MASTER’S
THESIS
Responding to Transnational Crises: A Development of
Public Diplomacy 2.0 and Crisis Communication
Rhys Clements Student ID: 10973427
University of Amsterdam Graduate School of Communication Master’s programme Communication Science
Supervisor: Sanne Kruikemeier
Abstract
In an era characterized by global interconnectedness, transnational crises place new demands on national governments. Social media facilitates the growth of such crisis, but also provides the channels with which to manage them when responses are demanded from such a range of disparate publics. The growing adaption of social media by governmental actors to
communicate with these publics has been noted, conceptualized as public diplomacy 2.0. Based on a theoretical model of crisis communication, this study asks to what extent the growing use of social media-based public diplomacy, public diplomacy 2.0, is used as a crisis communication tool in response to transnational crises. Through a content analysis of UK governmental actors’ response to five international crises though the social media platform Twitter, the application of crisis communication strategies is analyzed by applying the Coombs’ Situational Crisis Communication Theory. The results show an active use of crisis communication strategies on Twitter in responses to four of the five crises. The study therefore implies social media-based tools of public diplomacy should also be considered as tools of crisis management, whilst also forwarding an advancement of crisis communication theory within a political and diplomatic context.
In the context of a globalized world, local incidents can suddenly escalate into crises that transcend geographic, cultural and religious boundaries (Boin & Ekengren, 2009; Lagadec, 2009), intensified by global mass media coverage (Canel & Sanders, 2012) and social media reactions (Coombs & Holladay, 2012; Freberg, 2012; Schwarz, 2012). These crises are typically difficult to manage as it is not clear who ‘owns’ the crisis nor who must deal with it (Boin, 2009). Yet, governmental actors are often expected to respond quickly and effectively, even to geographically and culturally distant stakeholders (Lindholm & Olsson, 2011). In response to such situations, public diplomacy can be a useful tool (Andreasen, 2008; Olsson, 2013).
Public diplomacy is typically described as “a government’s process of communicating with foreign publics in an attempt to bring about an understanding for its nation’s ideas and ideals, institutions and culture, as well as its national goals and current policies” (Tuch 1990, p.3). Its modern application has evolved to reflect how the internet and social media have become integrated into our daily lives (Cull, 2008; Gilboa, 2006). In particular, social media has given new opportunities to governments to communicate directly, continuously and unrestrictedly with a range of dispersed audiences (Graham, Broersma, Hazelhoff, & van't Haar, 2013 ) across national borders in attempts to develop a favorable image of a nation (Cull, 2009; Wang, 2006). This development of such online communications has led to a reconceptualization of the term to public diplomacy 2.0 (Cull, 2011). Through the direct and unrestricted channels of communication that public diplomacy 2.0 has progressed, there are potential benefits for politicians and diplomats when communicating in a transnational crisis (Taylor & Kent, 2007).
Research into public diplomacy 2.0 is in its infancy, whilst its utility for governmental actors in crisis communication is lacking (Hayden, 2013). As both public diplomacy and crisis communication at their core concern themselves with protecting and enhancing the
reputation of the communicator, empirical research of the two concepts has the prospect to better understand the extent governmental actors can communicate and respond to the nature of transnational crises (Gilboa, 2008; Signitzer & Coombs, 1992; Zhang, 2006). This is especially pertinent for considering how governmental actors utilize online channels, notably social media, as a means of crisis communication to frame information in direct and
unfiltered ways that is currently understudied (Waters & Williams, 2011). As such, this study asks to what the extent governmental actors use social media as a crisis communication tool in the context of public diplomacy 2.0.
To answer this question, the social medium Twitter is used to examine crisis
communications through a manual content analysis. Based on previous research, Twitter has been shown to be popular with diplomatic and governmental actors in the practice of public diplomacy (Su & Xu, 2015) and has previously been used successfully to study governmental online communications (Strauß, Kruikemeier, van der Meulen & van Noort, 2015). 804 tweets from United Kingdom (UK) government actors and institutions that communicate with external (outside of the UK) stakeholders are examined through five crises, each caused by the terrorist group Islamic State (IS). The selection of these crises are based on their
transnational nature and their facility to engage public diplomacy efforts from the UK due to political, cultural or geographical links with stakeholders affected by the crises (Sandler & Enders, 2004).
Thus, in exploring transnational crises, this study makes two tentative and important steps. First, a theoretical development of public diplomacy as instrument for crisis mitigation is made. From this, a second step to further understand governments’ use of social media to deliver crisis communication strategies is advanced. To achieve this, Coombs’ (2007) Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) is applied, allowing for an empirical insight into effective crisis communication use through public diplomacy by governmental
actors. Moreover, in doing this study offers the first framework for testing the SCCT within political and diplomatic crisis communication.
Theoretical Background
From Public Diplomacy to Crisis Communication
Public diplomacy emerged during the initial years of the Cold War, defined as direct communication with foreign peoples to create a favorable image of a nation to affect public opinion and hence influence foreign governments (Malone, 1985; Mor, 2009). The aim to foster and increase influence remains central to public diplomacy, but changes in the meaning of power in international politics has changed how this is achieved (Gilboa, 2006). A nation’s image, values and reputation (‘soft power’) now rival military and economic power (‘hard power’) as determinants of status in the international community (Nye, 1990). As such, modern public diplomacy (public diplomacy 2.0) comprises of activities by national actors to maintain and promote a country’s soft power in pursuit of influence in the international sphere (Melissen, 2005).
