The Impacts of Contextual Factors on Social Media Crises: Implications for Crisis Communication Strategy Selection

ABSTRACT

The prescriptive approach to crisis communication strategy (CCS) selection has long been criticized for lack of flexibility and adaptability. To address this issue, this study proposes an emergent approach to strategy formulation by focusing on contextual impacts on social media crises and their implications for CCS. An online discussion on Sina Weibo, a Chinese microblogging platform, about a high-profile homicide in a McDonald’s restaurant, is taken as the case. Based on a multidisciplinary theoretical framework that consists of the theory of rhetorical arena and framing theory, an inductive framing analysis of 100 top forwarded posts indicates a complex negotiation process among multiple crisis communicators through various crisis frames. The results suggest that selection of CCS should be from contextually based behavior through investigating interaction among multiple crisis communicators and examining the contexts in which crises are situated. This study also contributes to advancing the CCS selection model of Situational Crisis Communication Theory by integrating contextual factors.

Acknowledgments

The author deeply appreciates the insight and comments shared by W. Timothy Coombs and Salla-Maaria Laaksonen. The author also wishes to thank the editor and the blind reviewers’ input on the original version of the article.

Notes

¹ Weibo accounts can be verified by the Sina Company to ensure their integrity and validity. Once the accounts are verified, they get a “V” badge next to their logos, which enhances their credibility.

² According to Entman, “to frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating context, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item descried” (1993, p. 52; italics in the original).

³ A section of MPS. “The four blacks” include illegal workshops, illegal factories, illegal markets and black dens, and “the four harms” refer to criminal activities that endanger citizens, families, society, and the country.