A Cross-cultural Study: The Impact of Message Convergence and Source Credibility on Organizational Reputation during a Crisis
Jiaqi Wu 12090511 Master thesis
Graduate School of Communication
Master’s programme Communication Science Dr. Anna Berbers
Abstract
This study explored how multiple message interaction on social media influence public perception across cultures. Through a 2×2×2 between-subjects experiment, the impact of message convergence and source credibility on the perceived organizational reputation on Twitter during a crisis in Eastern and Western cultures were examined. Although message convergence was significantly tied to perceived organizational reputation, there was no significant relationship between perceived organizational reputation and source credibility. The impact of cultural differences was also not significant. These findings contribute to the understanding of the interaction of multiple information on social media during a crisis from a cross-cultural perspective and provide a new direction for public relations professionals in social media reputation management.
Keywords: Reputation management, social media, crisis communication, across cultures, message convergence, source credibility
Introduction
According to Buffet, "If you lose money for the firm, I will be understanding. If you lose reputation, I will be ruthless" (as cited in Kanner, 1991, p. 45). Reputation is the pillar of organizational development (Iwu-Egwuonwu, 2011). A crisis is a threat to organizational reputation (Coombs, 2007). With the popularity of social media, the power of the threat will be amplified, and the consequence of the threat can be more serious. Reputation management during a crisis is facing more challenges in the digital age. More organizations have realized the importance of social media in managing crisis issues and protecting reputation. This trend also has attracted many scholars’ attention to the role of social media in the field of crisis communication and reputation management.
Not only can social media spread crisis-related information faster and wider but also it can be an "issue arena" for interaction where multiple actors can discuss issues or crises in which they have been stake (Vos, 2017). Various opinions about the organization from different directions will be present to the audiences on social media (Hayes, Hendrix, & Kumar, 2013). In previous studies, some focus on the factors affecting social media use during crises (Jin, Liu, & Austin, 2010), while some studies have compared the effects of
crisis communication using traditional and social media on public perception and reaction (Schultz, Utz, & Göritz, 2011). However, research on the interaction and convergence of messages in social media is scarce. Recent work by Ye and Ki (2018) on the interaction effects of multiple messages has only focused on Facebook, and it is unclear the effects of other platforms. As Twitter is regarded as the most used social media for crisis
communication (Lovejoy & Saxtona, 2012), it is worth investigating how the interaction of messages influence public perception during a crisis when people are confronted with multiple messages from different sources on Twitter simultaneously.
With the expansion of multinational organizations, a crisis can spread rapidly over the globe. Cross-cultural crisis communication has attracted great interest in scholarly (Huang & Bedford, 2009; Schwarz, Seeger, & Auer, 2016; Zhu, Anagondahalli, & Zhang, 2017). People from different cultures may perceive and respond to a crisis differently (Falkheimer & Heide, 2006) and have different perceptions towards the organization-in-crisis. Therefore, this study will also take culture into account. The study will focus on Eastern and Western culture because there are huge differences between them in values and cognitions (Hofstede, 1984),
which may affect the ability of people to perceive information and the effect of information interaction on social media.
This study aims to explore the interaction effects of multiple messages on the perceived organizational reputation on Twitter during a crisis across cultures. Through an experimental approach, the study shed light on the effects of multiple messages communicated
simultaneously on public perception towards an organization-in-crisis and investigated the cultural variances in the impact on social media. This study will help to deepen the
understanding of the opportunities for and threats to organizational reputation on Twitter and extend the work by Ye and Ki (2017) that focused on the interaction effects of multiple messages on Facebook. The study also can contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the role of social media on organizational reputation during a crisis in different cultural contexts. Since there are huge differences between Eastern and Western culture, examining the differences will be helpful for public relations practitioners to understand the influence of culture in reputation management better and handle an intercultural crisis on social media. Also, it can offer insight for managers in multinational organizations to make social media strategies to gain a competitive advantage in the context of globalization.
This study will explore the role of social media from three aspects: message convergence, source credibility, and culture. Through an experimental approach, participants will be shown to a Twitter page, including one tweet and six comments about the Starbucks' racial-bias crisis.
Based on Message Convergence Framework (MCF), message convergence occurs when people get one single conclusion after seeing numerous messages from distinct sources (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969). In this paper, message convergence will be used to refer to message consistency, which means multiple comments are consistent with the opinions expressed in the tweet. It will be manipulated as either consistent tweet-comments, inconsistent tweet-comments. Source credibility will refer to the credibility of the
tweet-sender, and in this study, employee tends to be assigned as a high-credibility source while organization tends to be assigned as a low-credibility source. Besides, China represents Eastern culture and the Netherlands represents Western culture in the study. Therefore, this study would focus on message convergence and source credibility on social media to
investigate the perceived organizational reputation across culture during a crisis. Based on the above issues, the research question is:
How do message convergence and source credibility on social media influence perceived organizational reputation during a crisis in Eastern and Western culture?
