Understanding Stakeholders' Expectations of Organisational Crisis Communication by Social Media

Due to the high levels of user interactivity and lack of control mechanism on social media (Coombs 2014), it is important for organisations to know how to communicate with stakeholders via social media as a crisis unfolds (Eriksson 2012). Since such communications can adversely affect organisational reputation if mishandled (Dean 2004). Gaining understanding of how stakeholders expect organisations to communicate on social media during crises can help organisations to communicate more effectively in crises. However there is little guidance from the literature to assist organisations in that regard. This paper explores the factors that stakeholders expect organisations to consider when communicating about a crisis via social media. The paper provides findings from a qualitative content analysis of 17000 Facebook and Twitter messages posted by stakeholders of seventeen large Australian organisations during crises over a twelve month period. The research findings suggest that stakeholders expect organisations to provide updates proactively and reply to their messages in a timely manner. They also expect organisations to be honest, take responsibility for the crisis, show understanding toward the affected stakeholders, be authentic and avoid deleting unfavourable messages to the organisations. The paper makes several key theoretical and practical contributions. First, it increases scholarly understandings of the use of social media for crisis communication. Second, it gives a better understanding to organisations about stakeholders' expectations of organisational use of social media during crises by identifying the factors that organisations are expected to consider in that communication. This can help organisations planning for appropriate social media crisis communication. Third, it contributes to the social media and crisis communication literature and responds to the call for more systematic studies in this area (Ki & Nekmat 2014). Key implications from the findings are discussed.