Enterprise-Related Crisis Communication on Twitter

Stieglitz S, Bruns A, Krüger N


Abstract
The rise of social media as communication channels has enabled customers to provide feedback or to ask for assistance quickly and easily. In the context of brand crises, the microblogging platform Twitter is highly relevant because of its ability to support information sharing. By investigating communication on Twitter, the authors examine Twitter activity patterns based on a dataset of some 240,000 tweets during two major brand crises affecting the Australian airline Qantas – the volcanic ash cloud caused by the eruption of Chilean volcano Puyehue in June 2011, and the global grounding of Qantas flights by management in the course of an industrial dispute in October/November 2011. Through this case study we find that characteristics of communication change significantly during different stages of the crisis. Further, we demonstrate that different kinds of crisis result in different communication patterns on Twitter.

Keywords
Social Media; Twitter; Qantas; Crisis



Publication type
Research article in proceedings (conference)

Peer reviewed
Yes

Publication status
accepted / in press (not yet published)

Year
2015

Conference
12th International Conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik

Venue
Osnabrück, Deutschland

Language
English