Scholarly attention on how this is achieved has noted actions such as nation branding (Anholt, 2007; Dinnie, 2008), cultural advocacy and diplomacy (Cull, 2009), strategic use of social media (Comor & Bean, 2012; Zhang, 2013), and basic public relations practices in the international sphere (Gilboa, 2008; Signitzer & Coombs, 1992) as ways to achieve this. A common theme through all these approaches is the concern for the management of a nation’s reputation. A positive reputation helps to create “either an enabling or a disabling
environment” (Foreign Policy Center, 2002, p. 9) in which nations can pursue political goals and policies in the global arena (Wang, 2006). If reputation is developed through the
communications stakeholders – defined as any group that can affect or be affected by the behavior of a organization (Bryson, 2004) – receive about a nation (Fombrun & van Riel,
2004), then public diplomacy must consequently be seen as part of this reputation management.
Crises pose a unique threat to reputations, giving reasons for people to think badly of an organization and affecting how stakeholders interact with the organization undergoing the crisis (Dowling, 2002). If an organization has built reputational capital, i.e., “the quality of the relationship it has established with stakeholders and the regard in which the company and brand is held” (Fombrun & van Riel, 2004, p.32), then a crisis will inflict less reputational damage (Coombs, 2007). Public diplomacy is therefore of chief concern to crises that involve political organizations at the international level because of the role it plays in building this reputational capital (Dinne, Melewar, Seidenfuss & Musa, 2010). Hence, as public diplomacy holds reputation management at its core, it too can be considered as a means of crisis
management.
Social Media, Public Diplomacy and Crisis Communication
In making this theoretical link, the context of the online media environment is influential. Public diplomacy has developed alongside advancements of digital media technologies and the rise of a global and interconnected culture, with politicians and
diplomats recognizing the importance of the internet and new media tools, like social media, to promote public diplomacy efforts, build relationship and amplify their networking power (Comor & Bean, 2012; Cull, 2008; Khatib, Dutton & Thelwall, 2012). As discussed, this adaption of social media by governments has led to the conceptualization of the practice as public diplomacy 2.0 (Cull, 2011).
Scholarly literature notes this change, though often through theoretical arguments (e.g., Castells, 2008; Cull, 2011; Gilboa, 2006; Wang, 2006) or through case studies on how different governments reach out to foreign publics and the efforts (messages, strategies) they
employ (e.g., Park & Lim, 2012; Su & Xu, 2015; Zong & Lu, 2013). Of the limited empirical literature, Waters and Williams (2011) analyze government agency use of Twitter in
communications, whilst Strauß et al. (2015) make a quantitative assessment of Twitter use in public diplomacy. Both recognize a significant increase in governmental actors adopting social media as a means direct and unfiltered communication with targeted audiences, though noting the practical implication of one-way closed communications with audiences remaining dominant over two-way open engagement that platforms like Twitter should enable.
In managing a crisis, social media plays an important role in both facilitating the growth of crises and providing channels that can be used to communicate during a crisis (Coombs & Holladay, 2014). Social media use increases during a crisis (Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2006) as people seek unfiltered, timely and in-depth information (Johnson & Kaye, 2010; Procopio & Procopio, 2007; Taylor & Kent, 2007). Platforms like Twitter offer organizations the opportunity to communicate their message without imposed filters, as typically found when communicating through traditional news releases (Taylor & Perry, 2005), and the ability to reach often large and disparate audiences quickly and easily (González-Herrero & Smith, 2008). Research has also found publics assign a higher level of credibility to social media coverage than traditional mass media coverage during a crisis (Selzter & Mitrook, 2007).
Unfortunately, only a few studies have examined social media as a tool for crisis communication (e.g., Briones, Kuch, Liu & Jin, 2011; Schultz, Utz & Goritz, 2011; Sweetser & Metzgar, 2007) and much less is known about how governments use social media during a crisis. This study, in advancing the values of public diplomacy 2.0 as an ideal platform for crisis communication, attempts to fill this gap by analyzing governmental actors’ use of social media during transnational crises.
Application of the Situational Crisis Communication Theory
Research in the field of crisis communication has been developed and refined with corporate organizations in mind. Very few cases of crisis management examine governments or political representatives, and those that do are lacking in empirical support (Andreasen, 2008; Lindholm & Olsson, 2011; Olsson, 2013). Cooley and Jones’ (2013) study of United Nation agencies response to external crises using Coombs’ Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) however provides a starting framework for evaluating crisis communication strategies outside of the corporate context. This study follows a similar approach.
The SCCT is considered a dominant crisis communication theory, useful for explaining how organizations can form effective crisis communication responses (Avery, Lariscy, Kim & Hocke, 2010). It represents what an organization says and does when a crisis occurs to protect reputational assets by anticipating how stakeholders will react to a crisis (Coombs, 2007). However, the SCCT has been criticized for not addressing how the
information form, especially social media, can impact crisis behaviors (Jin & Liu, 2010). For example, it does not account for the interactions and engagement between an organization and stakeholders that take place on social media and how that may influence reactions to a crisis (Lin, Jin & Austin, 2013).
Yet, Heath (2006) stresses that some messages should be relayed through one-way communication in emergency-related situations, such as acts of terrorism or natural disasters. Given the discussed limited findings that two-way communication and engagement is not fully utilized in government actors’ social media communications (Straβ et al., 2015; Waters & Williams, 2011), examining the use of social media in a crisis with models that considers only how organizations respond can still be a useful framework. Significantly, the SCCT also provides a well-developed and empirically proven theory of crisis communication.
Assessing a Crisis with the SCCT
The SCCT is rooted in attribution theory, which posits that people search for the cause of events, especially those that are negative and unexpected (Weiner, 1985). If an organization is deemed responsible for the event, then its reputation is threatened. By understanding these attributions of responsibility, organizations can determine crisis responses to minimize reputational damage (Coombs, 1998, 2007).
