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Despite the enormous value social media yield governments in communicating with citizens, there is scant research on the extent to which local governments are actually using social media for crisis communication efforts. As local governments continue to face diminishing budgets stretched time, and human, and fiscal resources even for the management of daily operations, it is imperative to reveal how social media can maximize efficiency in crisis management. In addition, given the extraordinary growth in social media use over the past few years, it is also important to evaluate if and how governments are using this technology to communicate with publics during crisis and incorporating it into their crisis communication plans.
Using survey data collected from more than 300 local government officials from municipalities across the United States, this study examined social media use in a relatively unexplored context, local governments. It specifically addressed the adoption and use of social media tools for crisis communication and social media’s part in managing a crisis. Results indicate the extent of social media use, but not the number of tools used, is positively associated with local city officials’ assessments of their ability to control a crisis situation as well as their overall evaluations of the strength of their responses.
In September 2015 the Environmental Protection Agency found that many Volkswagen cars sold in the United States were equipped with software that could falsely improve the performance of diesel engines on emissions tests. This cheating was subsequently acknowledged by the car maker.Among the many issues at stake for the company was one of public perception. Anecdotal evidencate at the time of the incident suggested irreparable harm to the Volkswagen brand. So could Volkswagen recover in the short term in this regard? And, the broader question, how can you measure brand perception in times of scandal, particularly in an era where social media can cause negative news to proliferate and reverberate over time? In the absence of direct empirical evidence, we wanted to find a way to tackle this important issue. We began our research with some key questions: How does social media sentiment change as a consequence of a public relations crisis? How does the public react to recovery efforts initiated by the company? How do topics of conversation shift as a consequence of a brand scandal and subsequent recovery efforts?...
After hundreds of workers were killed in Turkey's worst-ever mining accident, Turkey's prime minister sought to downplay the disaster.
...Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan did a few things right in his response. He visited the site, comforted victims, and, according to The Telegraph, he “promised the tragedy would be investigated to its ‘smallest detail’ and that ‘no negligence will be ignored.’”
But then he violated a basic rule of crisis communications that must be adhered to when fatalities are involved....
The 5C’s of crisis communications detail the five critical traits all executives and spokespersons must convey during their press conferences and interviews.
I’ve written before about the dangers of uttering “quotes of denial,” in which the word “not” is placed immediately before a negative noun or adjective. The problem is that the defensive-sounding negative word or phrase tends to linger longer in the public memory than the word “not.”
So when Chris Christie uttered the phrase “I am not a bully” during his marathon press conference on Thursday, I knew it would be used against him. Sure enough, here’s the cover from this weekend’s USA Today Weekend...
“Many studies have already shown how important crisis management is for organizations,” Hong said. “This study shows that Facebook can be a valuable tool for public relations professionals when working to solve or lessen the severity of a crisis. Because Facebook is very personal for its users, well-thought-out crisis management messages can be effective at reaching users on a personal level, which is a powerful way to persuade people to a cause.”
Hong also found that Facebook posts written in a narrative style were more effective than posts written in a non-narrative format. Narrative style is chronological and focuses more on story-telling rather than fact listing.
“This indicates that the effect of narrative tone in organizational statements during crises increases perceived conversational human voice, which represents a high level of engagement and best communicates trust, satisfaction, and commitment to the audience,” Hong said. “This is an important practice for public relations professionals because perceptions that an organization is sincerely trying to provide timely and accurate information during a crisis can lead to not only more favorable attitudes toward the organization, but also perceptions of less responsibility the organization has for causing the crisis.”...
Twitter‘s tweets-per-second numbers are usually fairly stable, with spikes happening here and there to varying degrees depending on what is trending and happening in the real world. On August 3, however, it had an unusually high per-second tweet peak – so high, in fact, that it set a new record for the social network. Now Twitter has posed the details on what happened complete with some bragging about its user experience.
The flood of tweets originated from Japan during a showing of Castle in the Sky, with viewers so enthused about what they were watching that tweets reached a sort of rapid crescendo, peaking out at 143,199 in a single second. This is in contrast to the average per-second rate the microblogging website sees of 5,700....
Allow me a moment of nostalgia for the classic liveblog. “Liveblogging” was this thing we used to do before the rise of Twitter and Storify, much like good old-fashioned blogging itself. You’d have a host and a bunch of guests all watching the same Web page together, and for an hour or so, they’d make magic.
I should confess: every now and then, I get a hankering for some of that old magic. I pour some good wine, dust off a CoverItLive console, and invite some friends over.* And every time I do, I’m reminded why genuine liveblogging — real-time, browser-based liveblogging — is still one of my favorite instruments in the modern journalism toolkit. I highly recommend it to you, for reasons I outline below. And I’ll also give you some pointers on how to do it....
Here are 5 benefits of using a mobile app for your internal crisis communications - and which industries and types of organizations would best benefit.
