This document discusses crisis communications and the role of social media. It defines a crisis as a disruptive event that can damage an organization's reputation. Examples include natural disasters, accidents, and technical errors. The document outlines best practices for using social media during a crisis, such as actively monitoring platforms, providing timely updates, and being transparent. It also discusses the importance of maintaining trust and credibility and responding thoughtfully to customer concerns on social media. Finally, it examines lessons from past crises like Hurricane Irene regarding hashtags and the tone of social media messages.

1. ETHICS AND
CRISIS
COMMUNICATIONS
#Manship4002
Lecture 14

2. WHAT IS A CRISIS?
• Crisis = significant, disruptive event that
often features a rapid onset, and can
produce negative consequences for an
organization‘s financial health and
reputation.

3. EXAMPLES OF CRISES
 Natural disasters (public sector
organizations should demonstrate
responsibility for safety of citizens)
 workplace accidents, violence
 technical errors
 rumors

4. SOCIAL MEDIA FOR
CRISIS MANAGEMENT
• Organizations use social media to proactively
monitor and prepare for potential crisis
• Requires active listening, social media monitoring
• Organizations can use social media to provide up-
to-date information during a crisis event
•24 hour updates
• Social media messages enable reputation
managers to reach key demographics quickly and
efficiently during a crisis event
• Social media, used correctly, can establish positive
credibility and reputation for a brand

5. REPUTATION
―the collective representation of multiple
constituencies‘ images of a company, built up
over time and based on a company‘s identity
programs, its performance, and how
constituencies have perceived its behavior‖
 consumer sales (private sector)
 perceived product quality
 credibility (public sector)
 Companies that have an established and
positive reputation are more likely to recover
quickly after a major crisis (Ulmer, 2001).

6. REPUTATION
A corporate reputation is based on four
foundations
1. Reliability
2. Responsibility
3. Credibility
4. Trustworthiness
(Fombrun, 1996).

7. FORBES:
―In life, and in business, reputation is everything.
That said, reputation is very fragile and it only
takes one mistake to cause irreparable damage to
your company‘s image. This is especially true in
the digital world where radical transparency and
high customer expectations reign supreme.
Ignoring strong public digital voices isn‘t an option
any more.‖

8. 1. Listen and Be Present: Not having a presence
on social communities can reflect badly on your
brand. Listen and respond – even if just with a
link to a website or form for customer feedback.
2. Set The Right Expectations: Make a plan for
how quickly people should expect your response
– 5 hrs? 24hrs? 48hrs?
3. Be Transparent: DON‘T erase negative posts,
ever. DON‘T try to cover up social media
mistakes. Customers don‘t expect you and your
teams to be perfect, just transparent and honest.
They expect you treat them like family…
4. Respond Thoughtfully: show you care; ―of
those customers who received a reply in
response to their negative review 33% turned
around and posted a positive review, and 34%
deleted their original negative review.‖

9. 5. Never Lose your Cool: never be rude or attack
customers in social forms – unacceptable, and will
come back to bite your A*$!
6. Have a crisis management team (from PR,
HR, legal, marketing…)
7. Manage access to your social media
accounts carefully
8. Post moderation guidelines: “you can also
post your own moderation guidelines on your
social media pages to make it obvious what
behavior will or will not be tolerated within your
social communities. Being up-front about your
―house rules‖ makes it simpler to take down
offensive posts by referring to your rules and
pointing out how they were violated.‖
9. Hire experienced community managers

11. WHAT IS A BRAND‘S
RESPONSIBILITY ON
TWITTER?
“To respond.” - Conversocial
CEO Joshua March [a platform that enables
brands to manage interactions and increase
engagement with customers in social media]
Many brands, however, don‘t respond to
customer service complaints on Twitter. Many
of these customer complains are direct queries
(48%), not simply negative comments (9%), so
they deserve responses.

