Employee social-mediated crisis communication as opportunity or threat?

Marcus Opitz · Vidhi A. Chaudhri · Yijing Wang

53 citations0/0 files storedCorporate Communications An International Journal

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Public Relations and Crisis Communication Digital Marketing and Social Media Corporate Identity and Reputation

Abstract

Purpose Defending their employer on LinkedIn or attacking their organization on Twitter: a ubiquitous social-mediated environment allows employees of crisis-stricken organizations to reach out to a mass audience with only a few keystrokes. But is such employee social-mediated crisis communication an opportunity or a threat to their organizations? By developing the perspective of employees in contrast to consumers, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of employee social-mediated crisis communication on organizational reputation. Design/methodology/approach An online survey experiment was conducted among 386 participants constituting the publics of an organization. Findings The findings demonstrate the importance of moderating effects of message framing (advocacy vs adversary) and medium (blog vs microblog). They show that in comparison to consumers, employees attacking their organization on social media, particularly via media such as blog, cause disproportionally more damage to organizational reputation. Research limitations/implications While the significant effects of employees’ adversary message might make them a threat for organizations, it is argued that the fact that employees are equally as effective as advocates for their organizations as consumers also constitutes an opportunity. Practical implications Organizations need to be cognizant of the threats posed by employees’ crisis communication as well as aim to reap opportunities offered by these credible communicators by considering strategies such as authentically integrating employees in the official crisis communication response. Originality/value By comparing the role of the two groups of stakeholders (employees vs consumers) in crisis communication, the study contributes to an important audience-centered perspective.

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References

2009Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media 2011Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media 1994Organizational Images and Member Identification 1997Image repair discourse and crisis communication 2000The Reputation QuotientSM: A multi-stakeholder measure of corporate reputation 2002Helping Crisis Managers Protect Reputational Assets 2004Adversaries of Consumption: Consumer Movements, Activism, and Ideology 2007Making sense of credibility on the Web: Models for evaluating online information and recommendations for future research

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