Community Relations: Social Media in Crisis Response: 4 Trends, 5 Opportunities, and a Framework

2014 ◽  
Vol 30 (10) ◽  
pp. 14-19
Author(s):  
Peter Hirsch ◽  
Rachel Caggiano
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Crisis Response ◽  
Community Relations

The Value of Brand Fans during a Crisis: Exploring the Roles of Response Strategy, Source, and Brand Identification

2021 ◽  
pp. 232948842199969
Author(s):  
Hayoung Sally Lim ◽  
Natalie Brown-Devlin
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Experimental Design ◽  
Crisis Communication ◽  
Word Of Mouth ◽  
Crisis Response ◽  
Response Strategy ◽  
Brand Identification ◽  
Communication Source ◽  
Practical Implications ◽  
Selection Of

Using a two (crisis response strategy: diminish vs. rebuild) × three (source: brand organization vs. brand executive vs. brand fan) experimental design, this study examines how brand fans (i.e., consumers who identify with a brand) can be prompted to protect a brand’s reputation during crises and how the selection of a crisis spokesperson can influence consumers’ evaluations of the crisis communication. Being buffers for their preferred brands, brand fans are more likely to accept their brand’s crisis response and engage in positive electronic word-of-mouth on social media. Brand fans are more likely to evaluate other brand fan’s social media accounts as a credible crisis communication source, whereas those who are not brand fans are more likely to evaluate brand and/or brand executives as credible. Findings provide theoretical applications in paracrisis literature pertaining to social media but also practical implications for brand managers to strategically utilize brand fans in crisis communication.

Evolution of public sentiments during the COVID-19 pandemic: Case comparisons of India, Singapore, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
May Oo Lwin ◽  
Anita Sheldenkar ◽  
Jiahui Lu ◽  
Peter Johannes Schulz ◽  
Wonsun Shin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Media ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Initial Period ◽  
The United States ◽  
Crisis Response ◽  
Important Indicator ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Communication Space

BACKGROUND Public sentiments are an important indicator of crisis response, with the need to balance exigency without adding to panic or projecting overconfidence. Given the rapid spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, governments have enacted various nationwide measures against the disease with social media platforms providing the previously unparalleled communication space for the global populations. OBJECTIVE This study aims to examine and provide a macro-level narrative of the evolution of public sentiments on social media at national levels, by comparing Twitter data from India, Singapore, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States during the current pandemic. METHODS Over 67,363,091 million Twitter posts on COVID-19 from 28 January 2020 to 28 April 2021 were analyzed from the five countries with "wuhan", "corona", "nCov", and "covid" as search keywords. Change in sentiments ("very negative", " negative", "neutral or mixed", "positive”, “very positive”) were compared between countries in connection with disease milestones and public health directives. RESULTS Country-specific assessments show that negative sentiments were predominant across all five countries during the initial period of the global pandemic. However, positive sentiments encompassing hope, resilience, and support arose at differing intensities across the five countries, particularly in Asian countries. In the next stage of the pandemic, India, Singapore, and South Korea faced escalating waves of COVID-19 cases, resulting in negative sentiments, but positive sentiments appeared simultaneously. In contrast, while UK and US negative sentiments increased sharply and dramatically after the declaration of a national public emergency, strong parallel positive sentiments were slow to surface. CONCLUSIONS Our findings on sentiments across countries facing similar outbreak concerns suggest potential associations between government response actions both in terms of policy and communications, and public sentiment trends. Overall, a more concerted approach of government crisis communication appears to be associated with more stable public sentiments balanced between positives and negatives over the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Implementing Social Media in Crisis Response Using Knowledge Management

2012 ◽  
pp. 216-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murray E. Jennex
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Environmental Conditions ◽  
Management Strategy ◽  
Crisis Response ◽  
Knowledge Management Strategy ◽  
Use Of Knowledge

Social media is being used by individuals during a crisis to alert rescuers to their location, status others on their condition or on environmental conditions, warn of issues, and so forth. However, organizations have been slower to adopt social media for crisis response. This paper explores issues affecting social media adoption by organizations for crisis response and proposes the use of knowledge management strategy as a process for mitigating these issues and guiding organizations in adopting social media into their crisis response plans.

