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Using and understanding social media in the context of networked publics enhances crisis communication. This chapter describes models and ideas for integrating social media into the communication strategies of rescue organisations. The authors develop their recommendations for the use of social media by these organisations from both a summary and comparison of communication processes during the 2013 Central European floods in Austria, and from the perspective of an organisation actively using social media in the chosen model region of Alkoven. The chapter presents basic recommendations, recommendations inspired by content strategy and recommendations based on web and social media literacy in order to support the further development of crisis communication in the digital age.

The 2013 Central European floods were not only one of the most severe natural disasters in Austria in the last decades, but also constituted a landmark in crisis communication. For the first time, social media and online newspapers were important news channels, creating a need for new crisis communication strategies. Based on 20 semi-structured interviews and an analysis of online data, we reconstruct in this chapter the online communication of different stakeholders such as the authorities, rescue organisations and journalists during this emergency situation. The study shows that the use of social media was a weak point in official crisis communication. Through detailed analyses of information flows and the requirements of different stakeholders, the study reveals new challenges and possibilities for crisis communication in the digital age.

Guided by the growing importance of social-mediated organisational communication, this study examines how communication professionals within healthcare organisations perceive and respond to the reputation impacts of social media on the organisation’s reputation. Although the healthcare sector finds itself in the midst of a (continually) transforming landscape characterised by large amounts of digital health (mis)information and an empowered “patient-as-consumer”, little is known about how professionals in this sector understand the changes and respond to them. Moreover, much extant scholarship on the topic is published in specialised health or medical journals and does not explicitly address the communication implications for healthcare organisations.

In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with communication professionals responsible for social media across eight hospitals in the Netherlands. The sample included two participants working as communication consultants/social media advisors for healthcare organisations. In all, 15 interviews were conducted.

Building on interviewee perspectives, the authors advance the CARE (Control, Access(ability), Responsive(ness) and Engagement) model of social-mediated communication, highlighting the dualistic characteristics of each dimension. This model is built upon a careful analysis of healthcare professional responses. In an always-on environment, understanding and managing the tensions within the authors’ model may be decisive to the reputation implications of social media use.

Understanding the tensions within each dimension lends a more nuanced perspective on the potential impact(s) of social media as experienced by professionals in the field. In shifting away from a binary, either/or approach, the paper contributes to explicating the complexities of a pervasive phenomenon (i.e. social-mediated communication) and its multifaceted impacts on the healthcare sector.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, public sector organisations produced thousands of social media messages weekly answering citizens questions and informing the public on safety related matters. The purpose of this study was to investigate how the pandemic shaped social media listening in Finland's public sector organisations and how these organisations aligned their listening and strategic communication to address emerging questions, news (real and fake) and rumours during the pandemic.

Building on a theoretical background from strategic communication, organisational listening, digital marketing and public sector communication, qualitative interview data included communicators (N = 14) from all central Finnish public sector organisations in charge of COVID-19 communication. Findings were themed and analysed qualitatively to understand the level of alignment of strategic communication on social media.

The findings revealed that the pandemic had strained public sector organisations' communication capabilities, forcing them to align their processes and resources reactively to enable useful content and limit false/misleading content. The results confirmed that organisational listening remained somewhat unaligned. A dual role of public sector communication as speakers but increasingly as listeners was highlighted.

The study’s findings point to organisational listening on social media being a central requisite for public sector organisations overcoming a crisis.

Adopting an exploratory approach, this paper aims to focus on the potential negative consequences that online firestorms (OFs) might have on consumer–brand relationships. Specifically, the authors focus on the individual level through taking a close look at the content that users generate during these attacks.

The authors conducted content analysis to study four recent brand-related OFs that occurred on Twitter.

The results show that brands are at the core of the users’ conversations, although other actors, such as competing firms, can also be affected. Negative comments greatly exceed positive ones. Actions against the brand, both passive (avoidance) and active (vengeance), emerged during the OFs.

The exploratory nature of the study could cast doubt on the generalizability of the results. Moreover, the number of OF analyzed is limited, although they represent an interesting variety of brand misconducts.

Nowadays, brands are publicly scrutinized through social networks, as the networks enable users to speak out about brands’ perceived mistakes and wrongdoings. This paper confirms that managers should monitor, understand and try to respond to OFs to minimize their impact.

Online firestorms are a recent phenomenon that has gained attention finally, as they can reach hundreds of users in real-time and can involve a huge amount of comments posted online against a brand. These attacks could severely damage the brand, even when there is no strong evidence of the posted content being true. This paper adds to the scarce literature on the topic and analyzes the negative effects for brands.

Este trabajo exploratorio identifica posibles consecuencias negativas que los ataques colaborativos online contra las marcas podrían tener en las relaciones marca-consumidor. Para ello se adopta la perspectiva del participante en el ataque colaborativo mediante un análisis pormenorizado del contenido que los usuarios generan durante el tiempo que dura el ataque contra la marca.

Se ha llevado a cabo un análisis del contenido generado durante cuatro ataques colaborativos recientes que protagonizaron distintas marcas en Twitter.

Del análisis de contenido se desprende que las marcas son las protagonistas de las conversaciones de los usuarios aunque otros actores tales como marcas competidoras también han sido mencionadas. Los comentarios negativos predominan sobre los positivos. También se identifican acciones contra la marca, tanto pasivas (evitar comprarla) como activas (venganza).

El carácter exploratorio del estudio impide la generalización de sus resultados. El número de ataques colaborativos analizados son limitados aunque representan una interesante variedad de errores y malas conductas por parte de las marcas.

Actualmente las marcas son objeto de escrutinio público en las redes sociales en tanto que facilitan la interacción entre usuarios y el comportamiento informativo de cualquier tipo. Este trabajo confirma que los responsables de marca deben controlar, comprender y tratar de responder a estos ataques colaborativos contra las marcas para minimizar su impacto.

Los ataques colaborativos contra las marcas son un fenómeno que está recibiendo una enorme atención últimamente en la medida en la que miles de usuarios participan en ellos en tiempo real generando una enorme cantidad de comentarios online contra una marca. Estos ataques pueden dañarla seriamente, incluso ante la ausencia de evidencias claras de que el contenido que se comparte sea cierto. Este trabajo contribuye a la escasa literatura existente sobre los ataques colaborativos online contra las marcas y analiza sus posibles efectos negativos.

Artículo de investigación

Social media empower individuals to voice their opinions about issues that they perceive to be unacceptable. When many others add their opinions and large quantities of messages containing negative word-of-mouth suddenly spread online, an online firestorm occurs. By extending the situational theory of problem solving (Kim and Grunig, 2011) into the domain of online communication, this study aims to identify the drivers for participating in online firestorms.

With reference to a fictitious online firestorm trigger (i.e. perceived moral misconduct) posted on Facebook, a qualitative pre-study and quantitative online survey were conducted. Based on the responses of 410 participants, an ordinary least squares regression was modeled to examine the factors of participating in the online firestorm. Later, structural equation modeling was applied to test the model and gauge its fit with the data.

Participants' involvement recognition, perception of being collective actors and approval of slacktivism behaviors positively predicted their participation in the online firestorm, whereas non-anonymity hampered it.

The study's findings not only contribute to the current understandings of online firestorms but are also valuable for developing theory and forms of professional crisis management. Moreover, they offer insights into the factors of online communication environments that encourage users to voice their opinions.