Intranets are a great tool for large organizations that have offices all around the country and the world, but what about when you have workers on the ground? Workers on the ground don’t necessarily have a computer in front of them at all times, but what they definitely do have is a mobile phone. Creating an app designed specifically for your internal (crisis) communications will allow you to:- Access and reach each and every member of your team, no matter where they are at any given time – and all at once...
...Edward Burkhardt, CEO of Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railways waited 5 days before visiting the crash site andmaking a statement to the media. His statement lacks a significant, quotable apology to those affected, while focusing too much on the technical aspects of dealing with insurance, finances and monetary issues. He even begins his statement by defending whether he is a compassionate person.
True, the CEO does not always need to be the spokesperson in every crisis. However, a crisis this big demands an appearance and statement within 24 hours of the onset of the crisis.
True, I believe a CEO should spend more time managing the crisis and running the company than trying to be a spokesperson, but a crisis this big demands at least a few hours to talk with the media and the families who have lost loved ones. News reports indicate that at the time of the news briefing, the CEO had not reached out to families....
Wall Street Journal ran a blog yesterday talking about how bad Asiana’s PR is in the wake of the pilot-induced crash in San Francisco. They made the point that the CEO rebuffed communication experts in the US who wanted to help if the crash aftermath and stuck with its South Korean team. An Asiana representative said, “It’s not the proper time to manage the company’s image.”
That’s quite a remarkable statement. If the hours, minutes, days and weeks following a horrible crash, caused by an inexperienced pilot, is not the proper time to manage a company’s image, when is? The old adage about a crisis representing both risk and opportunity is very true, I believe. Trust can be built despite horrible circumstances, so it does matter greatly....
As with so many other news events, there was plenty of speculation and misinformation flowing on Twitter about the crash of an airplane at San Francisco airport — but for better or worse, that is just the way the news works now.Another breaking news event — in this case, the crash of Asiana Airlines flight 214, which broke apart while landing at San Francisco airport on Saturday morning — sparks more criticism (primarily on Twitter, of course) about how Twitter is a haven for errors and unfounded speculation, and how people seem compelled to retweet things during these events even if they have no knowledge of whether they are true or not.
To some, including regular readers of GigaOM, this won’t come as any surprise. Welcome to the way the news works now.
We saw similar criticisms and debates about the value of Twitter as a news medium during the Boston bombings, Hurricane Sandy, the shootings at Sandy Hook elementary school, and pretty much every other major news event that has happened over the past several years. At some point during the action, someone will complain about how many mistakes there are circulating on Twitter, and others will argue that we should all just refrain from tweeting or retweeting anything — or perhaps just wait until later and buy a newspaper....
Fans had made a to-be-published book by Paula Deen a top seller on Amazon, but the publisher, Random House, joined the list of business partners that have cut ties to the embattled chef....
The book deal was one of the last remaining lucrative business relationships for the embattled celebrity chef. Its cancellation came on a day when Sears, Kmart and J. C. Penney announced that they would stop selling products, including cookbooks, branded with her name. Since last week, the Food Network, Smithfield Foods, Walmart, Target, Caesars Entertainment, QVC and the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk have decided to suspend or sever ties with Ms. Deen after her admission in a legal deposition that she had used racist language in the past and allowed racist, sexist, homophobic and anti-Semitic jokes in one of her restaurants. Ms. Deen was deposed on video as part of a discrimination lawsuit filed last year by a former employee....(New York Times)
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Donald Trump made piggish comments about women to Billy Bush, the cohost of Access Hollywood, in 2005. NBC released the video yesterday. The video makes clear that, at least in 2005, Trump considered bedding women as sort of a video game, one he plays to win with wealth and power. As Republicans began to distance themselves from the comments — and some from Trump — Trump apologized. His apology is a case study in how not to apologize. Here are some qualities of sincere apologies. - You take responsibility for what you did. - You are specific. - You don’t talk about how you got caught and whether that is fair. - You apologize directly to the people you hurt .- You find or offer ways to make amends. - You don’t justify why what you did is ok. - You don’t go off topic to avoid talking about what happened. Trump’s apology fails on every single element....
Filed under: The most WTF thing we've seen in months.
Urban Outfitters, purveyor of clothing and home goods, big-ass floppy hats and occasionally offensive T-shirts, has outdone itself with this product on its website—a "vintage" Kent State University sweatshirt featuring fake blood splatters.
In 1970, the Ohio National Guard fired on a group of unarmed anti-war student protesters at Kent State, killing four and wounding nine others. The sweatshirt sold out quickly, because there was only one. ("We only have one, so get it or regret it!" said the description.) Now it's listed on eBay by someone who says he/she will "give 50% of the profit to the Southern Poverty Law Center, who protect those who cannot protect themselves, often those who are victims of police brutality."...