First, organizations must understand the crisis situation in order to assess the reputational threat. This is based on the crisis responsibility stakeholders attribute to the organization, formed through the frames stakeholders use to interpret the crisis (Coombs and Holladay, 2002). The SCCT calls this the crisis type, and each crisis type generates specific and predictable levels of crisis responsibility attributed toward an organization (Coombs, 2006). The SCCT identifies three crisis type clusters: (1) the victim cluster which has weak attributions of crisis responsibility and the organization is viewed as a victim of the event (e.g., natural disasters); (2) the accidental cluster which has minimal attributions of crisis responsibility and the event is considered unintentional or uncontrollable by the organization (e.g., technical-errors) and (3) the intentional cluster that has very strong attributions of crisis responsibility and the event is considered purposeful (e.g., human-error; Coombs &
Holladay, 2002).
Second, Coombs’ contends that the performance history, comprised of crisis history (whether an organization has faced similar crises in the past) and relationship history (how well an organization has treated its stakeholders in the past), should also be considered as intensifying factors in assessing the reputational threat posed by a crisis (Coombs, 2004, 2007). As performance history worsens greater attribution for a crisis will be put on an organization. This can mean crises typical of low attributions of responsibility are better
treated as if they belonged in a cluster with higher attributions of crisis responsibility. In determining the crisis cluster and performance history, organizations can then determine how much responsibility stakeholders will attribute to the organization and in turn the reputational threat. An assessment of crisis selected for this study based can be seen in Table 1 and will be described below.
Each crisis is categorised in the victim cluster as they are acts of terrorism: the crises were created by external agents causing damage to the UK, of which the government had little control. Crisis history is whether or not an organization has had a similar crisis in the past, suggesting an on-going problem that needs to be addressed (Coombs, 2007; Martinko, Douglas, Ford & Gundlach, 2004). The Sousse and Paris terror attacks were unexpected as there was no history of such attacks; IS taking Mosul followed a protracted period of instability in Iraq since the United States-led coalition in 2003; the murder of David Haines was in the context of a number of other hostage-killings by IS; the Brussels terror attacks followed shortly after the terror attacks in nearby Paris. Hence, these three crises had a crisis history, but only IS taking Mosul are considered an on-going problem. The relationship history refers to the quality of the interactions between an organization and its stakeholders (Coombs & Holladay, 2001). All cases except for IS taking Mosul are viewed as having Table 1
Crisis Types and Performance History
Event Crisis Cluster
Performance History
Crisis History Relationship History
IS take Mosul Victim High Negative
Murder of David Haines Victim Medium Positive
Sousse Terror Attack Victim Low Positive
Paris Terror Attack Victim Low Positive
positive relational history: the UK share close ties with Brussels and Paris; its relation with Tunisia has strengthened since the Arab Spring (British Embassy Tunis, 2015) and the attacks affected mainly British nationals; the murder of David Haines involved a British national. The unstable situation in Iraq and the UK’s role in the Iraq War likely means the relational history was negative before IS took Mosul.
Applying Crisis Communication Responses
Based on the crisis type assessment, organizations can anticipate which crisis response strategies can be used to preserve their reputation and help rebuild legitimacy (Coombs & Holladay, 1996). A higher degree of perceived crisis responsibility dictates a response that takes more accountability, and vice versa (Coombs & Holladay, 2002). The way this is communicated affects how people perceive the organization and/or the crisis. Thus, in matching the correct crisis response strategies to the crisis type as guided by the SCCT, attributions for the crisis can be shaped, perceptions of the organization in crisis can be changed, and the negative affect generated by the crisis can be reduced (Coombs, 1995). To implement an effective response, the SCCT argues for three responses: instructing information, adjusting information and reputation repair.
The first priority in any crisis is to protect stakeholders from harm, a strict ethical responsibility of SCCT (Coombs, 2007). This involves instructing information to tell
stakeholders basic information about what happened in the crisis event and how stakeholders can protect themselves. Crisis often create an ‘information vacuum’ which sources, from the news media to individual voices on social media, try to fill as people seek out information about the crisis (Coombs, 2015). The early provision of instructing information therefore ensures an organization places itself as a source and presents its side of the story, making sure stakeholders receive the correct information to protect themselves from harm (Coombs,
2015). Instructing information also helps to reduce the uncertainty a crisis creates (Sturges, 1994), as do expressions of concern which help alleviate some of the stress from the crisis and are expected from stakeholders early in a crisis (Coombs, 2007; Kellerman, 2006). In addition to protecting stakeholders, scholars have highlighted that the early provision of information about a crisis also helps protect reputations by showing that the organisation is in control (Caleys & Cauberghe, 2012; Hearit, 1994). It is only after instructing information is given that attention should be turned to adjusting information and reputation repair strategies (Coombs, 1999; Coombs & Holladay, 2001).
Adjusting information is communication about what the organization is doing to correct the problem and/or prevent a repeat of the crisis. Updates of corrective actions reduces anxiety by reducing ambiguity around the crisis, helping stakeholders cope psychologically with the crisis and reassuring them that they are safe (Sellnow , Ulmer & Snider, 1998). Coombs (2015) also highlights the importance of communicating about remembrance of crises once it is over. Adjusting information should be provided as soon as the information becomes available and continue for as long as necessary. In fact, the timely provision of informing and adjusting information alone can be enough to protect a reputation when crises have minimal attributions of crisis responsibility (e.g. victim crisis), no crisis history and positive prior relationship (Coombs, 2007). In instances when this is not the case, reputation repair strategies are crucial.