Communicating During an Outbreak or Public Health Investigation

2019 ◽  
pp. 243-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abbigail J. Tumpey ◽  
David Daigle ◽  
Glen Nowak
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
At Risk ◽  
Social Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Effective Communication ◽  
Crisis Response ◽  
Communication Strategy ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media

Effective communication during an outbreak or public health investigation is crucial for fostering adoption of public health recommendations and minimizing or preventing harm. During outbreaks, a comprehensive communication strategy integrating news media, social media, and partner engagement is essential for reaching affected persons and for keeping everyone informed about public health actions and recommendations. The strategies outlined in this chapter are the foundation for rapidly and effectively conveying information and public health recommendations to the persons at risk, the media, and the different entities involved in the response. Regardless of the public health event’s cause, core communication actions and steps will be similar; however, in every outbreak or public health investigation, perceptions and needs will vary among target audiences, partners (i.e., persons or organizations that can play a role in the crisis response), and persons or organizations with a connection or interest in the outbreak (stakeholders).

Organisations' conversations in social media: applying dialogue strategies in times of crises

2014 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefania Romenti ◽  
Grazia Murtarelli ◽  
Chiara Valentini
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Crisis Communication ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Crisis Response ◽  
The Body ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Crisis Communications ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Response Strategies ◽  
Body Of Knowledge

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to develop and test a theoretical framework, grounded in managerial and organisational theories of dialogue, through which organisations can take decisions in relation to the most appropriate crisis response strategies for handling social media stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach – The theoretical framework is developed through a conceptual analysis of literature on dialogue, social media and crisis communication. The theoretical framework is then tested in eight different international organisations experiencing a crisis. For each case, different web contents, such as organisations' status updates/posts, links, videos published on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, were analysed using a rhetorical research approach. Findings – The analysed organisations apply different online dialogue strategies according to crisis types and in combination with specific crisis response strategies. Most of the organisations investigated carry on those dialogue strategies suitable to develop consensus (concertative), guide conversations on specific topics or issues (framing), find solutions to the crisis collectively (transformative). Concertative strategies were often associated with informative crisis response strategies, framing strategies with denial and justification crisis response strategies and transformative strategies with corrective actions. Research limitations/implications – By using a dialogic perspective in setting up online conversations with their external stakeholders, the paper proposes a theoretical model to explain companies' decisions in carrying on online dialogues during critical situations and thus contribute to the body of knowledge on online crisis communications. Practical implications – The proposed model can support crisis communicators to manage dialogue's aims and dimensions differently by taking into account both contextual and situational conditions. Originality/value – By integrating management studies on dialogue into crisis communication and social media literature, the authors intend to offer an alternative thinking of organisations' decision-making in relation to crisis response strategies and social media stakeholders.

scholarly journals Combining Remote Sensing with Webdata and Machine Learning to Support Humanitarian Relief Work

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Kersten ◽  
Malin Kopitzsch ◽  
Jan Bongard ◽  
Friederike Klan
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Information Overload ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Extraction Methods ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
Crisis Response ◽  
In Situ Data ◽  
Information Gaps

