Operationalizing crisis communication from within: Toward the Crisis Organizational Communication framework in the social mediated environment
Publication Type
Journal Article
Publication Date
12-2020
Abstract
The pervasive social media use during crises reinforces the necessity to re-examine organisational engagements, particularly to internal stakeholders who can step forward as organisational representatives in times of crises. Existing crisis research on social media use have mostly targeted external audiences. The gap remains on how organisations could build a strong team to complement external communication (Frandsen & Johansen, 2011; Ruck & Welch, 2012). In the current social media landscape, it is thus critical to examine how organisations can leverage social media's influence (Romero et al., 2011) to communicate internally and nurture these advocates (Sellnow & Ulmer, 1995). Employees are corporate ambassadors and brand advocates as they are seen as organisational representatives by external stakeholders (Men, 2014). To build emotional goodwill among employees, organisations need to understand the evolved communication landscape and what employees are looking for. Examined through the theoretical lens of organisational listening (Macnamara, 2016), this paper explores how organisations can build that corps of advocates who identify strongly with their organisations and can serve as ready corporate spokespersons whether called upon or not (Crable & Vibbert, 1985). Using Coombs' (2015) three-staged approach, this paper suggests that crisis social media organisational communication should be prominent during the pre-crisis and crisis phases due to the focus by organisations to regain their reputation post-crisis through intensified engagement of external stakeholders. This paper is arguably the first of its kind to explore enhancing crisis communication through organisational listening on social media, conceptually developing the Crisis Social Media Organisational Communication (CSMOC) model.
Discipline
Business and Corporate Communications | Social Media
Research Areas
Corporate Communication
Publication
Asia Pacific Public Relations Journal
Volume
22
Issue
1
First Page
1
Last Page
20
ISSN
1839-8227
Publisher
University of Newcastle
Citation
TAN, Kevin Kok-Yew and PANG, A..
Operationalizing crisis communication from within: Toward the Crisis Organizational Communication framework in the social mediated environment. (2020). Asia Pacific Public Relations Journal. 22, (1), 1-20.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/6618