The SCCT groups the reputation repair response strategies, based upon increasing perceptions of responsibility for a crisis, into three primary response options: (1) deny strategies that seek to remove any connection between the organization and the crisis; (2) diminish strategies that argue a crisis is not as bad as people think or that the organization lacked control over the crisis; (3) rebuild strategies that attempt to improve an organization’s reputation by offering material and/or symbolic forms of aid to victim. Also, secondary
response options are reinforce strategies that present new information about the organization and/or reminding stakeholders of past good works by the organization. This can bolster goodwill and arouse feelings of sympathy toward the organization, but should be used to supplement the other strategies or adjusting and instructing information about the crisis and only when an organization has a positive relationship with stakeholders from which sympathy and goodwill can be drawn (Coombs, 2007).
Within these four categories, Coombs (2007) has created a list of ten different strategies in the development of the SCCT. Table 2 lists these strategies, including
additionally strategies other crisis communication scholars have developed and are useful in examining response to terror events. These include: separation as a third diminish option (Benoit & Brinson, 1999) due to external events arguably being beyond control of national governments (Laqueur, 2003); transcendence (Benoit, 1997) as a rebuild response due to acts of transnational terrorism often prompting wider calls for unity or peace (e.g., President Francois Hollande calling for “the defence of the values of the Republic” after the Paris attacks; Iacobucci & Toope, 2015, p.43); and endorsement as a reinforce strategy (Liu, 2010) because of the cooperative response needed to counter international terrorism (Laquer, 2003).
Organizations should use increasingly accommodative reputation repair strategies as the reputational threat from the crisis intensifies, as determined by the crisis type and
performance history (Coombs & Holladay, 1996). Arguably the rebuild strategy is the safest response, but research demonstrates that overly accommodative strategies produce no greater reputational benefit (Coombs and Holladay, 1996) and can make a crisis seem worse that it is (Siornkos & Kuzbard, 1994), while under accommodative strategies threaten to increase reputational harm (Coombs, 2007). An accurate matching process of the crisis type and response therefore restricts negative perceptions of the crisis and organisation, and protects and bolster reputations.
As discussed, the applicability of SCCT for crisis communication has been
empirically developed in corporate contexts. The present study extends the utility of SCCT by asking: to what extent do governmental actors employ crisis response strategies via social media in the context of public diplomacy? To answer such a question, the three crisis
responses of outlined by the SSCT – instructing information, adjusting information and Table 2
Reputation Repair Crisis Response Strategies
Primary reputation repair responses
Deny Response
Attack the accuser: Confronts a person or group that is claiming there is a crisis or something is wrong.
Denial: Asserts that there is no crisis.
Scapegoat: Tries to shift the blame for the crisis to another person or group that is not the organization.
Diminish Response
Excuse: Minimizes the organization’s responsibility for the crisis by claiming they did not intend for the problem to happen and/or did not have the ability to control the events leading up to it.
Justification: Attempts to minimize perceptions of damage resulting from the crisis and suggests that it is not as bad as it may seem.
Separation: Tries to disconnect the organization away from the responsible parties for the crisis.
Rebuild Response
Transcendence: Shifts the focus away from the immediate crisis to a larger issue. Compensation: Offers compensation to the victims of the issue.
Apology: Takes full responsibility for the crisis and asks for forgiveness. Secondary reputation repair responses
Reinforce Response
Reminder: Reminds the audience of past good works of the organization and their positive actions in response to crises.
Ingratiation: Praises stakeholders (those affected by the crisis) and/or reminds them of past works of the organization.
Victimage: Reminds the audience that the organization is a victim of the crisis and the repercussions too.
reputation repair strategies - must first be examined in relation to the five selected crises. Based on the SCCT framework that suggests instructing information should be provided before giving adjusting information and pursuing reputation repair strategies, the first hypothesis is proposed:
Hypothesis 1: Instructing information is the first used crisis response strategy in every
crisis, followed by adjusting information and reputation repair.
Second, the degree to which crisis types and reputation repair strategies are related as must be also be assessed to answer the research question. As described in Table 1, the murder of David Haines and the terror attacks in Sousse, Paris and Brussels have minimal
attributions of crisis responsibility, low to medium crisis history and positive prior relationship. As such, little reputational protection is needed. Reinforce strategies are therefore an adequate response as guided by the SCCT, utilizing positive stakeholder
relations to manage minimal reputational threat (Coombs, 2007). The IS taking Mosul crisis has minimal crisis responsibility but a history of similar crises and negative prior relationship. As guided by the SCCT, IS taking Mosul should be treated as if it is an ‘accidental’ rather than ‘victim’ crisis. Thus, diminish crisis response strategies should be used to lessen the UK government’s connection to the crisis or have people view the crisis less negatively (Coombs, 2007). Based on these inferences, the following hypotheses are proposed to test the
application of crisis communication strategies via social media by governmental actors:
Hypothesis 2: The murder of David Haines and the terror attacks in Sousse, Paris and
Brussels will result in reputation repair strategies within the reinforce cluster.
Hypothesis 3: The IS taking Mosul crisis will result in reputation repair strategies
Material and methods
To answer the research questions, a manual content analysis was conducted. The content analysis allowed for specified characteristics of communications to be identified through objective and systematic inferences (Holsti, 1969). Using Coombs’ SCCT as a guideline, crisis communications sent by the UK governmental actors concerned with foreign affairs via social media were identified and coded based on a coding manual (Appendix 1). Prior to coding, several steps were taken to identify the cases, the data and to collect the sample. As well as relying on previous research, some methodological decisions have also been informed through an interview conducted with a communications officer of the UK Foreign and
Commonwealth Office (FCO) (A. Lawrence, personal communication, March 10, 2016).
Case Selection
Five key crises related to IS were selected for their transnational nature: each happened outside of the UK but still had a meaningful impact on the political system and public opinion, and warranted a potential crisis response by the UK government. Importantly, this allowed for communications directed at foreign publics to be examined through a crisis communication lens. These were:
1) IS seizing Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul, and establishing its brutal caliphate in the region on 10 June 2014. The capture of Mosul drew a significant amount of international media attention to the terrorist group and was the beginning of the IS’ rise in the region (Al-Sinjary, 2014). Additionally, it was a blow to post-Saddam Iraq where the UK has continued to heavily invest both political and military resource (Marcus, 2014).Some weeks later, the UK government raised its terrorist level to ‘severe’ in response to the conflict in Iraq and Syria (Home Office, 2014).
