Examining the Role of Social Media in Effective Crisis Management: The Effects of Crisis Origin, Information Form, and Source on Publics’ Crisis Responses.
Publics increasingly use social media during crises and, consequently, communication professionals to understand how to strategically optimize these tools. Despite this , there is scarce theory-grounded research to understand key factors that affect how publics consume crisis information via social media compared to other sources. To fill this , an emerging model helps crisis managers understand how publics produce, consume, and/or share crisis information via social media and other sources: the social-mediated crisis communication model (SMCC). This study tests essential components of the SMCC model through a 3 (crisis information form) x 2 (crisis information source) x 2 (crisis origin) mixed-design (N = 338). The findings indicate the key role of crisis origin in affecting publics preferred information form (social media, traditional media, or word-of-mouth communication) and source (organization in crisis or third party), which influences how publics anticipate an organization should respond to a crisis and what crisis emotions they are likely to feel when exposed to crisis information. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]/nCopyright of Communication Research is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
Manipulaiton Check3-item scale of responsibilityANOVA TestMANOVA Test
Interviews, online questionaire
Use of social mediaCrisis emotionsAcceptance of defensive crisis strategiesAcceptance of accommodative crisis strategies
For stimuli development:Online questionnaire to select students for in-depth, in-person interviewsFirst interview about experience of situations and how they use mediaThis study tests essential components of the SMCC model through a 3 (crisis information form) x 2 (crisis information source) x 2 (crisis origin) mixed-design (N = 338).
Interview with college students about a situation in the given university.
Research Question 1.1: How, if at all, is publics’ acceptance of organizational strategies affected by crisis origin and crisis information form?Research Question 1.2: How, if at all, is publics’ acceptance of organizational crisis strategies affected by crisis origin and crisis information source?Research Question 2.1: How, if at all, are publics’ crisis emotions affected by crisis origin and the crisis information form?Research Question 2.2: How, if at all, are publics’ crisis emotions affected by crisis origin and the crisis information source?
included only one public, college students, in a series of university situations. Additional experiments are needed with different publics and different crisis situations that highly involve these publics, so as to test whether the causal effects of crisis information form and source hold valid and reliable across different publics.additional research is needed to further segment public types by media consumption habits and level of involvement with the organization in crisisimportant for future research to also explore the synergistic impact of multiple forms and sources of crisis information dissemination.
The findings indicate the key role of origin in affecting publics’ preferred information form (social media, traditional media, or word-ofmouth communication) and source (organization in crisis or third party), which influences how publics anticipate an organization should respond to a crisis and what crisis emotions they are likely to feel when exposed to crisis information.
Experimentunderstand how publics produce, consume, and/or share information via social media and other sources: the social-mediated crisis communication model (SMCC)
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