Cap Stone Paper Final

Running Head: CRISIS RESPONSE VIA SOCIAL MEDIA

Crisis response via social media:

Response time during communication crisis effects on outcomes

Alan Piñon

Wayne State University

Comm 7220

March 21, 2016

CRISIS RESPONSE VIA SOCIAL MEDIA 2

The speed at which communication can occur between large segments of the population

has drastically changed the way in which organizations need to respond during a communication

crisis. Even as little as 10 years ago, when Twitter was just a fledgling company and Facebook

was only two years old, the speed of communication was considerably slower than it is today.

The slower speed of communication, even if it was only a few hours, meant that organizations

had time to consider messaging and tactics in the face of crisis, as it was less likely other parties

were putting any messaging out regarding the situation. If the organization had a crisis

communication team in place and a well thought-out crisis communication plan, then the few

hours before the media got wind of a problem and started inquiring would have been enough

time for the organization to conduct some fact finding, assess damages, decide on key messages,

and select and debrief the proper spokesperson. There could have even been time to craft proper

messages for internal stakeholders and communicate to some of them so that the entire

organization was on message and ready for the onslaught of questions.

Things are vastly different in today’s world. Communication is instantaneous. It happens

across multiple platforms, and the messages come from a multitude of places. To add to the

problem, many of those weighing in with opinions and information about the crisis at hand do so

without any authority or special insight (Dotey, 2011). In the past, that lack of credibility would

have meant no one paid attention, but today, the seemingly flat landscape for who counts as

credible allows for any voice that speaks “loud” enough and often enough to become an

important influencer during a crisis. Often, the person who is in first with messages becomes an

influencer on the subject. The problem is that first often means wrong, or at the very least,

incomplete. First hand observations that are put out with no fact finding or reliable sourcing of

information can never really be accurate. But, the public is not interested in precise information.


When a crisis happens, the public just wants information (Aggergaard, 2015). This presents both

an opportunity and a challenge for an organization attempting to handle a crisis.

The opportunity comes as an organization can identify itself or its avatar as the authority

in the crisis, as long as it gets into the social media conversation quickly. This can be a great

benefit to an organization, and we know from the literature on crisis that being in early with key

messages, especially if those messages are of a nature that indicates remorse and acceptance of

blame, then the organization has a better chance of surviving the crisis (Coombs, 2007).

However, being in first is a challenge. When you weigh-in and start communicating in a crisis

before any fact-finding has been conducted or a key message drafted, then an organization can

create a problem for itself if its early messages have to be changed and back-tracked on as new

information is brought to light (Aherton, 2009). When the public sees an organization constantly

shifting its messages or recanting what it previously said, it brings up more questions about the

integrity of the organization and the ability of its leadership to do the right thing and handle the

problem. Even with a highly trained crisis team and a well-thought out plan to get messages out

during a crisis, there will always be some lag time between the onset of an event and the

organization’s first message hitting social media.

In order to gain a better understanding of how the element of time impacts an

organization’s ability to control messaging during a crisis event, I will examine a number of case

studies in which social media played a role in a crisis event. Specifically, I will focus on events

in which it can be found that an organization’s response on social media had an impact, either

positively or negatively, on an organization’s ability to manage the crisis situation to better

understand how response time and frequency of messaging impacted public perception of the

organization. By examining multiple case studies that had varying outcomes, it will be possible


to explore how long it took an organization to respond to a crisis event on social media and how

that may have affected the effectiveness of the messaging. In addition, the role of cadence or

frequency of messaging in social media will be looked at in order to understand how it impacts

the overall ability for an organization to handle a crisis. This is important for crisis

communicators to understand, since a better understanding of how much time is actually

available before messaging needs to be put forth in social media can help crisis communicators

better plan for and execute a crisis communication plan.

For this study, Coombs’ situational crisis communication theory will be used in order to

understand the type of crisis events the case studies represent, as each will fall into one of the

clusters as identified in situational crisis communication theory. This literature lends a

framework for understanding if the messaging itself would be successful outside of social media,

and allows for certain assumptions to then be made about how time and frequency may have

helped or hindered that messaging’s effectiveness in social media. An organizational

communication crisis is generally defined as a threat to the organization’s high priority goals.