2) IS murdering British aid worker David Haines in a propaganda video on 13 September 2013. Haines’ murder was in the context of a string of Western hostages’ brutal killings by IS, released through propaganda videos. Haines was the first British citizen to be killed in this manner. 13 days later, the UK parliament sanctioned air strikes against IS in Iraq (Prime Minister’s Office, 2014).
3) The IS related terrorist attack at the Tunisian city of Sousse, killing 30 British citizens, on 26 June 2015 at a beach resort popular with British tourist. The UK government responded by launching the largest anti-terrorism investigation since the 7 July 2005 London bombings (Metropolitan Police, 2015).
4) The IS related terrorist attack in Paris, France, killing 130 people and injuring a further 368 on 13 November 2015; and
5) the IS related terrorist attack in Brussels, Belgium, killing 32 people and injuring 300 on 22 March 2016. Though not taking as many UK citizens lives, the proximity of the crises, the socio-cultural connection to the two countries and the political and military closeness (Harcup & O’Neill, 2001) to Britain meant that the attacks resonated highly with the UK public and government. Security and police presence in the UK was increased after both attacks (Prime Minister’s Office, 2015; Home Office, 2016), while in response to the Paris attacks, the UK parliament sanctioned airstrikes against IS in Syria (Ministry of Defence, 2015).
Data Sources
In identifying the most important social media channel for crisis communication by the UK government, Twitter was selected. This choice was made on the basis of the number of UK government representatives and organization being active on Twitter as opposed to other popular social networks, such as Facebook, as guided by the UK FCO Social Media
Guidance webpage (Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 2015). Twitter is also the fifth highest social medium by number of active daily users (excluding Chinese platforms; Statista, 2016), and is the most frequently used medium by UK government representatives and organization for posting messages (A. Lawrence, personal communication, March 10, 2016).
Next, a variety of key UK governmental representatives and organizations were focused upon. Since the research positions itself within public diplomacy and explores external events to the UK, those associated with foreign relations and situated in countries experiencing the IS terrorist attacks were selected. In total, 19 accounts were identified: the Ambassadors and Embassies in Tunisia, Belgium and France (n = 6), the FCO and its Secretaries (n = 4), the UK Prime Minister (n = 1), representations to international political organizations (UK Permanent Representation the European Union, UK Delegation to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and three UK Missions to the United Nations in Geneva, Vienna and New York) (n = 5), and Ambassadors to these organizations (which only applied to UK Missions to the United Nations) (n = 3). It should be noted that pervious holders of job positions were also included if for the time they held the position one of the crises occurred, just as current holders were excluded for the time periods before they held the position.
In applying the SCCT to the five identified crises, it was also imperative that
communications on the days and weeks that followed were included to view a complete crisis response. Accordingly, a 21 day period from the first day of the crisis was selected. In
addition, communications relevant to the crisis had to be identified. This was completed through key word searches relevant to IS and the selected crises. For example, for the terror attacks in Paris, word searches included terms such as “Paris”, “attack”, “IS”, “Daesh”, “terror”, “terrorism”.
Data Collection
The tweets for this study were collected using the software ‘Facepager’. All the tweets that were sent by the 19 selected accounts in the five 21 day time periods were collected, and then reduced based on the key word searches to 928 tweets. A further reduction of the sample was conducted due to key word searches selecting tweets that were not related directly to the crises in the time period. This further case selection took placing during coding. For example, words such as “Paris” also appeared in tweets not related to the Paris terror attack. Hence, there were not included in the analysis. This left a total of 804 tweets to be analysed. It should be noted that the amount of tweets was not equally distributed across accounts, nor crises, as different accounts tweeted at different frequencies through each period.
Inter-coder Reliability
For the content analysis, one main coder was assigned to code all 928 original tweets. A second coder was trained to test the reliability of the items’ measurements for six crisis communication response strategies used in the study. The tweets coded for the inter-reliability test consisted of 10.02 per cent of the total tweets, randomly selected (n = 93). Krippendorf’s Alpha was chosen as the measure of reliability (Hayes & Krippendorff, 2007). Though a conservative measure, the nature of the coding (dichotomous variables except for one variable) meant it was deemed appropriate. Overall, the results were satisfying. In cases -where the Kalpha was below the threshold of .80, the percent agreement (pairwise
agreement) was at least above 79.76%. Operationalisation of Measures
The main dependent variables in answering the research questions are the crisis response strategies. To form an effective response the SCCT posits that three strategies are needed: instructing information, adjusting information and reputation repair. Reputation
repair strategies have been well developed within crisis communication research (Benoit, 1997; Coombs & Holladay, 2002; Liu, 2010). Instructing and adjusting information however have received less attention, leading to several different recommendations by scholars of how each is implemented. As such and as previously discussed, several different responses were identified from crisis communication literatures that were then measured to form the variables instructing information and adjusting information.
Instructing information was made of three different types of crisis responses: information about the crisis, i.e. what has happened (Coombs, 2015) (Kalpha = .66); information to aid public safety, such as emergency telephone numbers or travel advice (Sturges, 1994) (Kalpha = .90); and expressions of concern or sympathy for the victims of the crisis (Coombs, 2007; Kellerman, 2006) (Kalpha = .78). Each tweet was analysed for
containing the three respective responses (1 = present, 0 = not present). To form the variable instructing information, if any of the three responses were present, then instructing
information was measured as present (1). If none of the responses were present, then instructing information was measured as not present (0; M = .42, SD = .49).