Theoretical Background
Organizational reputation on social media
Reputation is defined as an aggregate evaluation based on the information stakeholders receive about the organization (Hiles, 2011). Reputation is one of the most critical intangible assets of an organization, which can enhance performance and create a competitive advantage over its rivals (Barney, 1991). Generally, a good reputation is advantageous for employee recruitment and can increase employee loyalty, enhance customer trust in products (Fombrum & van Riel, 1997), attract investment, and reduce financing costs (Beatty & Ritter, 1986).
In the digital age, social media plays a vital role in organizational reputation
management. Social media can enable organizations to build interactive relationships with their stakeholders directly and repair a damaged reputation quickly (Liu & Jin, 2011; Shin, Pang, & Kim, 2015). Moreover, social media spreads the news to the public, both positive and negative, more rapidly. People can share and discuss the crisis-related-messages with
each other through social media, which means multiple actors can get involved in the co-production of the information about the organizations (Pace, Balboni, & Gistri, 2017). Therefore, organizations may lose control of information, and the original evaluations of the organization may be changed (Hennig-Thurau, Wiertz, & Feldhaus, 2015). To some extent, social media may increase the risk of crisis and may lead to more threats to the organizational reputation.
Crisis usually creates high demands for information (Ye & Ki, 2018). Twitter is considered to be the most used social media and the most effective tool for communicating with people who are actively involved in the crisis. (Briones, Kuch, Liu, & Jin, 2011; Lovejoy & Saxtona, 2012). Heravi and Harrower (2016) argue that Twitter is a platform that has a good reputation for a discovery mechanism for real-time news and views. Twitter emphasizes concise writing, which allows messages to be widely shared at a faster rate than others in crisis. People can actively seek out multiple information on Twitter to meet their needs in crisis and reduce anxiety associated caused by uncertainty. Also, Twitter is considered as a flat and open communication medium for crisis communication (Bruns & Burgess, 2012). Not only individual users can generate and share various types of content, but also many
organizations, like media agencies, government offices, corporate brands, have their own official accounts. These organizations can spread information and are available to reach their audience rapidly on Twitter. A large amount of information from diverse sources on social media is interacting and jointly affecting public perception toward the organization. When people can make one own conclusion from the information, message convergence will take place.
Message Convergence in crisis communication on social media
Message convergence framework (MCF) was initially introduced by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca in 1969 to explore the interaction of arguments from various sources. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's work in argumentation theory has been regarded as one of the most influential systems of rhetoric (Frank, Bolduc, & Clark, 2003). Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca point out that different arguments constantly interact in discourse and can reach a consensus on some points. Organization-in-crisis can spark controversy and lead to a large number of distinct ideas about it on social media. If these various arguments "lead to a single conclusion," the message convergence will occur (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca,1969).
As the arguments continue to interact in the discourse system, there is usually some degree of convergence between them (Anthony, Sellnow, & Millner, 2013).
Anthony, Sellnow, and Millner (2013) applied MCF to crisis communication and distill three propositions: 1. "Convergence in the claims made by distinct sources, be it partial or complete, increases the strength of those claims." 2. "The more significant points of convergence are to the audience, the stronger the claims." 3. "The strength of convergence may be modified as a result of a reflection about this very convergence" (Anthony et al., 2013, pp.349-350). When applying it to practical work, MCF explains how people manage
information and make decisions in their minds when they are exposed to myriad messages. Anthony and Sellnow (2015) advanced MCF to the clinical and communicative practices of the physicians and examined the role of MCF in the obstetrician's medical decision making.
The consistency of messages is central to achieve message convergence (Lewis & Pullen, 2018). Since convergence can increase the strength of the claim, the persuasiveness of the arguments will be more potent if there is a high degree of consistency existing in the messages (Herovic, Sellnow, & Anthony, 2014). On the platform of Twitter, when there are more comments with arguments from the opposite side, the level of consistency between a
tweet and its comments is low. When there are more supportive comments on a tweet, the level of consistency between them is high, message convergence will occur. Hence, the conclusions people get from the area of convergence between a tweet and its comments are more convincing, which can have a profound influence in shaping public opinion and perception in crisis communication.
Social media are usually used by public relations professionals to achieve their organizational goals (Curtis et al., 2009). Because the goals for organization-in-crisis is to repair a damaged reputation and protect the image, organizations usually tell their side of the story as crisis response and publish positive content on social media to give color to their image during a crisis. Hence, the consistent comments on the tweets about positive crisis response will be positive during a crisis. For organizations-in-crisis, if they can gain more consistent comments on their positive crisis response tweet, people will be more willing to believe the story they tell for protecting reputation. Therefore, the study posits:
H1: People would perceive an organization-in-crisis more positively when the comments are
Source Credibility in the digital age in crisis communication
Source credibility has been studied from various perspectives. Some focus on the realm of advertising marketing (Kambitsis, Harahousou, Theodorakis, & Chatzibeis, 2002), while others explore the role of source credibility in politics (Teven, 2008). Previous studies have found source credibility is one of the indicators that influence the effect of persuasion, brand attitude, and consumer behavior (Haley, 1996; Pornpitakpan, 2004).
