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Exploring social media use in university crisis communication: An experiment to measure impact on perceived crisis severity and attitudes of key publics
Author(s) -
Hong Seoyeon,
Kim Bokyung
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of contingencies and crisis management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.007
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1468-5973
pISSN - 0966-0879
DOI - 10.1111/1468-5973.12242
Subject(s) - crisis communication , publics , social media , public relations , perception , political science , empirical research , psychology , social psychology , sociology , politics , law , philosophy , epistemology , neuroscience
This study seeks to investigate the impact of an exposure to a university's social media on publics’ perceptions during a crisis. Data from this study showed that participants ( N = 269) expressed more favourable evaluations towards the university and their perceived severity was mitigated after viewing its official statement on university's Facebook posts. The results of this empirical research offer a meaningful suggestion to crisis communication scholars and practitioners interested in assessing the impact of universities’ statements in social media by providing ways to understand the importance of the organizational usage of social media during a crisis, why that is important, and why practitioners should make effective social media communication tactics a priority during a crisis.