Adjusting information was made of two responses: providing updates on the crisis such as corrective actions (Coombs, 2007) (Kalpha = .81); and details of acts of remembrance for victims of a crisis (Coombs, 2015) (Kalpha = .87). Again, each tweet was analysed for if it contained either of the two responses (1 = present, 0 = not present). If either were present, adjusting information was also measured as present (1). If neither were present, then
adjusting information was measured as not present (0; M = .61, SD = .48).
The reputation repair strategy was formed of thirteen different responses, as explained in Table 2. For each tweet, the most prominent reputation repair response was identified and measured (Kalpha = .65). In total, only seven reputation repair strategies were found to have been used: separation (0.7%) within the diminish category, transcendence (4.6%) and
compensation (0.1%) in the rebuild category, and reminder (16%), ingratiation (4%),
victimage (.6%) and endorsement (23.3%) in the reinforce category. This left 50.6% of tweets
that did not contain a reputation repair strategy. Results
The extent that crisis response strategies are utilized by governmental actors via social media in the context of public diplomacy can first be seen through an assessment of the timing of the three strategies suggested by the SCCT. Hypothesis 1 tests this assumption. For each of the selected crises, a binary logistic regression was conducted with the three crisis response strategies (instructing information, adjusting information and reputation repair) as the dependent variables. Reputation repair was recoded into a dummy variable, determined by whether any reputation repair strategy was used in the tweet (1) or not (0). The twenty-one day period after each crisis was also divided into three phases to form independent (dummy) variables: one to two days after the crisis, the next three to seven days, and the final eight to twenty-one days. Using the first and second days phase as the reference category, a
comparison of predictions on the use of crisis response strategies in three to seven days phase and eighty to twenty-one days phase, holding each variable fixed respectively, across the five crises was made.
Figure 1 displays the over-time developments of the use of crisis communication strategies by UK governmental actors in response to each crisis, whereas Table 3 provides the formal test of Hypothesis 1. It displays the effect of the time phase in each crisis response in terms of its odds ratio with values higher than 1 indicating a positive effect and values lower than 1 a negative effect. Furthermore, a Wald chi-square statistic is presented to indicate whether there were any systematic differences across the time phases and crisis responses, as well as the Nagelkerke (pseudo) R-squared to show how well the time phases predicted the
crisis response. Unfortunately, the crisis events of IS taking Mosul and the murder of David Haines were unreliable due to a lack of observations necessary to perform a valid logistic regression of every crisis response and time phase. Instead, the use of crisis response strategies over time to these two crises can be observed in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Over-time presence of instructing information, adjusting information and reputation repair crisis communication response strategies.
Scores range from 0 (strategy present in none of the Tweets in the time phase) to 1 (strategy present in all of the Tweets in the time phase).
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
One to two days (N=12)
Three to seven days (N=8)
Eight to twenty-one days (N=18)
Murder of David Haines
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
One to two days (N=58)
Three to seven days (N=101)
Eight to twenty-one days (N=46)
Sousse Terror Attacks
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
One to two days (N=138)
Three to seven days (N=38)
Eight to twenty-one days (N=28)
Brussels Terror Attacks
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
One to two days (N=2)
Three to seven days (N=7 ) Eight to twenty-one days (N=18) IS take Mosul 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
One to two days (N=118)
Three to seven days (N=108)
Eight to twenty-one days (N=104)
Paris Terror Attacks
Instructing information Reputation repair Adjusting information
Table 3
Predicting Crisis Response Strategies from the Number of Days After A Crisis
Instructing Information Adjusting Information Reputation Repair
B Wald’s x2 Odds Ratio B Wald’s x2 Odds Ratio B Wald’s x2 Odds Ratio (reference = Days one to two)
IS take Mosul (n = 27)
Constant 0.000 0.00 1.00 0.00 0.00 1.00 0.000 0.00 1.00
Days three to seven -1.792 1.01 0.17 1.792 1.01 6.00 0.916 0.31 2.50
Days eight to twenty-one -2.079 1.69 0.13 NAa NAa NAa 2.833 2.62 17.00
Nagelkerke R2 .10 .47 .23
Murder of David Haines (n = 28)
Constant 1.099 2.71 3.00 -1.099 2.71 0.33 -0.693 1.28 0.50
Days three to seven NA NAa NAa NAa NAa NAa 2.639 4.59* 14.00
Days eight to twenty-one NA NAa NAa NAa NAa NAa 1.386 3.08 0.08
Nagelkerke R2 .78 .79 .22
Sousse Terror Attacks (n = 205)
Constant 1.053 12.33*** 2.86 -0.799 7.91* 0.45 -0.278 1.10 0.76
Days three to seven -2.219 34.05*** 0.11 3.007 47.12*** 20.22 0.700 4.38* 2.01
Days eight to twenty-one -3.405 31.86*** 0.03 3.150 27.99*** 23.33 -0.164 0.16 0.85
Nagelkerke R2 .35 .43 .05
Paris Terror Attacks (n = 330)
Constant 1.715 33.87*** 5.57 -1.264 38.52*** 0.28 -0.946 21.28*** 0.39
Days three to seven -3.196 80.50*** 0.04 2.808 69.65*** 16.58 1.020 13.15*** 2.77 Days eight to twenty-one -3.495 85.17*** 0.03 4.480 64.96*** 88.46 1.994 43.18*** 7.35
Nagelkerke R2 .51 .55 .18
Brussels Terror Attacks (n = 204)
Constant 1.239 36.89*** 3.45 -1.281 38.52*** 0.28 -0.932 24.28*** 0.39
Days three to seven -1.893 22.59*** 0.15 1.281 11.09** 3.60 0.826 4.83* 2.29
Days eight to twenty-one NAb NAb NAb 3.073 28.25*** 21.60 2.723 22.65*** 15.23
Nagelkerke R2 .44 .27 .21
Note. a Results removed due to lack of observation for this sub-sample. b Results removed due to complete separation of predictor variable for this observation. *p <.05. **p <.01. ***p <.001.
