Conclusion


What can what glean from such a broad topic and diverse array of different case studies? The term “incident” in of itself is broad ranging enough to encompass a huge number of different situations where crisis communication and social media interact with one another.


To begin with: social media influences crisis communications systems and strategies not just in terms of augmenting (or undermining) their operational effectiveness (i.e. their ability to reach large numbers of people), but also crucially affects peoples ability to talk back to a company or organization, to craſt their own narratives and in some cases, create things ex nihilo.


In turn, this affects every aspect of every sort of incident. As we saw with United Airlines, wildly different narratives quickly gained traction for reasons of grievance, crippling their ability to convey a coherent message on their end.


One of the key take-aways that emerges from all of this is the need for internal consistency among staff of an organization or corporation. In layman’s terms, everyone needs to be reading from the same song sheet when engaging with social media, or the press (or both together) for that matter.


The liabilities of not having this sort of internal consistency become clear in the case of MH370, where the social media of Malaysian Airlines quickly became the target of ridicule for posting out of date or wholly erroneous information. At least part of it this is due to management not making the official line clear enough to everyone quickly enough, leading to crossed wires and different messages from different parts of the companies about what should be communicated to the general public.


In the case of United, part of the problem was, again, a lack of coherent narrative that responded


to social media chatter while putting forward their own case, and, perhaps most crucially, admitting and accepting liability for the ticketing error that led to the whole debacle.


But it is fundamental to re-assert that the relationship between social media and crisis communications isn’t predominantly or even significantly antagonistic. Developments like Facebook Alerts help bring crisis communication “recipient response” systems to the general public, and give family members of people who may be in danger assurance in the event of major terror incidents in particular. However, it must be stressed again that this doesn’t necessarily provide a remedy for organizations and companies who need to provide their own independent ways of reaching staff in the event of incidents so major their welfare may be at risk.


In closing, social media’s impact on the news at large and how we consume will remain significant, so crisis communications professionals need to view it as a permanent part of the eco-system moving forward and develop strategies that take its chaotic nature into account.


One potential take-away point from all of this is for businesses and organizations to distinguish firmly between internal and external communications and have dependable, standalone systems for the former that in turn allow external communications to be more consistent and meaningful.


Page 8 | Crisis Comms & Social Media


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