A Framework for Managing Corporate Social Media Crisis

Social media crises pose significant challenges for organizations in terms of their rapid rate of spread and potential negative associations in terms of brand parameters and sustained negative advocacy by users. This paper reports on a multiple case study of four different social media crises that is informed by the crisis communication theories and grounded in the methodologies of netnography and big social data analytics. Findings show that voluminous but also transient nature of social media crises, different strategies employed by the organizations to manage the crises and their results, and a diversity of collective user actions. Based on the findings, we recommend that companies should choose a response strategy that is suitable for the type of crisis they are experiencing as well as the industry sector they belong to. We apply the findings to McKinsey’s 7S framework to offer a preliminary framework for managing social media crises.