Figure 1 indicates that for every crisis instructing information generally decreased over the three time phases, whilst adjusting information and reputation repair strategies increased. This observation is confirmed in Table 3: after the Sousse and Paris terror attacks, the odds of an instructing information strategy being used reduced gradually over each time phase. After the Brussels terror attack, instructing information had 85% lower odds of being used for the three to seven days after the crisis compared to the first one to two days.
Meanwhile, the odds of the adjusting information strategy being used significantly increased over each time phase and for all three crises. The same result was found for the reputation repair strategy, though a statistically significant difference can only be seen after the Sousse terror attack in comparing the first and second day with the third and seventh days. Overall, the results suggest that instructing information was significantly more likely to be used in the first and second days after the crisis, and adjusting information and reputation repair used in following days and weeks, supporting Hypothesis 1 whilst noting no formal empirical tests for crises of IS taking Mosul and the murder of David Haines.
A further test of crisis communication strategies being used by governmental actors in public diplomacy was to assess the fundamental matching process of the SCCT in response the crises. Hypothesis 2 and 3 stated that the reputation repair strategies should be connected to the crisis situation, based on the type of crisis and its performance history. Table 4
provides a cross-tabulation analysis of how the reputation repair strategies differed across the five different crises to test this assumption. A chi-square test of independence was performed and the relation between the reputation repair strategies and the crises proved to be
significant, X2 (28) = 285,557, p < .001, with a moderately strong association V = .29. It should be noted that 50% of the observations had an expected frequencies of less than 5.
Hypothesis 2 addressed the crises of the murder of David Haines, and the terror attacks in Sousse, Paris and Brussels. Across these crises there was a high frequency of no
reputation repair strategy being used (such as only crisis information, e.g., “Terrorist incident in Tunisia - FCO guidance and assistance https://t.co/bgz4hued9l’). When reputation repair strategies were used, responses within the reinforce cluster were most often used,
predominantly endorsement which highlighted third party support for the UK government’s response (e.g. “Conversation with Belgian PM @CharlesMichel agreeing to work together to help #Tunisia strengthen security https://t.co/soxylthipv”) and reminder which reminded stakeholders of good works by the UK government in their response (e.g. “Second RAF plane returns victims of #Tunisia attack to British soil @RAFBrizeNorton http://t.co/sbv5agnj5a”). Whilst noting a proportion of tweets with no reputation repair strategy, when reputation repair strategies were used, these results confirm Hypothesis 2: the crises of the murder of David Haines and the terror attacks in Sousse, Paris and Brussels, all of which had minimal crisis responsibility and positive performance history, resulted in the use of reinforce reputation repair strategies in response to the crises.
Table 4
Reputation Repair Strategies In Response To Five Isis Related Crises By UK Governmental Actors
Reputation repair
strategy IS take Mosul
Murder of David Haines Sousse Terror Attacks Paris Terror Attacks Brussels Terror Attacks n % n % n % n % n % Diminish Separation 5 18.5 1 2.6 Rebuild Transcendence 6 22.2 2 5.3 6 2.9 14 4.2 9 4.4 Compensation 1 3.7 Reinforce Reminder 2 7.4 35 17.1 43 13.0 49 24.0 Ingratiation 2 5.3 21 10.2 9 4.4 Victimage 5 1.5 Endorsement 9 33.3 18 47.4 42 20.5 104 31.5 14 6.9 No reputation repair strategy used 4 14.8 15 39.5 101 49.3 164 49.7 123 60.3 Total 27 100 38 100 205 100 330 100 204 100
Hypothesis 3 assumes that a similar matching process of the reputation repair
strategies to the IS taking Mosul crisis situation should take place, though diminish strategies should be used in response because of the negative performance history of the UK
government before the crisis. Noting a low number of observations, several different
strategies were used. Those most frequent strategies used were within the reinforce category including endorsement and reminder, followed by the rebuild category with compensation (e.g. “UK will provide an initial £3 million of emergency humanitarian assistance to help civilians fleeing ISIS advance in #Iraq. @DFID_UK”) and transcendence (e.g. “Events in #Iraq also part of new trend - terrorists seeking to take over territory/economic assets of wealthy states. Needs global response”) and finally the diminish category with separation (e.g. “World needs to see Arab nations taking a visible lead in confronting the threat from ISIL. Solution has to be found in this region”). These findings do not support Hypothesis 3.
Discussion and Conclusion
In examining five transnational crises, the present study applied a theoretical model of crisis communication, SCCT, to test the extent crisis communication strategies were used via the social media platform Twitter by governmental actors. The findings show that crisis communications on Twitter after each crises largely followed the theoretical guidelines developed by the SCCT that form an effective crisis response strategy, both in the timing of delivery and efforts in matching the crisis response strategy to the crisis types. The only exception was the crisis of IS taking Mosul.
The finding that instructing information is used in the immediate days after the crisis before pursuing reputation repair strategies corroborates with the SCCT. No empirical test of the timing of different crisis responses in the days and weeks after a crisis has previously been described, though Coombs (2007) stresses the ethical responsibility of first protecting
the physical and psychological needs of stakeholders in crises responses, whilst other research has pointed to the necessity of providing information early in the crisis as the first step to gaining credibility in a crisis (Caleys & Cauberghe, 2012; Hearit, 1994). The present study therefore provides a strong indication of social media being utilized by governmental actors to deliver timely crisis information to protect stakeholders and to begin to recoup reputation in the immediate days after a crisis. The findings also support the use of social media to provide continued updates on the crisis and pursuing reputation repair strategies over the following days and weeks after a crisis.