Source Credibility is defined as “a message source’s perceived expertise and
trustworthiness” (Tormala, Briñol & Petty, 2006, p. 684). In crisis communication, source credibility is the key to whether the crisis response is accepted. Highly credible source makes messages persuasive, induces more favorable attitude changes (Heinze, Uhlmann, &
Diermeier, 2014; Tormala, Brinol, & Petty, 2006) and positive behavioral responses (Arora,
Charles, Arora, 2006) to protect reputation.
During a crisis, an organization can provide an early and immediate response to
positions itself as a source and present its side of the story (Coombs, 2007). In the digital age, people from all over the world can join the discussion for the crisis through social media. Therefore, the organization is no longer the only source of information for influencing public
opinion, and other stakeholders, such as employees, can also have an impact on the online discussions of the organization in crisis. As internal stakeholders, employees play a crucial role in improving public attitude towards organizational reputation and reducing the risk of further reputational damage (Roberts & Dowling, 2002).
According to van Zoonen and van der Meer (2015) ’s study on the importance of source and credibility perception in crisis, the effect of source credibility on organizational reputation is higher for employees compared to an organization itself. This is because the
organization-in-crisis is “at a credibility disadvantage” (Veil & Ojeda, 2010, p. 415), while employees may be perceived as more independent credible sources than the organization and can provide inside information (Frandsen & Johansen, 2011). People tend to suspect that the organization-in-crisis respond to a crisis on social media is out of ulterior motive (e.g., financial interest) and consider the organization insincere and untrustworthy. Hence, employees can be seen as a high-credibility source, while the organization can be seen as low-credibility relatively during a crisis. Therefore, the study posits:
H2: People would perceive an organization-in-crisis more positively when they are exposed to a tweet about positive crisis response from an employee’s account on Twitter.
Cultural dimensions in crisis communication
Culture is a growing area of focus in public relations. As an increase in the number of multinational organizations, a crisis can travel the geographical boundaries to influence people in different countries (Lindholm & Olsson, 2011). Culture is an underlying value framework which can influence the way people think and behave. According to Hofstede (1984), there are significant differences between Eastern and Western cultures, and these differences are rooted in people’s minds and are difficult to change. More scholars begin to investigate the impact of cultural variances in public relations work based on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions’ theory, which provides an intercultural perspective on social media crisis communication (Liu, Meng, & Fellows, 2015; Lo, Waters, & Christensen, 2017).
Hofstede identified six dimensions of national culture: individualism-collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, power distance and masculinity-femininity, long-short term orientation, and indulgence- restraint. The dimension of individualism-collectivism is the one that has been studied most thoroughly among six cultural dimensions that differentiate Eastern/Asian cultures from Western/US culture (Singelis, Triandis, Bhawuk, & Gelfand, 1995).
In an individualistic society, people have a more individualistic attitude and prefer loosely-knit social networks. Individualism focuses more on individual achievement,
individual rights over duties and address individual rights, freedoms, and self-reliance (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, & Tipton, 1985; Hofstede, 1984). On the contrary, collectivism place a greater emphasis on the interests of the group to take precedence over individual interests. Collectivistic members tend to rely on the group, show a high preference for conformity, harmony (Oyserman, Coon, & Kemmelmeier, 2002).
Previous research by Ye and Ki (2018) has shown post-comment consistency on Facebook would lead to a more favorable perceived reputation of an organization-in-crisis. Based on MCF, this is because overlaps among information from different sources can increase the persuasiveness of the arguments (Herovic et al. 2014). Bond and Smith (1996) found conformity is greater in collectivist cultures than individual cultures. People from collectivist cultures, especially in Asia, tend to conform and depend on the group. This conformity results from information influence (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955), which may urge people to believe the judgment of others and maintain harmony. Hence, the persuasiveness of the arguments brought by the convergence in the claims will be stronger for people of
collectivist culture than people of individual culture. If people of collectivist culture find there is a consistency between a tweet and its various comments on Twitter, they are more likely to trust the organization and perceive an organization positively than people from individualism. Based on the scale of Hofstede (1984), the Netherlands can be considered as an individualistic society with a high Individualism Versus Collectivism (IDV) score of 80, and China is a highly collectivist culture with a low score of IDV. Therefore, the study posits:
H3: People from China would perceive an organization-in-crisis more positively than people from the Netherlands when the comments are consistent with a tweet about positive crisis response on Twitter.
