is supported.
21 Table 6
Hypothesis 6
The last hypothesis claims that the immediacy in which an organization issues a statement in times of crisis predicts the tone of the comments. In order to test this hypothesis a binary linear regression was performed. In the model the dependent variable was coded as a dichotomy. A 0 indicates a negative comment and a 1 indicates a neutral or positive comment. The binary logistic regression model predicting the tone of the comments from the immediacy in which an organization published a statement after a crisis on social media is statistically significant, F (2) = 136.90, p < .001. The model thus very likely helps to predict the tone of the comments in the population. The variance in immediacy explains 14% of the variance in the tone of the comments (Nagelkerk’s R² = .14).
The results indicate that as the organization takes longer in issuing a statement after a crisis on social media, the tone of the comments become more negative. The effect of the coefficient of the variable immediacy is statistically significant, Wald (1) = 36.66, p < .001. H6 is supported.
22 Table 7
Discussion
The findings from this study suggest that organizations in crisis may want to focus on different aspects when communicating with stakeholders on social networks. It is not only important what strategic message the organization posts in a statement, but also how sincerely they formulate it, how fast they post it, and how interactive they are with their stakeholders.
All tested hypotheses were found to be statistically significant. The overarching research question is which strategies can organizations use on social media to better protect their reputation. The data suggests that the different variables have an influence on the online reputation of an organization. Specifically, interactivity, and immediacy were found to be two deliverables that sparked positive replies by stakeholders.
This study additionally was interested in more general which crisis response strategies had been used by organizations on social media. Table 2 shows that Justification was the most used response strategy, followed by Apology and Bolstering. Coombs and Holladay suggested that organizations in crisis should use less defensive and rather more accommodative crisis response strategies (Coombs, 2002). In line with their research, this study also found that the
23 strategies employed by organizations were more accommodative, indicating that SCCT is still used in today’s business world. Other research, however, also found that accepting
responsibility by issuing an apology tends to produce a more positive outcome (Bradford, 1995 & Ki, 2014). The results of this study, however, contradict these claims and are rather in line with Verhoeven’s research results that the reputation suffered to the same degree whether an apology was issued or not (Verhoeven, 2012). The results of this study also indicate that when an apology was issued by an organization the responses from the audience were mostly negative. An in-depth analysis of the audience comments revealed that stakeholders care about whether the intention of a message is genuine or not. One of the organizations in crisis wrote an apology in a statement on their social media page, stakeholders, however, were found to be rather negative in their comments. Some of these comments suggested to learn a lesson or two from another organization that had deployed the same strategy but convinced stakeholders of their truthfulness. This implies that apology can be seen as a valid strategy that can be successfully used on social media, but it also implies that organizations have to take an effort into formulating it.
The third research question dealt with understanding the relationship between crisis types and the tone of the comments. Here it has to be noted that the crisis type does not always represent the level of responsibility adequately. For instance, the analysis revealed that an organization that was ranked into the victim cluster due to a data breach (hack) still had a high crisis responsibility awarded by the stakeholders. Stakeholders were upset with the organization and their policies regarding cyber-security and blamed the organization for not protecting the data with more caution. This has implications for practitioners as they need to make sure to identify the level of crisis responsibility in order to choose the best suiting crisis response strategy. This aspect has not been discovered by the existing literature and should therefore be seen with caution. It is important in practice to evaluate the crisis situation
24 beforehand and identifying the correct level of responsibility is crucial for further strategies. The results of this study further illustrate this relationship. There was a strong association found between the level of responsibility according to the crisis type and the initial crisis responsibility awarded by stakeholders. In 3 of the 17 crisis there was a difference. It is noteworthy that all three organizations that were ranked into the victim cluster and had high levels of responsibility awarded by stakeholders received predominantly negative comments, namely 56.2%, 80%, and 97% of the reactions were negative. At the same time these findings function as an explanation as to why the first hypothesis was not supported. The first
hypothesis claimed that organizations that were facing a crisis in the victim cluster would predominantly receive neutral or positive comments. Contrary to this hypothesized
relationship, the results indicated that these organizations received mostly negative comments. As mentioned above, the three organizations facing a victim crisis were still seen at fault by stakeholders and therefore received negative comments and influenced the results.
