Search

When firms face crisis, the instant and open channels of social media communication create a double-edged sword. While corporations can more quickly communicate with stakeholders, any missteps will have drastic and nearly immediate repercussions. What are the relationships among social media, subjective norms, attitudes, and intentions during corporate crisis? We explore this phenomenon via a study of a crisis faced by Lowe's, an international home improvement store, and how current and potential customers reacted. By utilizing a structural equations model to examine an integrated model of multiple constructs, we find that Facebook usage is associated with behavioral intent, perceptions of ethicality, and attitudes toward the organization. Counter intuitively, we find that an increase in participant Facebook usage is negatively related to felt subjective norms. Our findings indicate that beyond the traditional relationships examined by the Theory of Reasoned Action (e.g., norms, attitudes, and behavioral intent), that social media and subjective norms have a strong relationship with general attitudes and ethical attitudes toward an organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The University of North Alabama (UNA) was accused of negligence in the handling of a student's allegation of sexual assault by a professor. The initial university response prompted backlash from students, alumni, and the community. A more conciliatory response followed, and the UNA president spoke of the case during his annual address. These three responses, prompted by stakeholder critique, provided a unique opportunity to extend theory by analyzing how dialectical tensions and stakeholder responses affect organizational strategic decision-making in image reparation efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• From Hurricane Harvey through a week after Hurricane Nate, FEMA posted 5004 tweets. • Tweet content changed over time, suggesting FEMA was attentive to community needs. • For risk-focused entities like FEMA, the CERC model should be considered by researchers. • As the 2017 hurricane season progressed, more of FEMA's tweets included storm impact. • From hurricane to hurricane, FEMA tweets used more hashtags and account tags. Applying content and semantic network analysis research methodologies, this study examined FEMA's national and regional Twitter account posts during the historic 2017 hurricane season and argues for the expanded use of the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) model in researching risk and crisis communication during natural disasters. Messaging content was compared across time between FEMA and its regional counterparts during Harvey, Maria, Irma, and Nate. Results showed FEMA provided information to affected publics and bolstered its work using various Twitter features. Differences were identified in FEMA's national and regional accounts' posts. From hashtags to visual elements, FEMA's tweet content changed as the season progressed: more tweets included information about the impact of the storms; more tweets shared factual information from hurricane to hurricane; and the tweets tended to use more hashtags and account tags, which should broaden their audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]