Another relevant cultural dimension is long-short term orientation. It is identified by Bond (1987) and then added into Hofstede's work as the fifth culture dimensions. It is used to distinguish the difference in thinking between the East and West, also known as Confucian dynamism. According to the Hofstede empirical research (1988), Asian countries obtained the top scores on this dimension, while most western countries scored comparably low. Chinese culture is a typical representative of Confucian culture and scores an extremely long-term orientation (118), while the Netherlands is a society with short-term orientation culture with a
score of 44 (Hofstede, 1998). People from long-term orientation cultures have the values: perseverance, thrift (saving), a sense of shame, ordering relationships by status. They are willing to focus on slow results and virtue. In contrast, short-term orientation cultures prefer "reciprocating social obligations, respect for tradition, protecting one's 'face,' and personal steadiness and stability" (Hofstede, 2001, p. 354). Nations with higher levels of Confucian dynamism emphasize virtue over truth (Kim, Chon, & Miller, 2014). Virtue is a foundation of credibility and one of the inherent qualities of a speaker (Stroup, 2014). If people or
organizations have high credibility, they will be considered as very virtuous.
Because the employee is perceived as a relatively higher-credibility source compared to the organization (van Zoonen & van der Meer, 2015), and China is a long term oriented culture while the Netherlands is a short term oriented culture. People from China may rely more on information from the employee, and the impact of employee source on Chinese will be greater. Besides, one of the goals of crisis response strategies is to reduce the negative effect of the crisis (Coombs, 1995), including people's negative attitudes and feelings.
people's negative attitudes and feelings about the organization-in-crisis, and the Chinese people may perceive the organization more positively. Therefore, the study posts:
H4: People from China would perceive an organization-in-crisis more positively than people from the Netherlands when they are exposed to a tweet about positive crisis response from an
employee’s account on Twitter.
H1 Message Consistency (consistent tweet-comments vs. inconsistent tweet-comments) Perceived Organizational Reputation Source (employee vs. organization) Country
(China vs. the Netherlands)
H3
H4
Method
To test the hypotheses, a 2 (Message consistency: consistent tweet-comments and inconsistent tweet-comments) × 2 (Source: organization, employee) × 2 (Country: China, the Netherlands) between-subject factorial design was employed. Four Twitter pages were created with a different combination of levels of message consistency and source about Starbuck racial bias crisis.
Participants
Convenience sampling was used in the study. A total of 287 respondents from the Netherlands and China participated in this study. The participants were students at University of Amsterdam, employees at Elsevier, and students at Beijing Foreign Studies University. After excluding 11% incomplete responses (n=32), a total of 255 participants completed the questionnaires with 54.1% females and 45.9% males. 131 participants were Dutch (51.4%), while 124 participants were Chinese (48.6%). The age of the participants ranged from 17 to 33 years (M= 23.36, SD = 2.91). 116 participants (45.5%) have at least completed a bachelor’s degree. A majority of the participants use social media more than once a day (n = 225, 88.2%),
with the most use for WeChat (n = 107, 42%), followed by WhatsApp (n = 75, 29.4%), Instagram (n=33, 12.9%), Twitter (n=13, 5.1%), Facebook (n=12, 4.7%), Sina Weibo (n=11, 4.3%) or other social media (n=3, 1.2%).
Stimuli
Starbuck racial bias crisis was used in the experiment. Four Twitter pages were created. Participants were exposed to the tweet from Starbucks verified Twitter account or the tweet from an employee of Starbucks account, followed by six comments, respectively. To maintain the external validity, participants were offered a tweet and its comments as they would
encounter in real life. 'Likes' were removed from the Twitter page because there are huge differences in the numbers of 'likes' existing between organization account and personal account in real life. The organization's Twitter account was based on the actual Starbucks Twitter account, while the employee account was fictional in the experiment.
Starbucks's tweet and the comments used in the experiment were revised from the tweet and comments posted on the Starbucks Twitter account after the racist incident. The
the Starbucks account. Starbuck's tweet that claimed," On 5/29, we'll close US
company-owned stores to conduct racial-bias training to address implicit bias & prevent discrimination. We're ashamed & recognize that racial bias is a problem we must address." The content of the tweets was kept comparable between the two sources to ensure that the general messages would be the same. To make a clear distinction between the Twitter accounts, the employee account was used a fictional name Jean Lindsey. Moreover, the profile picture of the employee's Twitter account showed a young-aged woman wearing a Starbucks iconic green apron. Besides, "as a @Starbucks partner" was mentioned in the content of the tweet from an employee's Twitter account.
The comments on the tweet from the employee account were the same as those on the tweet from the Starbucks account. Six consistent comments (e.g., Thank you for making an effort that many companies never will.) and six inconsistent comments (e.g.," Too bad Starbucks bowed to pressure from groups that love to promote racial bias. I will drink coffee elsewhere.") were chosen respectively. The consistent comments are all positive and show support for the tweet about the response of Starbuck racial bias crisis. The inconsistent
comments are negative and show dissatisfaction with the tweet about the response of Starbuck racial bias crisis.
