Is the medium the message? Perceptions of and reactions to crisis communication via twitter, blogs and traditional media

Abstract

Value changes and the rapid emergence of media innovations (internet, social web) in society lead to an institutionalization of crisis communication, in which especially new media play a crucial role. The key contributions of the paper include deepening and refocusing the theoretical foundations of crisis communication by experimentally analyzing the effects of traditional and social-media strategies on the recipients' perceptions of reputation; and by analyzing the effects or crisis responses on the recipients' secondary crisis communications (e.g., sharing information and leaving a message) and reactions (e.g., willingness to boycott). The results indicated that the medium matters more than the message. For all three dependent measures - reputation, secondary crisis communication and reactions - main effects of medium occurred, whereas the message had only a significant main effect on secondary crisis reactions. © 2011 Elsevier Inc.