These events are generally unexpected and non-routine. (Seeger, Sellnow, & Ulmer, 1998). A

crisis damages the organization’s reputation, and threatens its future ability to function. With

situational crisis communication theory as the framework, Information Cascade Theory will be

used in order to understand how the flow of information in social media played a role in the

efficacy of social media mediated crisis communication. An Information Cascade is described as

the documented phenomena where decisions are made by “observing the actions of other

individuals, and then reproducing the same choices, independently of their own judgment”

(Kobayashi, 2015).


Literature Review

It is becoming more commonly accepted by corporations and communicators that blogs

and social media are better than traditional news mediums for communicating during a crisis,

specifically when it comes to repairing reputation (Schultz, Utz, & Göritz,2011). Schultz et. al.

examined how social media has had an increasing role in crisis and how the medium can

influence the public’s perception of the organization following a crisis. This work is of particular

note because it showed how Twitter, more so than blogs, was far more influential when used as a

means to sway public perception during a crisis. Furthermore, this research showed that the

medium crisis communicators chose to use to communicate during the crisis event often

outweighed the actual messaging put forth. Researchers have labeled blogs and Twitter as two-

way, dialogic, authentic, and credible ways to communicate (Schultz, Utz, & Göritz,2011).

Twitter and blogs allow for messaging to reach large segments of the population and allow for

the public to respond to what they read.

The research has found that crisis communication over Twitter resulted in better

reputation management than blogs, but both Twitter and blogs allowed for better reputation

management than traditional newspapers. This is despite the high perceived credibility of

traditional news outlets. Shultz, Utz, and Goritz examined three independent measures:

reputation, secondary crisis communication, and reactions. It was found that the most successful

messaging in all of these areas was a strategy of information and not one of apology or

sympathy. In addition, crisis communication through Twitter was found to lead to less negative

crisis reactions than the other two mediums measured. In essence, in terms of reputation,

organizations that scored the best with respondents in the study that were exposed to crisis

messaging via Twitter scored the reputation of the organization higher than those who read a


news article in a traditional news medium or a blog. This showed that people were less likely to

talk badly about the organization when the messaging was received through Twitter rather than a

blog or newspaper.

Communicating in social media during a crisis is shown to be an important part of a

modern-day crisis communication plan. One of the main reasons to communicate in the social

media space is that many of an organization’s stakeholders are already using that mode of

communication, making it ideal for messaging to get across (Veil, Buehner, & Micheal

Palenchar, 2011). Despite the amount of literature that has been put forth attempting to show the

importance and place of social media in crisis, there does not seem to be a cohesive examination

of the practical application of using social media in regards to how fast that information needs to

flow and how frequency aids in achieving desirable outcomes.

Communication Cascade Theory (Kobayashi, 2015) is important in understanding how

important the element of timely communication is on the effectiveness of social media

messaging during a communication crisis. Cascade Theory provides for a pivotal point in social

media at which messaging around an event becomes extremely hard to change as a particular

message get “shared” at a great rate and great volume without being independently checked or

verified by each individual user. This has serious impacts in social media because of the very

nature of the platforms. The rate at which information can be shared and pushed on to larger and

larger segments of the population means that an information cascade can occur rather quickly. In

social media, this would be the sharing of information without a user independently vetting or

judging the accuracy of the content. This poses a very really problem for crisis communicators,

as bad or even unwanted information can be spread at great speed and to a great segment of

stakeholders very quickly and there are few ways to halt or slow down information cascades


once they begin.

The ubiquity of social media and the access to the public pose both a challenge and an

opportunity for the digital-age crisis communicator. The opportunity exists in that

communicators in a crisis have direct access to platforms that can quickly and widely spread the

messages they want, without the need to go to third party reporting outlets, which often slow

down the process and convolute or change the desired message (Aherton, 2009 . The challenge

is the necessity of speed and the amount of competing voices. One of the key strengths being

identified for using social media during a crisis is its ability to increase dialogue during a crisis,

which, if used correctly, can help mitigate impacts on organizational reputation by providing a

good, honest, flow of information to the public (Brengarth,& Mujkic, 2016). Using social media

to educate the public during an event and to listen and respond to the concerns of the public has

proven in many cases to be key in successfully managing crisis. Another reason social media is

so vital in crisis communication is its ability to work even when other, more traditional mediums

of communication fail (Brengarth &, Mujkic 2016).