Procedures
The experiment was embedded in an online questionnaire and was distributed via a link over social media. Each participant was randomly assigned a Twitter page containing a tweet and six comments. After viewing the Twitter page, participants were then asked to complete a set of questions immediately. The procedure took 3 to 5 minutes. (Questionnaire is available in Appendix A)
Measures
Organizational Reputation
The organizational reputation of Starbucks was measured using ten items from Coombs and Holladay's (1996) organizational reputation scale. Participants were asked, including 'Starbucks is basically honest,' 'Starbucks is concerned with the well-being of its publics,' and 'I do not trust Starbucks to tell the truth about the incident,'(α = .89). All responses were measured
with a 7-point Liker scale (1 =strongly disagree, 7 = strongly agree). The higher the score is, the more positively people are going to perceive Starbucks (M = 4.2, SD = 1.11).
Manipulation checks
In order to ensure the experimental manipulations work, two manipulation checks were carried out. For message consistency, participants were asked the following statement on a 7-point Likert scale Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (Extremely unsupportive) to 7 (Extremely supportive): “To what extent do you think the comments are supportive of the tweet?” Because the crisis response tweet is positive, the consistent comments are positive and show support to it, while the inconsistent comments may show dissatisfaction. An independent t-test was
conducted to compare two scores between consistent tweet-comments and inconsistent tweet-comments, with a higher score reflecting a higher level of consistency between the content of the tweet and its comments and a lower score reflecting a lower level of consistency between the content of the tweet and its comments. As expected, the level of consistency of consistent condition (M = 5.65, SD = 1.46) was significantly higher than that of inconsistent
condition (M = 2.73, SD = 1.40); t (253) =16.36, p < .001. Thus, it can be assumed that the manipulation was successful.
For source, participants were asked to indicate who the tweet-sender was: Starbucks or an employee of Starbucks. Almost 90% correctly identified the source. A chi-square test was conducted to confirm it (χ2(1) = 171.57, p < .001). In addition, participants were asked the
credibility of the tweet-sender on a 7-point Likert scale Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (Extremely incredible) to 7 (Extremely credible). An independent t-test was conducted to compare two scores between the source of the employee and the source of the organization. As expected, the level of credibility of the employee (M = 4.78, SD = 1.469) was significantly higher than that of the organization (M = 3.91, SD = 1.712), t (253) = -4.33, p < .001. Consequently, the manipulation can be assumed as successful.
Randomization check
A randomization check was conducted using chi-square analysis and One-Way ANOVA to prove equal distribution of sampling. Results showed that the experimental groups there were did not differ with respect to gender (χ2(7) = 3.43, p = .843). And there
were no differences between the experimental groups with respect to age, F (7, 247) = 1.693,
p = .11. The distribution of sampling was proven to be balanced on age and gender.
Results
Descriptive Statistics
Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics for the perceived organizational reputation for the experimental groups
Table 1
Perceived Organizational reputation
Mean Standard Deviation N
consistent message Chinese 4.53 1.23 62
Dutch 4.38 1.23 65
Total 4.45 1.23 127
inconsistent message Chinese 3.85 .85 62
Dutch 4.05 .99 66 Total 3.94 .93 128 Organization Chinese 4.30 1.19 61 Dutch 4.20 1.10 67 Total 4.25 1.14 128 Employee Chinese 4.08 1.02 63 Dutch 4.22 1.16 64 Total 4.15 1.09 127
To explore the examine the effects of message convergence on organizational reputation and test whether there are differences of the perceived reputation of Starbucks between Chinese participants and Dutch participants when comments are consistent with the tweet about positive crisis response on Twitter, a two-way ANOVA was performed. Levene’s test for equality of variances was carried out but note that equality of variances could not be assumed (F= 3.77, p = .011). The analysis revealed only a significant main effect for the message consistency, (F (1, 251) = 13.91, p <.001, ƞ2 = .053). The level of Starbucks’s perceived reputation was significantly higher with consistent tweet-comments (M = 4.45, SD = 1.22) than inconsistent tweet-comments (M = 3.95, SD = 0.93). However, there was a no significant main effect of country on the organizational reputation (F (1, 251) = 0.03, p = .874, ƞ2 = .000) nor was there an interaction effect between message consistency and country (F (1, 251) = 1.686, p =.195, ƞ2= .0.00). People from China (M= 4.53, SD= 0.14) and people from the Netherlands (M= 4.38, SD= 0.14) did not have significant differences in perceptions towards Starbucks when they were presented to supportive comments. Thus, the effects of
message consistency on organizational reputation appeared stable in Chinese and Dutch participants. Therefore, H1 was supported and H3 was not supported.