This study also examined the contingent interactivity of an organization on social media. The outcomes show that an organization that is interactive has benefits from it, namely fewer negative comments of the audience. Ki found in their analysis of Fortune 500
companies in crisis that only a minority of them (9 out of 28) responded to messages of users (Ki, 2014). These results may suggest that in 2014 when the study was conducted the
priorities of organizations on social media differed in terms of their importance. They still found evidence that these interactive organizations profited from being interactive. The results of this study differ slightly in that 68.8% of organizations were interactive and replied to stakeholder’s messages or comments. These findings indicate that organizations are becoming more aware of social media strategies and what stakeholders expect from them. Especially those organizations that rely on a high customer service are therefore advised to have their own social media team in order to be constantly engaged with stakeholders and reply to their
25 demands. If done so in a timely manner this can have positive effects on customer satisfaction as the customers feel being taken seriously.
The interactive nature of social networks can, nonetheless, also have negative
implications for organizations. It also means that users can easily share and forward messages from organizations with a simple mouse click. In cases in which the organizations do not fulfill the demands of their stakeholders with their initial crisis response statement the negative effects can be quite detrimental as negativity could spread through the social
networks in no time. Especially on Twitter different hashtags can be created in order to start a discussion. In times of crisis these hashtags are always created by users that then share their opinion about the incident with other users all around the globe. This snowball effect can potentially be harmful for an organization in case this organization failed to calm down stakeholders with their own statement. This can then also function as an explanation for why two of the organizations in the preventable crisis cluster decided to not use social media as a medium for their crisis communication.
Once an organization decides to be interactive on social networks, the next step is to benefit from it and take the input of the audience as a guideline towards new strategies that are implemented to restore the organizations reputation after the crisis. A pro-active approach that considers the needs of the stakeholders is then the best way to deal with a crisis as such an approach symbolizes to stakeholders that an organization is not only willing to change things but also takes their input serious.
This study had also investigated the relationship between the tone of the comments of the audience and the immediacy with which a statement was released. The results of a
regression analysis indicated a significant relationship between the two variables, albeit the model showed a rather weak overall goodness of fit test, indicating that there might be some flaws in the model. The results are still of interest for this study as they indicate that for any
26 day longer an organization takes to issue a statement on social media, the tone of the
comments become more negative. These results are in line with the theory and findings of Roshan who hypothesized that replying to stakeholders in a timely manner has positive effects on the reputation. (Roshan, 2016). As mentioned earlier, however, it is even more important to put thought into the writing process. As the example of apologizing suggested, stakeholders are concerned with the content of the message. The immediacy should therefore not be standing in the way of creating a proper message first. This process, nevertheless, should not take longer than one day as otherwise stakeholders may get upset with the skills and priorities of the organization.
The overall tone of audience responses was measured in this study to make claims about the reputation of an organization. In addition to the different relationships mentioned above the tone of the audience responses can also function as a measure in itself. The tone of the comments is dependent on several factors and therefore dependent on how many different crises the sample included. It is still noteworthy that 51% of the comments reviewed were negative in nature while 23.4% were neutral and 24.7% were positive. On a first glance the negative comments stand out. When taking the neutral and positive comments together, however, it also makes up for half of the comments. Since the codebook specifies three different categories for the tone of the comments, neutral and positive comments were both comments in which a stakeholder did not directly indicate to quit the services of the
organization at stake. These results are partly different from Roshan’s project of Australian organization in crisis since he found mostly negative reactions online. This can be explained by the way the study was conducted. This current study investigated the initial responses of organizations and analyzed the top comments of these statements. Roshan, on the other hand, analyzed specific crisis that did not offer many comments, thus not getting a universal result. These results then also show that the post crisis communication of organizations on social
27 media has tremendous benefits. Issuing a statement on social media where multiple
stakeholder groups can be reached has the potential to calm down stakeholders and present reliable information to them. The results of this study already indicate that some of the organizations had good media strategies in place so that stakeholders did not react only negatively and were at times rather thankful to the organization.