The most compelling reason for crisis communicators to use social media is the presence

of their stakeholders in this space. A large majority of those who most organizations will want to

communicate with during a crisis are already on social media (Argenti, 2006). If an organization

is not present in these platforms during a crisis, not only will they be missing an opportunity to

get their messages out, but they will be leaving the door wide open for other, possibly negative

and inaccurate messages to spread and shape perceptions of their organizations. It is here that

the information cascade can be a determinate factor in the way social media shapes the outcome

of crisis communication. One of the key conditions researchers have found to be present for

information cascades to happen is the existence of a social bond of social link. This has become


very relevant in the age of social media, as the very nature of the platform is to create

connections and build bonds between individuals. In regards to crisis communication, the

appearance of information cascades means that messages first into the space can be picked up

and spread fast within the community, regardless of its accuracy, because the information is not

vetted by each individual on its own merits, but is instead judged by the merits of the person

from whom it has been shared. This means that speed of messaging is crucial in controlling a

communication crisis.

Case Study Analysis

New Zealand Earthquake

In September of 2010, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake hit New Zealand. The response from

the University of Canterbury, which was near the epicenter of the quake, was fast and included

communication on their website and social media. When the earthquake hit, the university

sustained substantial damage since it was only 80 miles from the epicenter of the earthquake.

The resulting damage was so bad, the university would be forced to close for two weeks

(Dabner, 2012). Even though there was substantial damage, university officials felt it necessary

to communicate with its stakeholders, as the university was one of the largest government

institutions in the area.

Crisis Response Analysis

Despite the large structural damage, crisis communicators congregated, and information

for students was quickly and regularly made available through the university’s website and

Facebook page. This allowed for a dialogue to occur in real-time between staff, students, family,


and emergency responders. Facebook analytics revealed more than 5,000 new followers were

added to the University’s page over the course of a week, and although the university used their

website as the official home for information regarding the quake, Facebook was the medium

through which most of the stakeholders received that information (Dabner, 2012). Since this

crisis falls into the victim cluster (Coombs, 2007), there was only a mild threat to the

organization’s reputation, however, there have been numerous situations that have occurred on

university campuses where the mishandling of an event in this cluster has caused long-lasting

damage to the organization’s reputation. The shootings on Virginia Tech’s campus in 2006 is a

prime example of this. With this is mind, Canterbury’s decision and ability to push forth

messaging on social media quickly and repeatedly can be viewed as a successful tactic to ensure

the institution’s positive reputation.

Social Media Response

Forty-eight minutes after the quake, crisis communicators had gathered and started

working on messaging that would be pushed out by university. By 7:40, over two hours after the

quake, the team had issued the first set of messaging via email, on their website, and on social

media. It’s important to note that in this case, which is a natural disaster that triggered a crisis

communication event, the gap of almost two hours was viewed as acceptable. A study conducted

after the earthquake showed that students either maintained a positive sentiment toward the

university or reported increased positive feelings toward the university (Dabner, 2012). Students,

faculty and staff reported that the university’s handling of the event was good, and most pointed

to the presence of constant updates by the university in regards to what was happening on the

ground as the main reason for the positive view of its performance. Several important takeaways

are observed in this case. First, the university had a crisis communication plan in place that


specifically addressed the need and allowed for the use of social media. The university

responded quickly and issued repeated and frequent information updates that kept any one

message from gaining the momentum needed for an information cascade to occur.

Anti-French Demonstrations in China

In April of 2008, groups of Chinese people rallied against French supermarkets over

issues related to products that were said to have killed young children because of contamination

caused by additives in food. Sixteen babies who were fed on milk made from powder produced

by Hebei Province-based Sanlu Group in northwest China's Gansu Province were found to have

developed kidney stones and died due to the addition of melamine. One of the corporations that

manufactured the milk, Carrefour, a French run company, was the focal point for huge

demonstrations because of the deaths, an almost unheard of event in China. The boycott got legs

online in social media almost immediately and the request for participants in the protest quickly

spread, resulting in numerous protests of stores in multiple locations around China. It took

Carrefour two days to make any response on social media. This lag in response is attributed to

having a crisis communication plan that did not specifically address the issuing of messaging in

social media. So, while Carrefour was responding to press inquires with messaging, it took some

time before that messaging was put out in social media. By the time Carrefour started pushing

messaging in social media, the number of protesters grew from 80 at a single location to 16,000

throughout the entire country (Mclaughlin,2008).