Table 2
Results of two-way ANOVA
Sum of Squares df Mean Square F p η2 Consistency 16.47 1 16.47 13.91 < 0.001 0.05 Country 0.03 1 0.03 0.025 0.874 0.00 Consistency * Country 2.00 1 2.00 1.69 0.195 0.00 Error 297.11 251 1.18 Total 315.30 254
To investigate the relationship between the source credibility and perceived
organizational reputation, and the impact of culture on this relationship. A two-way ANOVA was conducted with the reputation of Starbucks as the dependent variable, country and source as the independent variables. Levene’s test for equality of variances was carried out, and the assumptions of the analysis were met (F= .98, p = .403). Results represented that there were no significant main effects of source credibility (F (1, 251) = 0.54, p = .461, ƞ2 = 0.00) and country (F (1, 251) = 0.02, p = .893, ƞ2 = 0.00) on the organizational reputation of an organization-in-crisis. The analysis also revealed that the interaction between them are not
statistically significant either (F (1, 251) = .74, p =.39, ƞ2 = .00). Participants who were exposed to employee source (M = 4.15, SD = 1.09) and organization source (M = 4.25, SD = 1.14) appeared to have the same perception towards Starbucks. People from China (M = 4.08,
SD = 0.14) and people from the Netherlands (M= 4.29, SD = 0.14) did not significantly differ
in the perception towards Starbucks when they were exposed to a tweet about crisis response from an employee account with high credibility. Therefore, H2 and H4 were not supported. Table 3
Results of two-way ANOVA
Sum of Squares
df Mean Square F p η2
Culture 0.02 1 0.02 0.02 0.893 0.00
Source credibility 0.68 1 0.68 0.54 0.461 0.00
Culture * Source credibility 0.93 1 0.93 0.74 0.390 0.00
Error 313.71 251 1.25
Total 315.3 254
Discussion & Conclusion
The purpose of the study is to investigate the effects of social media on the perceived organizational reputation across cultures using an experiment. The study examined whether message convergence and source credibility affects the reputation of the organization-in-crisis
on Twitter, and generated insight into whether differences of these effects exist in Chinese and Dutch culture. The results showed that perceived organizational reputation is influenced by message convergence and has no significant relationship with the source credibility. The differences in the message convergence effects and source credibility effects on
organizational reputation between Western and Eastern cultures were not significant. This study examined the effect of message convergence on the platform of Twitter. A previous study by Ye and Ki (2017) has identified the positive effect of the consistent messages on the organizational reputation on the platform of Facebook, and current investigation added evidence to such a positive effect. Besides, this finding reflected the effect of consensus information on attitudes. It confirms the power of consensus in persuasion from message convergence, which is in line with the investigation by Anthony et al. (2013) that message convergence can influence the decision-making process.
Even though other studies found that the source credibility is important in relation to the public attitudes and emotions during a crisis (Claeys, Cauberghe, & Leysen, 2013; Wu & Wang, 2011), the experiment in the present study did not confirm the impact of sources on
Twitter on organizational reputation. Significant differences were not found in the public evaluation towards the organization on different information source credibility.
A possible explanation could be that the sample size is small and may not able to represent the characteristics of the population accurately, affecting the accuracy of the results. Besides, the possible interference of people’s prior attitudes of Starbucks is not considered in the study. The impact of source credibility on persuasion could be affected by people’s previous thoughts, resulting in people's perceptions towards Starbucks are not different
between different sources. An alternative explanation could be that the employee source is not as trustworthy as we expected. Though an employee is considered to be a more reliable source compared to an organization, this reliability is a relative concept. Employees are regarded to represent the company’s image and have a direct financial interest in the organizations as internal stakeholders (van Buren & Greenwood, 2008). Considering people may think the motivations of employees for tweeting about crisis response will be consistent with organization, there may be no differences in the perception between the credibility of two sources on Twitter.
Evidence is drawn from previous studies to prove that culture plays a crucial role in individual perception, which would influence the processing of information (Kastanakis & Voyer, 2014), thereby yielding an impact on the relationship between source and
organizational reputation, message convergence and organizational reputation. However, results in the current study suggested that culture has no direct relation to the reputation of the organization, nor will it have a significant impact on the relationship between the
organizational reputation and source, organizational reputation and consistency. The attitudes towards Starbucks of Chinese and Dutch participants are similar under different source credibility and different types of comments. A possible explanation might be the cultural interpenetration. Specifically, the central values of a culture will be influenced by other cultures. Craig and Douglas (2006) argued that collectivist Asian societies are increasingly adopting typical western values like individualism while western societies are becoming to stress values from Asian such as harmony. Cultural interpenetration will lead to greater with-in country value disparities, making it difficult to get significant differences between countries (Craig & Douglas, 2006). Since most participants in the experiment are heavy users of social networks, and the media can reinforce the blurring of cultural boundaries, the impact
of other cultures on these participants may be great. We cannot confirm to what extent were these participants have been affected by other cultures. Therefore, the could be the reason for the failure of the experiment to test the role of culture played in the relationships between organizational reputation and message convergence, organizational reputation and source.
In conclusion, the findings showed that a significant difference in the score of
organizational reputation between two levels of message convergence but could not predict a relationship between source credibility and organizational reputation. People may have similar attitudes towards the organization when they are getting the information from a high-credibility source and a low-credibility source. As no interaction effect of culture could be found in this study, it can be concluded that culture has little impact on the effect of positive reputation caused by consistent messages on social media and does not affect the similar results of organizational reputation resulted from two sources with different credibility levels.
