Social Media, Crisis Communication, and Publics

Dear Colleagues,

Crises are inevitable events that happen suddenly and harm businesses, non-profit organizations, public organizations, industries, governments, economies, as well as public figures. Social media can impose barriers, as they are platforms where a crisis begins and escalates but can create opportunities for affected entities. Specifically, social media can help organizations and public personas monitor audience reactions; effectively communicate their crisis response; respond to their stakeholders’ questions; and thus, manage their image and reputation. These new platforms also create new spaces where citizens can retrieve and share relevant crisis information, interact with other users and organizations, as well as express their emotions and thoughts during crisis events.

So far, related work on social media crisis communication has expanded traditional crisis communication theories (e.g., situational crisis communication theory, image repair theory), generated new crisis communication models for social-mediated environments, and applied various methodological approaches for the examination of the antecedents and consequences of crisis communication across different sectors, types of social media, and types of crises.

However, there still a great potential for additional research regarding the intersection between crisis communication and social media. Researchers and scholars need to continue addressing questions such as: How are various crisis communication theories applied in different types of social media? What factors drive the effectiveness of social media crisis communication? How does social media crisis communication impact the offline world and the public’s perceptions and emotions? What are the characteristics of social media users during times of crises? How do businesses, public organizations, and personas utilize social media to respond to different types of crises? Hence, this Special Issue aims to further research on social media crisis communication and welcomes contributions on, but not limited to, the following topics:

• Social media crisis communication models;
• Situational crisis communication and image repair theory in social-mediated environments;
• Crisis communication patterns on social media during natural disasters;
• Health-related crisis communication (Covid-19) and social media usage by organizations and citizens;
• User characteristics and types during times of crisis;
• Effective crisis communication strategies on social media;
• Brand crisis communication on social media;
• Political crises and scandals on social media;
• Social media engagement in crisis communication;
• Visual crisis communication on social media (e.g., Instagram);
• Social media crisis communication and corporate social responsibility;
• Social media crisis communication and reputation;
• Dialogic communication on social media during a crisis.

Dr. Amalia Triantafillidou
Guest Editor

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