Upon closer examination of the reputation repair strategies used by governmental actors via Twitter, a connection between crisis type and response was apparent. Crises that posed minimal reputational threat resulted in reinforce reputation repair strategies. Indeed, Coombs (2006, 2007) argues that in situations with very minimal crisis attributions, reinforce strategies coupled with instructing and adjusting information can be enough to offset
reputational threat and negative affect. This may explain the reason for the high proportion of tweets containing no reputation repair strategy after the murder of David Haines and the terror attacks in Sousse, Paris and Brussels, since many of the tweets likely included
instructing and adjusting information instead. As such, these findings are consistent with the fundamental matching process of the SCCT, and offer further support for the use of social media to deliver crisis communication strategies by governmental actors.
An exception to these results was seen with the crisis of IS taking Mosul. Based on the crisis situation, the expectations of diminish crisis response strategies being used was not met. Instead, a mix of reputation repair strategies was pursued. The different outcome from this crisis suggests an ineffective crisis response (Coombs, 2007), though on closer
inspection, the lack of observed reputation repair strategies makes it difficult for reliable conclusions to be drawn. The lack of observed reputation repair strategies was also apparent
in the crisis of David Haines’ murder, which may hinder the results in testing Hypothesis 1. This points to some of the limitations in this study.
In advancing the principles of public diplomacy 2.0 and its value for crisis
management, an outreach to foreign publics through social media by governmental actors was expected as previously researched (Park & Lim, 2012; Strauß et al., 2015; Su & Xu, 2015; Zong & Lu, 2013). The selected actors were theorized to offer a crisis response due to the nature of the crises affecting the UK government, warranting actions to stop any
reputational damage the UK might have received in the international sphere. The lack of observations found for the crisis of IS taking Mosul, and too for the murder of David Haines, may be explained by this assumption not being met, questioning the utility of online channels that are used in public diplomacy to deliver crisis communications.
That being said, the lack of observed crisis response strategies for both the crises can alternatively be accounted for because the crises did not warrant a full crisis response or efforts of public diplomacy. Coombs & Holladay (2012) stress that an event that challenges an organization only becomes a threat when a “manifest and wide array of stakeholders are attending the concern” (p. 408). The limited number of stakeholders affected by David Haines’ murder may explain the low number of observations compared to the Sousse, Brussels and Terror attacks. For IS taking Mosul, the instability in Iraq, the swiftness of the event and the dispersion of stakeholders, likely hindered the visibility and potential
momentum of the concern that would necessitate a greater crisis response from the UK government.
In addressing this limitation, future research may consider a wider systematic quantitative analysis of governmental actors that communicate with foreign publics during such crises. This study has only touched the surface of the UK government’s social media
presence which concerns itself with representing the UK government to foreign publics. Similarly, further studies should take other social mediums, such as Facebook, into account. Previous research shows that different social mediums gratify different informational needs for users (Sundar & Limperos, 2013), whilst the form and source of communications can affect crisis responses (Liu, Austin & Jin, 2011). By widening the study of governmental actors social media use for crisis communication, a greater understanding of the way modern crisis communication is executed can be advanced.
Nonetheless, this study does provide some theoretical implications that offer good grounding for future research. Firstly, in applying the SCCT, a framework for testing the entire process of a crisis communication response has been developed in this study. Reputation repair strategies have been well advanced and tested in crisis communication literature (Benoit, 1997; Coombs & Holladay, 2002; Liu, 2010), but an attempt here was also made to quantify the various other strategies recommended by crisis communication scholars when managing a crisis into the concepts of instructing and adjusting information. This development is coupled with the first statistical test of SCCT with regard to the essential timings of crisis responses strategies. Taken together, this advancement of the theoretical model provides a new starting point for evaluating crises based on the SCCT.
Of equal significance, the SCCT was successfully applied outside of an organizational and corporate context to a political and diplomatic context. The active and effective use of crisis communication strategies as defined by the SCCT suggests governmental actors’ attempts to shape audiences perceptions of national image and deflect negative affect at times of crisis. Considering these crisis reputation repair strategies were employed by governmental actors tasked with representing the UK government to foreign public, then the
communicative practices of public diplomacy should also be seen as a tool for crisis
so far has received little attention from research into social media-based diplomacy (Fisher, 2010; Park & Lim, 2012; Su & Xu, 2015; Zong & Lu, 2013).
Considering the significance attached to public diplomacy to cultivate and manage a national reputation (Wang, 2006), this development is of practical use to diplomatic and governmental actors. The importance of social media in crisis communication practices has begun to be documented within organizational contexts (Coombs & Holladay, 2014; Taylor & Kent, 2007; Ki & Nekmat, 2014) but little is known about its use for governmental institutions at times of crisis despite its growin active use amongst political and diplomatic actors (Strauß et al., 2015; Waters & Williams, 2011). It is hoped this study underlines the utility public diplomacy 2.0 provides for governments to respond quickly and directly to dispersed audiences in the aftermath of transnational crises, and the utility crisis
communication theorize, like the SCCT, brings to political and diplomatic communication.
Overall, in considering governmental actors’ responses to transnational crisis, social media-based public diplomacy provides a platform for delivering a crisis communications. Noting some lower than expected observations, social media was actively and effectively used in response to crises as guided by the SCCT. Through an empirical test of both the timings and matching process that creates an effective response, governmental actors actively engaged in crisis response strategies through the social medium of Twitter to communicate with stakeholders affected by the crisis. The study thus contributes to a better understanding of social media use by governmental actors and the use of public diplomacy as a
communication tool.
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