Conclusion
To conclude, this study explored the use of social media networks of organizations in times of crisis by a quantitative content analysis of Facebook and Twitter messages posted by large for-profit organizations after a crisis occurred. The detailed analysis allows
organizations that are interested in using social media for crisis communication to benefit from the lessons learned in this study. First and foremost, it has to be acknowledged that social media is a great tool for organizations to present themselves as these networks keep on increasing in the number of users. Organizations in crisis are advised to carefully evaluate the type of crisis they are facing. As this study showed it is vital for organizations to identify the correct level of initial crisis responsibility not only depending on the crisis type, but also on whether stakeholders may have a reason to see the organization at fault. After identifying the correct level of crisis responsibility organizations should make use of the existing theory of Coombs and apply a crisis response strategy accordingly. This study, however, also found that stakeholders on social media not only care for the content of a message, but more importantly if an organization means what they are saying. Especially in times when an organization chooses to issue an apology on social media it is wise to take an effort into formulating this apology so that stakeholders have a reason to believe that they are genuine in what they write.
28 Furthermore, this paper indicated that a quick response on social media is vital since otherwise stakeholders can receive news and in the worst-case scenario fake news elsewhere in the internet. This would diminish the impact of the organization in putting forth a certain frame to handle the crisis. One of the reasons as to why social media is a great tool for organizations is that a two-way communication can be applied between the organization and its stakeholders. This study therefore suggests that organizations set up a social media team and specifically during times of crisis interact with stakeholders to identify their needs. This can then be used as new input when identifying new strategies for the crisis aftermath. Here, organizations are advised to take a pro-active approach as it directly shows stakeholders the willingness of an organization to accept changes that after a crisis are deemed necessary.
Finally, this paper relied on SCCT and suggests that this framework also has applicability to crisis communication on social media as it is specifically useful for
determining the situation an organization faces in a timely manner. In the end this study broke new flesh with adopting a valuable framework that combines the SCCT research with the most important features of social media crisis management (Figure 2).
29 Figure 2: Revised Framework
The new framework adds crucial findings of this study to the original conceptual framework. These new features are on the one hand the stakeholders and on the other hand the follow up strategies. The engagement of an organization in interactive behavior has an
influence on how stakeholders perceive the organization. At the same time, stakeholders create an opinion about the crisis at large and award responsibility to the organization. As this study indicated, the awarded responsibility can differ from the crisis responsibility attributed by the crisis type. An organization in crisis is advised to draw on these finding in order to overcome any surprises in a later stage of the crisis. Once an organization decides to be engaging with its stakeholders during the crisis, this two-way communication effort can be utilized to identify the needs, concerns, and demands of the stakeholders with the help of which the organization can determine new follow-up strategies for the crisis aftermath.
30 Limitations / Future Research
Like any research, this study has certain limitations which can be addressed in future research. First, the data collection period of this study was limited in time and only seventeen crises were found. Future studies could explore a larger number of crises and make
comparisons between the same types of organizations. While this study investigated seventeen large enterprise crises it is still noteworthy that all crisis types were represented in the sample. Second, the study analyzed only two of the social media networks, namely Facebook and Twitter. Although, these are the largest social networks in terms of the quantity of users there are still other sources that organizations can exploit. Future research could not only extend the investigation towards other social media channels such as YouTube, but also compare the same crises on different networks to identify whether differences can be found. Third, this study relied largely on nominal data. The problem with nominal data and testing relationships is that when the sample size is large the tests are most of the time statistically significant. In order to overcome this problem, the effect sizes were also measured and detailed descriptions of the study itself were provided. However, future research could still investigate a larger number of crises and then take the averages of different variables to also make predictions of the relationship of these variables. This could prove to be valuable since predictions about different traditional crisis response strategies could be made. Fourth, this study encountered the difficulty of measuring the reputation of an organization in crisis. Although this study was primarily focused on the applicability of SCCT on social media crisis management from an audience perspective, future studies could try to explore and measure the reputation of an organization after a crisis by different means, for instance by taking into consideration the financial performance of an organization. Here, the stakeholder responses were considered when making claims about the reputation of an organization. The results of this study still have applicability, specifically for these organizations that rely on a high customer
31 satisfaction. Last, this study suggested that an organization can benefit from engaging more interactively with stakeholders on social media during times of crisis. Although some might see this engaging behavior as a certain risk or uncertainty for the organization, this study suggests that these uncertainties can be kept at a minimum when engaging in real-time dialogue and preventing the application of bots to automatically reply to messages. Future research is advised to look into the interactivity thoroughly by analyzing the interactive conversations between the organization and the users in more detail.