From a theoretical point of view, the study validated the proposition of Message Convergence Framework in crisis communication again on the platform of social media by experiment including a real-life case. It contributed to broaden the current understanding of the interaction of multiple information on social media from a cross-cultural perspective. As there was a lack of research about the influences of the interaction of multiple information on the organizational reputation under different cultures, the outcomes are valuable. Even though the culture was theoretically believed to have an influence on perceptions in previous studies, it was not confirmed in the current study. Cultural interpenetration in the changing global environment is provided to explain this result, which offers new directions for a future study about the impact of culture.
The finding of the study provided practical suggestions for professionals in crisis communication as well. Although cultural differences are essential for multinational
organizations to consider when operating across regions, and strategical crisis responses are chosen in different countries to deal with the crisis, the public perception towards
organization-in-crisis is not much different in different cultural settings. Organizations should pay more attention to comments on social media in crisis communication. Only when
organizations get more support from different sources can they be successful in online crisis management and have a better reputation. However, Negative comments are inevitable. In order to ensure the effectiveness of crisis reply on social media and gain a better reputation, organizations need to monitor the comments on their tweet and make plans for a reply.
Limitation and future research
There are some potential limitations to the present study. To begin with, the
generalizability of the results is affected by the sample. Since the method of sampling chosen in the experiment was not the best one, it is still questionable whether the sample is
representative of the population. Convince sampling was used in the study because the researcher can reach the participants easily. Since only employees of Elsevier and students were chosen in the study, the representativeness is limited. More Various participants should be considered to join in the study in the future.
Second, the differences among groups in organizational familiarity, the pre-existing attitude towards the organization and Twitter use were not considered in the study, which may
pose a threat to the internal validity of the experiment. To improve the validity of the experiment, these variables should be controlled in future studies.
Additionally, while Twitter is a very popular social media for crisis communication, but it is not the mainstream social media in China. Future research could explore the effects on different platforms or a collaboration two or more platforms. Given that no difference was found between organization and employee sources, a third-party source, media, could be possibly introduced in future research. Also, the materials used in the experiment are in English. Since English is not the native language of Dutch and Chinese, the participants' level of English proficiency is unclear. Language can influence the way people perceive the world (Sapir, 1985), which can affect the respondents' comprehension and perception when
answering the questions and experimental results to a certain extent. Experiment materials should be translated into local language to eliminate deviations in understanding in future research.
Last but not least, as cultural interpenetration may be the reason that the study failed to build up a link between cultural differences and the effects on organization reputation, a possible direction for future direction could be to explore the impact of cultural
interpenetration crisis on crisis communication. Furthermore, further research might focus on other types of crises and crisis response strategies.
Author Note
I would like to express my deepest appreciation to Dr. Anna Berbers, without her valuable advice and guidance help, the study would not have been completed. I also wish to thank Jingjing Wang for her suggestions, encouragement, and knowledge. Special thanks to my colleagues at Elsevier for their friendship and support.
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Appendix A
Questionnaire in Qualtrics (with Chinese translation)
Dear participant,
With this letter, I would like to invite you to participate in a research study to be conducted under the auspices of the Graduate School of Communication, a part of the
University of Amsterdam. The study focuses on the impact of social media on organizational reputation in the Starbucks racial bias crisis.
In this study, you will be asked to carefully read several messages. This is very important as afterward you will be asked to answer a number of questions concerning the content of these messages. Please take enough time to carefully read the message and the questions before answering. Below, you will now first be asked to agree to participate in this research project and for us to use your answers.
谨以此函，邀请您参加由阿姆斯特丹大学传播学院主持的一项研究。 该研究的重 点是在星巴克种族偏见危机中社交媒体对组织声誉的影响。
在本研究中，您将会被要求仔细阅读几则信息。 这非常重要，因为之后您将被要 求回答有关这些信息的许多问题。 在回答之前，请花足够的时间仔细阅读信息和问题。 现在首先您需要同意参与此研究项目，并同意我们使用您的答案。
Consent Form
I hereby declare that I have been informed in a clear manner about the nature and
method of the research, as described in the email invitation for this study.
I agree, fully and voluntarily, to participate in this research study. With this, I retain the right to withdraw my consent, without having to give a reason for doing so. I am aware that I may halt my participation in the experiment at any time.
If my research results are used in scientific publications or are made public in another way, this will be done such a way that my anonymity is completely safeguarded. My personal data will not be passed on to third parties without my express permission.
If I wish to receive more information about the research, either now or in future, I can contact
jiaqi.wu@student.uva.nl.
