Search results
1 – 10 of 34W. Timothy Coombs and Sherry Jean Holladay
The purpose of this paper is to provide a rationale and framework for examining stakeholder reactions to crisis communication messages in various social media channels…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide a rationale and framework for examining stakeholder reactions to crisis communication messages in various social media channels. Stakeholders can become crisis communications by entering various sub-arenas of the larger rhetorical arena. The concept of sub-arena is presented and a case analysis used to illustrate the application and value of examining stakeholder crisis communicators during a crisis.
Design/methodology/approach
Content analysis was used to evaluate publicly available social media messages posted on the Livestrong blog and the Huffington Post online news site.
Findings
The paper demonstrates that monitoring reactions of stakeholders can reveal how individuals can act as crisis communications in social media messages can serve as barometers the effectiveness of an organization's crisis response. The importance of examining multiple sub-arenas is considered due to the influence of supportive stakeholders in organizational social media.
Research limitations/implications
Only two sub-arenas were analyzed using one crisis response during a crisis that extended over a number of months.
Practical implications
The paper includes implications for the examination of social media messages from supportive stakeholder and neutral sub-arenas. The results provide indicators of the effectiveness of an organization's crisis response and how stakeholder messages in social media may contribute to or undermine the crisis response.
Originality/value
This paper demonstrates the value of monitoring social media comments to gauge reactions to organizational crisis responses and demonstrates how stakeholders can function as informal crisis managers. It also begins the discussion of the value and conceptualization of sub-arenas.
Details
Keywords
Britt Foget Johansen, Winni Johansen and Nina M. Weckesser
The purpose of this paper is to examine the Telenor customer complaints crisis triggered on the company Facebook site in August 2012. More specifically, the paper focusses on how…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the Telenor customer complaints crisis triggered on the company Facebook site in August 2012. More specifically, the paper focusses on how friends and enemies of a company interact, and how faith-holders serve as crisis communicators in a rhetorical sub-arena that opens up on Facebook.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is based on a textual analysis of 4,368 posts from the Telenor Facebook site, and an interview with the senior digital manager of Telenor.
Findings
Not only current and previous customers but also those from rival telephone companies were active in the Facebook sub-arena. The customers complaining about the company services were met not only with the response of Telenor, but also with counter-attacks from faith-holders acting in defense of Telenor. However, these faith-holders were using defensive response strategies, while Telenor used accommodative strategies.
Research limitations/implications
Organizational crises need to be seen as a complex set of communication processes, including the many voices that start communicating from different positions, and taking into account not only the response strategies of the organization but also the response strategies applied by supportive emotional stakeholders. In practice, faith-holders need to be monitored, as they may prove useful as “crisis communicators.”
Originality/value
The paper provides insights into an under-investigated area of crisis communication: the strategies of faith-holders acting as “crisis communicators” defending a company and themselves against attacks from negative voices on social media.
Details
Keywords
Silvia Ravazzani and Carmen Daniela Maier
The purpose of this paper is to explore how organizations can strategically frame their legitimate perspective on a specific issue in order to gain salience and public support in…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore how organizations can strategically frame their legitimate perspective on a specific issue in order to gain salience and public support in a social media context.
Design/methodology/approach
By means of framing theory and a critical perspective on strategic discourse in hypermodal spaces, the study examines in detail the discursive strategies and framing processes employed by a non-profit organization that faces local and global contestation of its corporate operations.
Findings
Through a critical discourse analysis of the organization’s 385 Facebook posts during two periods of time, the results not only show how the corporate perspective is strategically framed and legitimized, but also challenged and consequently adapted in this hypermodal issue sub-arena. In addition to legitimizing the organizational perspective by providing evidence-based facts and external expert views as reliable and neutral sources, and echoing supporters’ voices and actions as further endorsements, the organization also strategically manages the Facebook dialogue by delegitimizing counterarguments.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the corporate communication field by revealing how framing can be materialized in specific discursive strategies aimed to legitimize and delegitimize. It shows how such strategies are interrelated in hypermodal clusters in ways that sustain the organizational discourse, and can evolve across time and within the same actor’s strategy. Methodologically, this study expands the research toolkit by introducing hypermodality in exploring framing and strategic organizational discourse.
Details
Keywords
Päivi Tampere, Kaja Tampere and Vilma Luoma-Aho
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the authority communication and its relationship to citizens during a disaster. This analysis is crucial for organisations to help them…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the authority communication and its relationship to citizens during a disaster. This analysis is crucial for organisations to help them understand the different ways in which crises are perceived by citizens, and the reactions they may cause. The results will help authorities in planning their crisis communication.
Design/methodology/approach
Facebook comments written by authorities and citizens are studied and analysed in an exploratory case study related to the 2011 catastrophe in the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant via content analysis.
Findings
The analysis of Facebook comments revealed that authorities have to be prepared for communicating with citizens with diverging interests, who have different perceptions on a crisis and that relation is not the same with those different profiles of citizens.
Research limitations/implications
This case study only focusses on the Fukushima debate from the point of view of the authorities and citizens.
Practical implications
This study argues that it is crucial for both authorities and public relations practitioners to acknowledge that competing opinion holders are challenging each other and authority online, and that crisis communication should be planned accordingly.
