The social-mediated crisis communication research: Revisiting dialogue between organizations and publics in crises of China

Influence of Strategic Crisis Communication on Public Perceptions during Public Health Crises: Insights from YouTube Chinese Media

Crisis communication plays a crucial role in preserving the national reputation during significant national crises. From the perspective of Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), this research paper analyzed over 1,790,816 YouTube comments from Chinese-speaking audiences, using sentiment analysis alongside the Difference-in-Differences (DiD) model, in order to investigate the influence of strategic crisis communication on public perceptions during public health crises. The study findings indicate that during this public health crisis, YouTube Chinese media, whose audience mainly consists of overseas Chinese-speaking users, primarily incorporated the enhancing strategies, succeeded by the diminish strategies, with limited application of deny strategies, while the use of rebuild strategies was virtually absent in this context. In addition, the research analysis confirms that Chinese media effectively increased the public's positive perceptions of crisis events through crisis communication. Particularly, enhancing strategies proved most effective in improving public perceptions, followed by diminish strategies. In contrast, deny strategies failed to influence public perceptions of the crisis, and rebuild strategies demonstrated a negative impact on public perception. Thus, the research findings of this paper extend essential insights for effectively managing potential public health crises in the future.

Analysis on the Impact and Management of Political Education of College Students in the Micro Era Environment

With the rapid development of modern society and the popularization of information equipment, information transmission has broken the time and space constraints, and political education (PE) can be carried out anytime and anywhere. Micro media is the product of the rapid development of science and technology, which has brought us into a new "micro era." The research on the "micro era" has been the focus of academic attention in recent years. Especially with the popularization of micro media, its influence on people is becoming deeper, making more scholars in academic circles devote themselves to the "micro era" under study. However, while micro media is widely used by college students (CS), it also brings opportunities and challenges. Therefore, it is particularly important to clarify the opportunities and challenges faced by CS' PE under the background of the "micro era" and put forward practical countermeasures. Starting from the actual situation of PE communication in the micro era, this study analyzes the opportunities and challenges brought by the "micro era" to PE of CS through a questionnaire survey. Then, the effective strategies to improve the PE of CS are explored, in order to improve the ideological and political level of CS in the micro era.

Deny or bolster? A comparative study of crisis communication strategies between Trump and Cuomo in COVID-19

This study applied the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) in political crisis communication amidst the COVID-19 outbreak, a "sticky crisis" that is longitudinal and politicized, thereby involving multiple challenges and complexities. Considering the critical role of Twitter in the information transmissions during the ongoing pandemic, this study considered politicians' tweets as a proxy to access their crisis communication strategies and conducted a systematic content analysis to critically evaluate COVID-19 crisis communication strategies of two politicians, Trump and Cuomo, according to their perceived day-to-day circumstances during COVID-19. Three strategies categorized by SCCT, deny, diminish, and bolstering, surfaced with significance for both Trump and Cuomo. A new strategy specific to the political context, cohesion, was also identified. In addition, significant differentiation was observed in the strategic narratives between Trump and Cuomo, which reveals the evolving political dynamics in disease representation and crisis messaging. For example, Trump emphasized social exclusion and accusations of Democrats whilst Cuomo stressed care for vulnerable and minority groups and compassion delivery. Moreover, deny strategy, especially accusing other races, significantly boosted audience engagement for Trump. The results are discussed in relation to the idiosyncrasy of the complex COVID-19 pandemic and crisis communication in the political realm. Our findings demonstrate practical implications including online crisis messaging recommendations that foster public trust during politicized and polarized health emergencies and cultivate grounds for information exchange beyond partisan barriers.

A Visualization Analysis of Crisis and Risk Communication Research Using CiteSpace

This study aims to understand the research status and development trend of crisis and risk communication research (CRCR) through a visual analysis in CiteSpace, thereby providing a more comprehensive perspective for future research agenda. First, we retrieved published papers from Web of Science (1986–2020) and Scopus (1979–2020) with a title search. Subsequently, we analyzed the main research strengths and main topics of CRCR from two dimensions: co-authorship network and co-citation network. We conducted an in-depth co-citation network analysis from four perspectives: cluster analysis, high co-cited literature analysis, burst analysis, and turning points analysis. These results revealed the main research topics in the CRCR field, the most eye-catching research literature, the emerging research hotspots in each period, and the turning points of the overall development. Finally, we suggested further research directions for future avenues.

Exploring Negative Spillover Effects on Stakeholders: A Case Study on Social Media Talk about Crisis in the Food Industry Using Data Mining

Focusing on public-centered, social-mediated crisis communication, the current exploratory study drew on situational crisis communication theory to formulate a comprehensive view of consumer reactions to crisis. Data mining and automated content analysis techniques were utilized to analyze social media posts by the public during a crisis in the cereals industry. Two path analyses showed that: (a) crisis-related social media posts tended to skip over competitor brand products, followed by two major reaction paths—(1) a rational path based on guilt attribution that justifies implications for the company and (2) an emotional path associated with public distrust; and (b) public self-blame spilled over to other stakeholders such as the government and economic system. The results give voice to issues that concern the public during crises, both as individuals and as a community. They highlight the fact that sustainable crisis management should involve additional stakeholders. Conclusions and implications for society and practice are suggested.

Online Discourse in the Context of COVID-19, the First Health Crisis in China after the Advent of Mobile Social Media: A Content Analysis of China’s Weibo and Baidu

The COVID-19 epidemic was the first universal health crisis since China entered the era of mobile social media. When Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) broke out in 2003, it was not until almost six years later that Weibo was born, marking China’s entry into the era of mobile social media (Weixin 2020). In this context, this research analysed the role of the social media platform Weibo and the Internet search browser Baidu, in a government controlled online media environment, during the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to undertake this study, we applied the use of content and sentiment analysis to the discourse identified through the topics published during the investigation period, which encompassed 15 December 2019 until 15 March 2020. From the findings of this study, we concluded that, during the pre- and post-COVID-19 period, there was an important presence of social and lifestyle topic categories dominating the online discourse, which dramatically changed in correlation to the increasing spread of the disease. Additionally, there was a marked absence of topics in relation to economic and political information, and there was a notable absence of an official Government “voice” generating topics.

Corporate crisis management on social media: A morality violations perspective

Communication via a social network function enabled by social media has greatly empowered consumers' secondary crisis communication, as compared to a firm's crisis communication, and has thus changed corporate crisis management. This study aims to uncover consumers' decision process of engaging in secondary crisis communication in a social media context. Drawing on the social control perspective and impression management theory, this study examines the role of perceived morality violations and consumers' susceptibility to social influence in shaping consumers' secondary crisis communication in corporate crises. Moreover, leveraging cognitive dissonance theory, this study further examines the effects of corporate responses on the process of consumers' secondary crisis communication. A survey design with four scenarios was conducted to test a series of hypotheses relating to the decision process of secondary crisis communication. Our empirical results demonstrate that consumers' approach to secondary crisis communication on social media depends largely to the degree to which they perceive moral violations in the firms' crisis response. The findings also show that consumers tend to want to believe they are doing the “right thing” when considering secondary crisis communication and thus are afraid of being disliked by others for their purchasing decisions related to a firm in crisis. Such social conformance can result in a snowballing of negative word of mouth in product-harm crises cases. Findings contribute to the literature on social media crisis management and consumers' communication behavior on social media during product-harm crises.