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36 Appendix
Codebook Introduction
This study aims to examine how the corporation response strategy affect the way stakeholders perceive crises regarding different clusters.
Research question: “Which aspects and strategies can best be utilized by organizations to restore their reputation on social media during times of crisis?”
Instructions for coders
Each coder should follow the codebook and find the response strategies every statement utilized, identify the tone of the comments on Twitter, recognize the contingent interactivity, identify the crisis type, and level of responsibility and code these variables in the variable section.
Unit of analysis: Each statement or Twitter comment
Formal categories: A01 Coder
0 Dennis Latz
37 DD-MM-YYYY
A03 Organization Name of organization
A05 Publication
1 Social media statement (created by respective corporation to communicate with public) >>> Continue to crisis response strategies (V01, V02,)
2 Twitter comments
>>> Continue to tone of comments (V03, V04, V05)
Variables
V01 Crisis response strategies (adapted and modified from Coombs 2007)
V01.1 Attack the accuser
The actor confronts the person or group who is claiming that there is something wrong with the organization.
[e.g.] The whistle-blower was a “master of deceit".
0 No
38 V01.2 Denial
Management asserts that there is no crisis. [e.g.] “there is no current crisis”.
0 No
1 Yes
V01.3 Scapegoat
Management blames person or group outside of the organization. This ultimately diminishes the crisis response strategies.
0 No
1 Yes
V01.4 Excuse
Management minimizes organizational responsibility by denying intent to do harm and claiming inability to control the actual events which ultimately caused the crisis.
[e.g.] The company says they did not know about the break-in.
0 No
1 Yes
39 Management minimizes the perceived damage caused by the crisis.
[e.g.] Equifax has established a dedicated website, to help consumers determine if their information has been potentially impacted and to sign up for credit file monitoring and identity theft protection.
0 No
1 Yes
V01.6 Compensation
Management offers compensation in the form of money, vouchers or goods to victims or family of victims.
[e.g.] For customers who already have Galaxy Note7 devices, we will voluntarily replace their current device with a new one over the coming weeks.
0 No
1 Yes
V01.7 Apology
Management indicates the organization takes full responsibility for the crisis and asks stakeholders for forgiveness.
[e.g.] “I apologize to consumers and our business customers for the concern and frustration this causes.”
40 1 Yes
V01.8 Bolstering / Information
Managers tell stakeholders about the past good works of the organization, praise stakeholders for their efforts during the crisis, draw sympathy from being a victim of the crisis, or provide information only.
[e.g.] Samsung is the leader in mobile technology and has been for over a decade.
0 No
1 Yes
V02 Crisis type (retrieved from Coombs 2007)
1 Victim (e.g. natural disaster, rumor, workplace violence, product tempering)
2 Accidental (e.g. challenges, technical errors, technical error product harm, product recall)
3 Preventable (e.g. human-error accidents, human-error product harm, organizational misdeed, management misconduct, organizational misdeed, organizational misdeed with injuries)
V03 Tone of comments (adopted and modified from Ki 2014) V03.1
41 1 Negative
2 Neutral 3 Positive
Note:
Negative comments are these in which the audience communicate that they are unhappy, angry, offended, outraged, or irritated by the organization. Additionally, negative comments are comments in which the audience indicates to leave the organization and not be a customer any longer.
Positive comments were in general comments in which support for the organization was identified, and or the commentator defended the organization. In these comments a positive wording is used.
Neutral comments are comments which cannot be identified clearly as negative or positive. In addition, neutral comments are such in which a commentator indicate not to be affected by the current crisis.
V04 Interactivity
0 not interactive
1 interactive (replying to comments of the audience frequently)
V05 Initial Crisis Responsibility 0 low level of responsibility
42 1 medium level of responsibility
2 high level of responsibility
Note: high level of responsibility is when the audience is actively blaming the organization for being at fault for the crisis. When the audience does not make claims about whether the audience was at fault for the crisis the level of responsibility is low and was coded according to the crisis type.