This event falls into the accidental cluster of crisis communication theory. Researchers

have noted that in this type of case, two types of actions are necessary in order to a mange a

crisis with high propagation speed and high volume: The implantation of plans and information

monitoring (Viel, 2011). By consistently monitoring the flow of information in social media, an

organization can predict an information cascade before it happens and attempt to intervene with

proper messaging (Beeline Labs, 2009). Crisis plans must be in place that allow for crisis

communicators to react in real-time, when a cascade is seen to be eminent (Denis-Remis,

Lebraty, & Philippe, 2013). Carrefour failed in its crisis response because they were very late in

responding to the conversations happening in social media. By the time any messaging was put

forth by Carrefour, the messages being shared online had already reached what could be

classified as a cascade, since information that was being shared on social media was being

propagated without commentary by individuals and it was happening a great speed (Mclaughlin,

2008).


The protest was eventually ended both by the government and an earthquake in the area

that took the attention away from this topic. Despite the sudden end, Carrefour’s reputation was

severely damaged because it was never able to get ahead of the information cascade that

motivated the protestors. Even though the information that was being spread about Careefour

was eventually shown to be inaccurate, Carrefour’s lack of ability to get in on the conversation

before the messaging spread en mass meant that information was allowed to speed un-

interrupted. Carrefour responded so poorly because they were working from a crisis


communication plan that did not accommodate for the speed and volume of messaging in social

media.

The Love Parade Tragedy

Mass panic and the resulting stampede at the Love Parade music festival in Germany

killed 21 young people and injured 500 more in 2010. The event was put on by Rainer Schaller,

chief executive officer of one Germany’s largest gym chains. Before the incident at Love Parade,

Schaller had notably made comments about his willingness to take risks. Connecting the

statement to the event, media went after Schaller with accusations of risky cost cutting measures,

resulting in insufficient security at the event, allowing for the stampede. Schaller denied the

charges and accused the police of being the problem, which triggered a round-robin of finger

pointing between local government, event organizers, and the police. Message boards and social

media tools were a primary way stakeholders responded to and shared information about the

event. Researchers used the Love Parade tragedy to highlight failures to test SCCT and to

understand the extent the public used social media to address issues of blame as well as to

understand how social media shaped their attitudes toward the event and those who were accused

of causing the situation (Pretorius, Gwynne & Galea, 2015).

Love Parade started in 1989 as a small party with about 150 attendees. By 1999, the

festival grew to a peak capacity of 1.5 million. Despite its popularity, the event was not

generating a lot of revenue. That, combined with changes in regulation to laws in Germany about

events, led the organizers to look for cost cutting measures, but they were unsuccessful and were

forced the festival to shut down for two years. In 2006, Schaller purchased the rights to the

parade, but the parade could not find a venue, as the city of Berlin officials felt the parade was


too large for the city to handle, and other alternative areas refused to accept liability for the

event. Parade organizers, in an effort to appease town officials, found a site in which they said

they could control capacity because there was only one entrance to the festival grounds, which

was a ramp that led to two tunnels that opened up into a railroad depot. This, of course, meant

the only entrance was also the only exit.

Chronology of Events on the Ground:

• 4:20 p.m. Police stopped venue goers from entering the depot as it was clear peak

capacity had been reached, and early attendees attempting to leave were running into

traffic of new festival goers coming in, causing a log jam at the entrance/exit.

• 5:20 p.m. Festival goers begin to breach barriers to either get into the festival or to leave

the festival. As pressure around the exit/entrance mounts, a slow moving stampede event

occurs, crushing participants. At this point, people start to attempt to climb scaffolding

and other facades to escape, but fail and fall, resulting in multiple injuries.

• 7 p.m. The crisis management team for city authorities gathered.

• 7:45 p.m. A press conference is held updating the public on the injuries at the public.

All of the participants that died during the event died from crushed rib cages as other

festival goers trampled them. Three organizations were held responsible for the event: Schaller

as the event organizer, the town officials who licensed the event and approved all plans and

logistics, and the town police who were in charge of ensuring security plans for the event were

proper and who agreed to a support roll for hired event security.



The initial response from all three of the organizations was one of denial or refusal to

accept blame and scapegoating the other responsible parties. As this crisis falls into what

Coombs would describe as a preventable event, this is not considered an effective crisis response

strategy. There was a lot of shifting of blame being done by the parties, who primarily

communicated through press conference, and press releases. However, their stakeholders, who

were primarily injured festival goers and their families, were having conversations online in

social media around who was responsible for the event. But, the organizations themselves did not

have a voice in this conversation. From a crisis perspective, all three organizations failed in their

response. The blame game led to more outrage and increased comments online, almost all of

which the parties involved were unaware because they were not monitoring or responding online

(Schwarz, 2010). The public essentiality refused to pick a side, blamed all sides equally, and

demanded retribution from all three. Since this was the early era of social media, none of the

responsible parties participated in any listening or engaging in the social boards where their

stakeholders were communicating. This meant that not only was the strategy of scapegoating a

poor crisis response, the lack of using social media to listen, engage, and respond was added to

the overall failure for the organizations to manage the crisis.