12. GAP LEAVES TWITTER
COMPLAINTS UNANSWERED…

13. CONVERSOCIAL
CEO JOSHUA MARCH
―There‘s a more established model
coming up, which is the ‗social media
customer service team‘. Big brands need
to have 50-60 customer service staff
trained to use social media, as well as
systems to monitor actions and keep up
with the volume.‖

14. ―While having followers and getting hundreds
of retweets is great, brands should start
paying attention to the quality of their
engagement. Companies like Conversocial
are helping to provide the tools to do this–
other similar companies include Sprout
Social and TwentyFeet. The bottom line is it‘s
not about quantity anymore — we‘ve
confirmed that there are a lot of people on
the Internet and they‘re making a lot of noise.
It‘s now more than ever about the quality of

15. • Social media have transformed how
crisis communicators reach their
audiences
• Social media platforms and messages
add to challenges involved in maintaining
the reputation of brands and corporations
• Social media can help people feel they
have more control over a crisis, and feel
more connected to the community during
the crisis

16. INDIVIDUAL
EMPOWERMENT
DURING CRISIS
Using social media, individuals can contribute
directly to media by providing eyewitness
perspectives through video, photos, or texted
accounts of an event, often bypassing the
professional reporters on the scene, and
providing unfiltered views of what is
happening in the world.
9/11
Hurricane Katrina
2007 Virginia Tech shootings

17. PEOPLE USE SOCIAL
MEDIA DURING CRISES
 Community members who experienced
the 2007 southern California wildfires
sought information and used social media
to contact friends and family.
 Many people saw Tweets about TVA ash
spill crisis before they received traditional
media updates.
 Risks for organizations that provide
inaccurate information to stakeholders in a
time of crisis

18. HURRICANE IRENE
LESSONS
 Misinformation spread on Twitter about where to
find food and shelter before the storm caused fear
and confusion
 Crisis communicators should monitor their social
media accounts to ensure that erroneous
information is not provided via their accounts or by
individuals commenting on their organization‘s social
media posts.
 Use crowdsourcing, or the power to ask individuals
to help contribute and create information

19. RESEARCH:
Social mention (www.socialmention.com) was used to
collect updates appearing on social media platforms
from August 22, 2011 to September 1, 2011 using the
search terms ―hurricane irene,‖ ―hurricane irene
safety,‖ ―hurricane irene mold,‖ and ―hurricane irene
food safety.‖
The social media updates collected about Hurricane
Irene came from multiple sources such as Twitter,
Facebook, Digg, YouTube, Yahoo! News, Google
News, Reddit, and Flickr.
The most frequently used social media platform was
Digg (N = 295) followed by Twitter (N = 231) and then

20. FINDINGS
―Hashtags are useful to incorporate
strategically into a crisis communications
plan‖
 To monitor what others are saying
 To ensure those impacted in the crisis are able to
follow what others are reporting
The improper use or improper dissemination of
hashtags may have impacted the wider
dissemination of what could have been very high
scoring messages.
Top social media updates on Social
Mention had links to more information

21. Communicate Quickly
Be Credible
Be Accurate
Be Simple
Be Complete
Communicate Broadly

22. WHAT CONSTITUTES A
―GOOD‖ CRISIS
MESSAGE?
Previous research has shown that crisis and
emergency messages are most effective when they
 feature a personal touch (i.e., personalized
messages)
 feature efficacy (i.e., providing individuals with
action steps to take).
Emergency messages ought to
1. Explain the event
2. Identify likely consequences and outcomes
3. Explain who is in charge and what they are doing
to mitigate harm
4. Explain what people can do to protect themselves

23. BEST PRACTICES FOR
CRISIS
COMMUNICATORS
 Integrate multimedia and links into
updates: Individuals want not only textual
information appearing in social media
updates related to a crisis, but also a visual
context of the information or a reference to
another credible source.
 Proper use of hashtags and tagged
keywords: Organizations and agencies
need to be strategic in monitoring and
assigning hashtags for specific events so
that others may monitor, follow, and respond.

24. BEST PRACTICES FOR
CRISIS
COMMUNICATORS
 Balance between official and
conversational updates: Most of the
updates collected from Social Mention
focused on addressing breaking news about
Hurricane Irene, but were framed to be more
conversational than official in tone
compared to traditional media. The more
conversational updates were more
successful than those in an official tone of
voice.

25. MORE RESOURCES ON
SOCIAL MEDIA AND CRISIS
COMMUNICATIONS
Idisaster 2.0: http://idisaster.wordpress.com/
Hootsuite: Social Media and Crisis Communications, FDR
Style: http://blog.hootsuite.com/lessons-crisis-
communications-fdr/
Sparkcentral Guest Blog: Crisis Management with Social
Media: http://usefulsocialmedia.com/reputation/sparkcentral-
guest-blog-crisis-management-social-media
4 Golden Rules for Tweeting During a Crisis:
http://socialmediatoday.com/howveryheather/1412701/4-
golden-rules-tweeting-during-crisis
Managing A Brand‘s Social Presence During Crisis:
http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130418211506-
8628736-managing-a-brand-s-social-presence-during-crisis