Crisis communication online: How medium, crisis type and emotions affected public reactions in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster

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Abstract

Social media play in today's societies a fundamental role for the negotiation and dynamics of crises. However, classical crisis communication theories neglect the role of the medium and focus mainly on the interplay between crisis type and crisis communication strategy. Building on the recently developed “networked crisis communication model” we contrast effects of medium (Facebook vs. Twitter vs. online newspaper) and crisis type (intentional vs. victim) in an online experiment. Using the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster as crisis scenario, we show that medium effects are stronger than the effects of crisis type. Crisis communication via social media resulted in a higher reputation and less secondary crisis reactions such as boycotting the company than crisis communication in the newspaper. However, secondary crisis communication, e.g. talking about the crisis communication, was higher in the newspaper condition than in the social media conditions because people consider traditional media as more credible. We also found higher levels of anger in the intentional crisis condition than in the victim crisis condition. Anger in turn was related to reputation, secondary crisis communication and secondary crisis reaction. The results stress the need for more complex models of crisis communication.

Highlights

► Crisis communication via social media more effective than via traditional media. ► Effects of medium stronger than effects of crisis type. ► Indirect effects of crisis type via anger. ► Traditional media still perceived as more credible source. ► Source credibility predicts secondary crisis communication.

Introduction

Social media have become part of everyday life for many people (Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007); more than 900 million people use Facebook, and there are more than 100 million tweets daily. Also organizations have embraced social media as an important communication channel for marketing and PR, but also for crisis communication. Social media might be especially useful during organizational crises, because concerned publics can be informed quickly and directly, and because organizations can engage in a dialog with them.

Social media use and its effects have been widely studied for the domain of interpersonal communication, examining for example people's self-presentation on social networks, or effects of social media use on relationships (see for example Buffardi and Campbell, 2008, Debatin et al., 2009, Utz, 2010, Utz and Beukeboom, 2011, Utz and Krämer, 2009). However, studies on the corporate use of social media remain largely descriptive (e.g. Lovejoy et al., 2012, Waters et al., 2009). In the field of crisis communication, classical theories (e.g., Situational Crisis Communication Theory by Coombs, 2007, Coombs and Holladay, 2002); however, focused on the effects of different response strategies in specific crisis situations on reputation or secondary crisis reactions such as buying intention or negative word-of-mouth. But they have not paid attention to the medium or the public's secondary crisis communication, that is, sharing or forwarding the organization's crisis communication.

Research has only very recently started to analyzes the role of social media in crises (Schultz, Utz, & Göritz, 2011) and theorized on it in models, such as the social mediated crisis communication model (SCCM; Liu, Austin, & Jin, 2011) or the more comprehensive networked crisis communication model (Schultz, Utz, & Glocka, 2012). They challenge classical crisis communication theories by showing that the medium used affects the impact of crisis communication. Especially communication via Twitter leads to more positive outcomes for the organization (Schultz et al., 2011).

In the present paper, we use the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster as crisis scenario to shed more light on the cognitive, affective and behavioral effects of social media use in crisis communication, based on an experimental approach. Our research contributes to more comprehensive crisis communication models by examining the effects of medium and crisis type on secondary crisis communication, secondary crisis reaction, and reputation. We extend prior research in several ways. First, we aim to replicate the strong effect of medium reported by Schultz et al. (2011), thereby demonstrating the generalizability of these results. Second, we extend the work by Schultz et al. (2011) that focused on Twitter and blogs as social media by examining the effects of crisis communication via Facebook. Third, we also analyze the underlying processes. More specifically, we test whether perceived credibility of the medium influences secondary crisis communication and whether effects of crisis type are driven by anger.

Section snippets

Literature review

Crises, especially avoidable ones, are always a threat to the reputation of an organization. The foremost goal of crisis communication is therefore to restore the reputation of the organization and the trust of customers or other stakeholders. Classical crisis communication theories such as the Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT; Coombs, 2007, Coombs and Holladay, 2002) have focused on the question of which strategy an organization should choose depending on the crisis type. SCCT

Participants and design

The experiment had a 2 (crisis type: intentional vs. victim crises) × 3 (media type: Twitter vs. Facebook vs. newspaper) between-participants design. A hundred eighty-two people (50% males, 50% females) participated. Their mean age was 29 years (SD = 8.38).

Procedure

The crisis scenario chosen for this research was the recent nuclear incident in Japan. On March 11, 2011, an earthquake hit the east coast of Japan, killed hundreds of people, and damaged also the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants causing

Manipulation checks and preliminary analyzes

In the victim crisis condition, 72% (N = 54) of the participants considered circumstances to be responsible for the crisis, whereas 66.4% (N = 71) of the participants in the intentional crisis condition held the organization responsible for the crisis. The Chi-square test (χ2 = 25.95; p < .05) confirmed the success of the manipulation of the two crisis conditions. The majority of respondents also correctly identified the medium they saw, χ2 = 121.17; p < .001.

We also examined whether attention to the news

Discussion

In this online experiment, we contributed to the field of crisis communication by examining experimentally the effects of medium and crisis type on reputation, secondary crisis reactions and secondary crisis communication. By analyzing also the effects on likelihood and valence of secondary crisis communication, we explored also the dynamics around crisis communication and contribute to the emerging field of more comprehensive crisis communication theories (Jin et al., in press, Schultz et al.,

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