Originality/value
The participant profiles can help organisations to clarify citizens’ crisis perceptions that can emerge in online discussions. Practitioners need to concentrate on determining how to get their voice heard so that there are perceived credible and legitimate actors.
Details
Keywords
Susanne Sackl-Sharif, Eva Goldgruber, Julian Ausserhofer, Robert Gutounig and Gudrun Reimerth
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…
Abstract
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.
Details
Keywords
Carmen Daniela Maier, Finn Frandsen and Winni Johansen
The aim of this paper is to study the development of a smoldering crisis over time. The focus is on a nationwide news media and online news communication related to a smoldering…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to study the development of a smoldering crisis over time. The focus is on a nationwide news media and online news communication related to a smoldering crisis running in the Danish healthcare system since 2016: the problematic implementation of a large-scale electronic health record (EHR), technology entitled Sundhedsplatformen (SP), in the hospitals of the capital region of Denmark.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on insights from crisis communication theories and in particular rhetorical arena theory (RAT), traces of SP smoldering crisis and patterns of discursive strategies are identified and explained from a longitudinal perspective to explain the communicative complexity that characterizes this smoldering crisis. To build an understanding of how this smoldering crisis is perceived, followed and kept alive, an analysis of (de)legitimation discursive strategies employed strategically by various actors and voices in news articles is conducted in relation to four communicative themes: issue identification, warnings, blame attribution and potential solutions.
Findings
It has been found that a legitimacy deficit emerges communicatively through specific (de)legitimation strategies during this smoldering crisis. New insights into RAT (Frandsen and Johansen, 2017) are also provided.
Practical implications
This study is not only of theoretical relevance, but it is also of practical relevance for public relation professionals who aim to identify characteristics of starting smoldering crises as well as to find strategic responses to the ongoing challenges and the developing over time of smoldering crises.
Originality/value
New insights into RAT (Frandsen and Johansen, 2017) are provided.
Details
Keywords
Silvia Ravazzani and Carmen Daniela Maier
This article aims to investigate evaluative framing of global plastic pollution as discursively performed by two opposed categories of social actors, namely corporations versus…
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to investigate evaluative framing of global plastic pollution as discursively performed by two opposed categories of social actors, namely corporations versus environmental movements.
Design/methodology/approach
The article builds on the literature related to framing, issue arenas and moral evaluations to unravel how evaluative framing and counterframing are implemented in multimodal digital spaces and how social practices get legitimized or delegitimized according to different communicative purposes. It presents a longitudinal critical discourse analysis of the issue-related webpages and press releases of PepsiCo, one of the worst global plastic polluters, and of the global environmental movement #breakfreefromplastic.
Findings
Findings suggest that the systematic recurrence of specific evaluative strategies has a double macro-function: (a) organizing discourses strategically through its presence or absence; (b) signalling the moral significance of recontextualized social practices by conferring legitimacy to remedial actions and/or illegitimacy to deviant actions.
Social implications
This study contributes to increasing accountable environmental action and trustful communication for overcoming global sustainability issues.
Originality/value
The article offers a nuanced understanding of the role of evaluative framing in communicating global sustainability issues. Methodologically, it extends existing categories of moral evaluations and articulates a framework for future studies.
Details
Keywords
Marita Vos, Henny Schoemaker and Vilma Liisa Luoma-aho
This paper seeks to contribute to the field of corporate communication by clarifying the theoretical basis of communication in issue arenas and proposing an agenda for research on…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper seeks to contribute to the field of corporate communication by clarifying the theoretical basis of communication in issue arenas and proposing an agenda for research on issue arenas.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on insights from stakeholder thinking, network theory, issues management, and agenda-setting theory, the authors identify different levels of analysis that could explain the behaviour of organisations in the public debate on current issues.
Findings
The organisation-centred approach is replaced by a strong emphasis on interaction in networks of organisations, groups and individuals. Decision-making on communication strategies can be further developed by analysing the particularities of each issue arena, in particular the characteristics of the issue and the actors involved as well as the course of the debate and the communication strategies utilised in stakeholder interaction.
Research limitations/implications
This theoretical approach calls for further research, but offers an agenda and suggests four starting levels for analysis.
Practical implications
This paper provides a timely approach to the analysis of corporate communication that may help understand the complexities of a rapidly changing organisational environment and, ultimately, assist organisations in developing customised communication strategies suited to each issue arena relevant to their operations.
Originality/value
Insights from various theories are brought together to serve as a starting point for the further analysis of communication in issue arenas.
Details
Keywords
Lærke Højgaard Christiansen and Jochem J. Kroezen
Organizations are increasingly confronted with legitimacy threats related to the perceived social costs of their business activities. Despite a significant amount of research on…
Abstract
Organizations are increasingly confronted with legitimacy threats related to the perceived social costs of their business activities. Despite a significant amount of research on the responses of individual organizations, surprisingly limited attention has been paid to the collective activities firms may engage to address such issues. In this paper, we use institutional theory as a lens for an exploratory case study of Issue-Based Industry Collective (IBIC) action in the alcohol industry. Our findings identify a new organizational form, the IBIC and inspire new research avenues at the intersection of business collective action, social issues, and institutional theory.
Details