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This mixed-methods study presents a comparative analysis of the use and perceived usefulness of Facebook and Twitter, among Swedish citizens and crisis communication professionals, as crisis communication tools and information sources. The use and perceived usefulness of Facebook and Twitter are not congruent and consistent between the two different groups, according to the overall study. Communication professionals, for example, report higher levels of perceived usefulness regarding Facebook's potential as a crisis communication tool than do the citizens. Taken together, the results show that researchers (within social media and crisis communication) and crisis managers both need to deal with the fact that social media is not a homogenous phenomenon with a single coherent role in crisis management and communication research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If well managed, crises do not only pose a threat to political actors but also provide opportunities to show action, strengthening credibility and launching new policies. Within the field of crisis communication, research has primarily taken an interest in the rhetorical strategies of actors when explaining successes or failures. In this article, we examine key characteristics of what we refer to as crisis exploitation coverage in the news media. We do so based on a comparative quantitative study of 3 crisis cases (terror, floods, and financial crisis) selected due to their differences in journalistic routines and preparedness. The results of the study revealed that the similarities in the cases were more pronounced than their differences. All three cases showed high levels of descriptive journalism and issue framing in combination with unbalanced reporting—characteristics that were all favorable toward the governmental actors in charge of managing the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Crisis communication research has primarily focused on universal models guiding managers of various organisations in times of crisis. Even though this is about to change, a tendency remains for research in the field to overlook the impact of structural conditions on organisation's crisis communication. In order to add to the emergent discussion on new theoretical and empirical venues within the field of crisis communication, this paper proposes a framework based on new institutional theory for analysing crisis communication practices as a societal phenomenon. New institutionalism is advocated due to its ability to shift the focus from agency to structure and in doing so emphasise the social preconditions for organisational activities. In line with this, this conceptual paper discusses crisis communication as an institution, i.e., as a set of more or less conscious ideas about formats (the organisational structures developed for crisis communication work), contents (the content of organisations' communication in times of crisis) and contexts (the situations during which organisations are expected to perform crisis communication). Moreover, we discuss how these ideas become translated (i.e., modified) as they travel (i.e., become legitimate, popular and get widely spread) across organisational and institutional contexts. In order to illustrate the framework described above, the Swedish authorities' communication in connection to the A/H1N1 outbreak is used as a case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transboundary incidents with the potential to develop into crises transcending geographical, cultural and religious boundaries are becoming increasingly common in today's interconnected world. This development poses new demands on governments to communicate with publics on a transnational level, what is commonly referred to as public diplomacy. Based on an inductive comparative case study, this article suggests a framework for understanding public diplomacy as a crisis communication tool consisting of three core tasks: sense making, networking and messaging. The article ends with a proposal as to how public diplomacy can contribute to crisis mitigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Muhammad cartoon crisis in 2005 provides an illustrative example of how crises travel across geographical boundaries, in this case, from a national newspaper into a full-fledged public diplomacy crisis at the international level. From a crisis management perspective, a multilevel setting poses a real challenge to actors trying to contain the situation at hand. Likewise, the multilevel nature of a crisis poses a challenge to crisis communication theories, which have traditionally focused on rhetorical strategies in single organizational crises. As a response, this article proposes a framework for examining crisis communication based on how actors’ framing impact the perceptions of arenas, stakeholders, and communication strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]