<p>Gathering, analyzing and disseminating up-to-date information related to incidents and disasters is key to disaster management and relief. Satellite imagery, geo-information, and in-situ data are the mainly used information sources to support decision making. However, limitations in data timeliness as well as in spatial and temporal resolution lead to systematic information gaps in current well-established satellite-based workflows. Citizen observations spread through social media channels, like Twitter, as well as freely available webdata, like WikiData or the GDELT database, are promising complementary sources of relevant information that might be utilized to fill these information gaps and to support in-situ data acquisition. Practical examples for this are impact assessments based on social media eyewitness reports, and the utilization of this information for the early tasking of satellite or drone-based image acquisitions.</p><p>The great potential, for instance of social media data analysis in crisis response, was investigated and demonstrated in various related research works. However, the barriers of utilizing webdata and appropriate information extraction methods for decision support in real-world scenarios are still high, for instance due to information overload, varying surrounding conditions, or issues related to limited field work infrastructures, trustworthiness, and legal aspects.</p><p>Within the current DLR research project "Data4Human", demand driven data services for humanitarian aid are developed. Among others, one project goal is to investigate the practical benefit of augmenting existing workflows of the involved partners (German Red Cross, World Food Programme, and Humanitarian Open Street Map) with social media (Twitter) and real-time global event database (GDELT) data. In this contribution, the general concepts, ideas and corresponding methods for webdata analysis are presented. State-of-the-art deep learning models are utilized to filter, classify and cluster the data to automatically identify potentially crisis-related data, to assess impacts, and to summarize and characterize the course of events, respectively. We present first practical findings and analysis results for the 2019 cyclones Idai and Kenneth.</p>

scholarly journals Social Media Crisis Communication Model for Building Public Resilience: A Preliminary Study

2021 ◽  
pp. 245-256
Author(s):  
Umar Ali Bukar ◽  
Marzanah A Jabar ◽  
Fatimah Sidi ◽  
Rozi Nor Haizan Nor ◽  
Salfarina Abdullah
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Regression Model ◽  
Crisis Communication ◽  
Preliminary Investigation ◽  
Crisis Response ◽  
Kappa Statistics ◽  
Communication Model ◽  
Dynamic Feature ◽  
Consistency Requirement ◽  
Process Macro

There is an ongoing discussion about the effectiveness of social media usage on the ability of people to recover from the crisis. However, the existing social media crisis communication models could not address the dynamic feature of social media users and the crisis, respectively. Therefore, the objective of this study is to conduct a preliminary investigation of the social media crisis communication model for building public resilience. Thus, 34 items were generated from the literature concerning the crisis, crisis response, social interaction, and resilience. The items were validated by three experts via content validity index and modified kappa statistics. After passing the validation test, the instruments were pre-tested by 32 participants. The reliability of the items was analyzed using Cronbach’s alpha. Also, the model fits and mediation were examined by the regression model, and the hypotheses were independently assessed in process macro models. Based on the result obtained, each of the constructs satisfied the internal consistency requirement; crisis (0.743), crisis response (0.724), social media interaction (0.716), and resilience (0.827). Furthermore, the result also indicates that the regression model is a good fit for the data. The independent variables statistically significantly predict the dependent variable, p < 0.05. Also, the result of the process macro models indicates that all the hypotheses are independently supported.

scholarly journals Source of Information in Times of Health Crisis: Evidence from Turkey During COVID-19

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ekmel Geçer ◽  
Murat Yıldırım ◽  
Ömer Akgül
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Low Socioeconomic Status ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Demographic Factors ◽  
Crisis Response ◽  
University Graduates ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Economic Level ◽  
Source Of Information

Aim: Media as a source of information can shape public opinion toward COVID-19 response. Identifying how and where people seek information during COVID-19 outbreak is vital to convey the most effective message about managing the COVID-19 crisis. The purpose of this study was to determine the source of information and investigate the role of various demographic factors - age, gender, educational attainment, and perceived economic level – on source of information. Subject and Methods: An online survey (n = 4,624) was conducted on the Turkish public during early stages of the COVID-19. Results: The results showed that internet journalism and social media were the most preferable source of information. Higher age, educational attainment, and economic level were related to higher levels of seeking information from TV, newspaper, internet journalism, and informative meetings. Females obtained information more from their friends and family, and social media than males. High school graduates or below watched more TV and obtained less information from internet journalism, while university graduates sought information from their families and friends, and that postgraduates attended informative meeting and read newspapers. People with medium and high economic status respectively watched more TV and read more newspapers while people with low socioeconomic status attended less in informative meetings. Conclusion: In sum, this study provides evidence that a source of information might be influenced by demographic factors. Researchers and policymakers can use a source of information to develop crisis-response strategies by considering variations in the demographic factors.

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