A congressman was caught on surveillance tape kissing a woman (not his wife). His crisis management takes a page out of David Letterman's and Don Draper's playbook.
...Well, so much for that. According to Politico, Rep. McAllister’s staff said the congressman would no longer pursue an investigation into the leaker. It looks like he will have little to hide behind other than the de rigueur “I have let my family down and will try to do better” line.
Mining the mobile phone data from 10 million people over 4 years reveals the subtle changes that occur in the flow of information when disaster strikes, say network scientistsscientists.
...More interesting, however, is what happens next. It’s easy to imagine that the first thing the group of friends and relatives do next is contact other people to spread the news that a disaster has struck.
But instead, the next call they make tends to be straight back to the person involved in the emergency situation. This is completely different to the normal behaviour where the likelihood of returning a call is significantly lower. Indeed, a call made during a concert is less likely than usual to get a call back.
Liang and co conclude that the need for correspondence with eyewitnesses is more critical than the dissemination of situational awareness during emergencies.” In other words, the desire to want to find out more trumps the need to pass on what they already know. At least in emergency situations....
One of the smartest things a brand can do is to respond as quickly and intelligently as possible to negative social media publicity, which is exactly what Taco Bell did.
Whether it’s an unsatisfactory customer experience, a management mistake, product malfunction or an employee of a major fast food chain publicly posting photos of themselves licking Tacos there are many reasons a company can get bad publicity.Below, we share with you some simple PR techniques that may well be worth thinking about so that your company is ready when people start talking about you on a blog, Facebook or Twitter....
The key word in social media is social.
As such, it’s a two-way game. Brands and businesses that use channels such as Twitter and Facebook to simply broadcast their message rarely get the sort of results they would expect. Fans and customers want and demand to be heard, and brands that carefully nurture these relationships benefit from higher engagement levels, boosts in website traffic and sales, strong word of mouth marketing and customer loyalty.
But sometimes, despite our best efforts, things go wrong. So what do you do when the worst happens?...
Oprah Winfrey, one of the world’s richest women valued at over 2.9 billion dollars, was refused 3 times the opportunity to examine and purchase a 37 thousand dollar Tom Ford handbag. This happened at a posh upscale boutique in Switzerland.
The resulting news and social media backlash for the boutique involved and Switzerland itself (the country’s tourism office also apologized to her) was rapid and explosive, with negative commentary from news organizations, Facebook, Twitter, media publications and the like chiming in. Don’t be surprised by this! Anything that touches on deeply personal values (racism, gender equality, lifestyle, health, etc.) will quickly mushroom into an immense social media unconscious event. It will either become a social media dream or in this particular case…the ultimate social media brand reputation management nightmare.
This wake up call provides a powerful opportunity for businesses regarding their reputation management process. Not every business has a plan in place and for those who don’t know where to start, consider these 3 compelling reputation management tips....
The bombings at the Boston marathon were a tragic reminder that terrorism can strike anywhere at any time. Business Continuity professionals should be thinking about the effects of a terrorist attack and incorporate those scenarios into their plans.
Just about every plan we put together these days includes aspects of social media crisis management. Presenting a variety of platforms and utilities that are perfect for communications, reputation management, monitoring stakeholder sentiment and a host of other specialized uses.
Add to that the fact that your audience is all but guaranteed to be both talking about and searching for information on your crisis via social media, and the question of whether to use social for your next crisis management campaign becomes a no-brainer.
...Social media disasters occur for a number of reasons, the first being that your company probably messed up. It may not have been intentional, but something, somewhere down the line, went wrong enough for someone to complain and it was enough for others to vocalize that complaint en masse. One mistake is all it takes for social media to turn against your brand.
No one is perfect and you can't expect to please everyone all the time, so the best trick is to be prepared for how to handle things if your company finds itself under attack in the social realm. Here are three examples of companies who were attacked by social media and how they handled, or should have handled the situation. Learn from their mistakes or successes so you can stay on social media's good side....
As I watch this crisis unfold, only 150 miles away from my home in Montreal, there are two things in particular that stand out: the crisis leadership and communications fail of the Chicago-based company that owns the train, Rail World Inc., and the executive Chairman that everyone looked to for leadership, but was no where to be found, Edward Burkhardt.
Rail World Inc.’s crisis communications failThe biggest communications fails are those (crisis communications) that do not exist, and those that come across as insincere and half-assed in a crisis situation.I wish I could report to you that Rail World Inc. had at least utilized social media as a communications tool for communicating with stakeholders, the media and concerned residents of the Lac-Mégantic community, but unfortunately I can’t. The company has zero corporate social presence and I suppose it never occurred to them to create, at the very least, a Twitter account to keep stakeholders updated throughout the crisis....
After one of its planes crash landed into San Francisco, Asiana Airlines issued a press release that didn't even acknowledge the victims.
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Interesting study on how to resource crisis communications and social media in local government.