Should I have any complaints about this research, I can contact the designated member of the Ethics Committee representing the ASCoR, at the following address:
ASCoR secretariat, Ethics Committee University of Amsterdam
Postbus 15793 1001 NG Amsterdam 020‐ 525 3680
同意书 我特此声明，已明确告知我这项研究的性质和方法，如本研究的电子邮件邀请中所述。 我同意完全自愿地参加这项研究。基于此，我保留撤回我的同意的权利，而不必给出理 由。我知道我可以随时停止参与实验。 如果我的研究结果在科学出版物中使用或以其他方式公开，则可以完全保护我的匿名性。 未经我的明确许可，我的个人数据不会传递给第三方。 如果希望现在或将来获得有关该研究的更多信息，请联系 jiaqi.wu@student.uva.nl. 如果我对这项研究有任何投诉，我可以通过以下地址与代表 ASCoR 的道德委员会指定 成员联系
o
I understand the text presented above, and I agree to participate in the research study. 我了解上述内容，并同意参与研究。Q1 What is your nationality? 您的国籍是什么？
o
Chinese 中国o
Dutch 荷兰o
Others 其他 (end of survey )Q2 What is your age? Please indicate your age in numbers in the blank. 您的年龄？ 请在空白处用填写数字表示您的年龄。
Q3 What is your gender? 您的性别？
o
Male 男性 (1)o
Female 女性 (2)o
Others 其他 (3) __________您完成的最高学历是什么？
No formal education 无正式学历 (1)
o
Primary education 小学 (2)o
Secondary education 中学 (3)o
Bachelor's degree (or equivalent) 本科 (4)o
Master's degree 硕士 (5)o
Doctoral or Professional degree 博士 (6)Q5 How often do you use social media? 您使用社交媒体的频率？
o
Never (1)o
Less than a few times a week (2)o
A few times a week (3)o
More than once a day (5)o
Which social media do you use most ?Q6 Which social media do you use most ? 您最常使用哪种社交媒体？
o
Twitter (1)o
Instagram (2)o
Facebook (3)o
Sina Weibo (4)o
Wechat (5)o
Whatsapp (6)o
Other (7) _____________Background
Starbucks racial bias incident Two black men were arrested at a Philadelphia Starbucks, after a Starbucks manager called 911, claiming they were trespassing. The men hadn’t ordered anything and were reportedly waiting for a business associate to arrive. The video of the arrest went viral on social media.
星巴克种族歧视事件两名黑人在美国费城的一家星巴克被逮捕， 星巴克经理报警时声 称他们擅自闯入。这两位男子没有任何消费，据说正在等待一名商业伙伴到来。
You will see a tweet and its 6 comments about Starbucks racial bias incident occurred in Philadelphia.
Please carefully read the tweet and its comments and you will be asked to answer a number of questions.
您将会看到关于星巴克种族歧视事件的一条推文和六条评论，请仔细阅读该推文和它评 论，您会被要求回答一些问题。
Tweet & Comments
(Starbucks-inconsistent)
Manipulation check
Q7 Who is tweet-sender? 谁发布了这条推特
o
Starbucks 星巴克 (1)o
Employee of Starbucks 星巴克的一个员工 (2) Q8 To what extent do you think the tweet-sender is credible？ 您认为发布该推文的发布者的可信度有多高？Extremely incredible 非常不可 信 (1) Moderately incredible (2) Slightly incredible (3) Neither incredible nor credible (4) Slightly credible (5) Moderately credible (6) Extremely credible 非常可信 (7) The tweet-sender is
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
Q9 To what extent do you think the comments are supportive of the tweet? 您认为这些评论对该推文的支持度有多高？ Extremely unsupportive 非常不支持 (1) Moderately unsupportive (2) Slightly unsupportive (3) Neither supportive nor unsupportive (4) Slightly supportive (5) Moderately supportive (6) Extremely supportive 非常支持 (7) The comments are
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
Reputation
Please indicate how strongly you agree or disagree with all the following statements 请指出您对以下所有陈述的赞同或反对程度 Strongly disagree 非常不 同意 (1) Disagree (2) Somewhat disagree (3) Neither agree nor disagree (4) Somewhat agree (5) Agree (6) Strongly agree 非 常同意 (7) Starbucks is basically honest 星巴克基本上 是诚实的 (1)
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
Starbucks is concerned with the well-being of its public 星 巴克关心公众 的福祉 (2)o
o
o
o
o
o
o
I do trust Starbucks to tellthe truth about
the incident 我 相信星巴克说 出了这件事的 真相 (3) I would buy a product or service from Starbucks 我会 购买星巴克的 产品或服务 (4)
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
Under most circumstance, I would be likely to believe what Starbucks say 在大多数情况 下，我可能会 相信星巴克所 说的话 (5)o
o
o
o
o
o
o
I would prefer to haveo
o
o
o
o
o
o
NOTHING to do with Starbucks 我更 希望自己与星 巴克没有关系 (6) Starbucks is NOT concerned with the well-being of its public 星巴克不 关心公众的福 祉 (7)
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
Starbucks is basically DISHONEST. 星巴克是不诚 实的 (8)o
o
o
o
o
o
o
I do NOT trust Starbucks to tellthe truth about
the incident 我 不相信星巴克 说出了这件事 的真相 (9) Under most circumstance, I WOULD NOT be likely to believe what the Starbucks say 在 大多数情况下 ，我不太可能 会相信星巴克 所说的话 (10)