The tragedy at Love Parade falls into the preventable cluster. Research has shown that a

proper response here is acceptance of blame, apologia, and compensation. None of this was

done by any of the organizations involved. None of the organizations involved in the event


appeared online in order to put forth messaging. What occurred in social media was the public

took pieces from media coverage, reposted articles, and commented, often issuing blame, but

almost never defending one of the three organizations involved. Since the organizations never

responded in social, the messaging was completely dictated by the public, with outrage as the

end result across the board. This is an extreme example of how failing to have a presence at all in

social media can allow for stakeholders’ upset around an event to gain a fever pitch. The outrage

online eventually led to the then mayor of Duisburg, Adolf Sauerland, stepping down, and the

event was forbidden from ever operating again, causing huge financial losses for Schaller.

A very interesting component of the social media response was that there appeared to be

fewer mentions of the event organizer and his role in the event. This has been attributed to the

fact that much of the social chatter was in response to the police organization and town officials

repeatedly issuing statements of blame at each other. In this way, the event organizers, who

arguably were the most to blame, evaded some of the worst commentary online because they

were absent in a majority of the finger pointing that was being reported in the traditional media.

Conclusion

These cases highlight examples of social media directly impacting the outcomes of public

perception of an organization during and following a communication crisis. The main hypothesis

tested was that organizations need to be quick with messaging on social media in order for that

messaging to be effective and keep wrong or unwanted information from reaching a point at

which it can cascade to users. The Anti-French Demonstrations case shows how being slow to

respond with appropriate messaging can have devastating effects on an organization. Love

Parade shows how having a complete absence of messaging in social can harm many parties, but

a very interesting outcome was that the party that did the least amount of blame shifting was also


the party that escaped the most blame on social media. This should not be considered an

endorsement of not presenting messaging during a communication crisis, but it is an interesting

piece of information that deserves further exploration.

The earthquake and the university response highlight the importance quick messaging

can have in terms of managing a crisis. In terms of time, it’s hard to identify a specific timeframe

or hard and fast rule based on the information reviewed in this paper, but many guideposts can be

identified. Surprisingly, the most successful case reviewed here showed a lag time of almost an

hour before initial messaging from the organization was put out on social media. In the

Carrefour case, the social media response took two days. Other similar research supports the

idea that days is too long to respond, but that hours are still available before an organization

needs to be present with messaging on social media. Interestingly, much of what these cases

show and other research alludes to is that frequency of messaging is just as important as the

speed at which initial messaging is brought forth. Frequent and repeated messaging was the

determinant factor in the success of the university. The overall conclusion drawn from this brief

analysis is that there might be more time available during a crisis event for messaging to be

communicated than one might expect. To claim that organizations have an hour or even several

hours before messaging needs to be present is a safe assumption based on these cases. What

cannot happen is for days to pass before messaging is put forth.

Discussion

The cases featured here are a small example of times social media has either aided or

hindered the ability of an organization to effectively manage a crisis situation. Researchers who

study social media and communication are further ahead of crisis communication scholars in


their understanding of how social media is used to sway public opinion in areas such as

marketing or public policy. It is not uncommon for researchers in those areas to talk about time

and frequency or messaging and how those elements impact successful campaigns. It seems

there is ample evidence for a similar in-depth discussion to happen around how both time and

frequency impact crisis communication. This is important to understand because, as previously

mentioned, the stakeholders that any organization wishes to communicate with are already using

social media. This makes social media a critical tool for crisis communicators. In order for crisis

communicators to have success in that arena, there needs to be a plan in place that addresses the

use of the platform and has specifics on how and when messages must be produced in order for

there to be successful outcomes (Pohl, 2013). As noted, this paper suggests that an hour at least

is available for communicators so long as subsequent messages are frequent following the initial

response. This result is somewhat surprising when one considers the speed and volume at which

social media messages can occur around an event, which means further research is called for in

this area.


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Cap Stone Paper Final