Crisis Management and Social Media

Transcription

1 Crisis Management and Social Media Jenna Basting 11/14/12

2 I Introduction To fully understand the effects of social media and just how it goes hand in hand with crisis management, I first need to define these two terms as to how I want them represented with in the contents of this paper. Starting with social media; this term has grown drastically within the last five years considering it was nonexistent just that long ago. In the scheme of five years that is a mere blink of an eye but to the world of technology it has been a lifetime for social media. When defined by (Dictionary.com, 2012), it states that social media is, computers, web sites and other online means of communication that are used by large groups of people to share information and to develop social and professional contacts. In terms of crisis management this is generally an easy term to understand with the meaning literally in the two words. Crisis management is defined as: the techniques used, as by an employer or the government, to avert or deal with strikes, riots, violence, or other crisis situations (Dictionary.com, 2012). Before one can manage a crisis one must know what is considered a crisis. A crisis involves a situation or event that is experienced or perceived as intolerably difficult and may exceed typically available resources, personnel, procedures and coping mechanisms. Managing a crisis involves extensive planning, preparation and training. Going back in time no one would have been able to guess or understand the power/effect social media would/can have over a wide variety of professional fields. Almost all fields if not every field of study is in some way linked to a social media site. Crisis management plans have recently stepped up their game and are now incorporating the areas of social media into their crisis plans and taking advantage of this new phenomenon. According to the journal article Managing a Crisis (Badzmierowski, 2011) all crisis can be planned for and that it is how well

3 they executed is what matters. Take into account the BP oil spill this company is still seeing the repercussions of their failed attempt at managing their crisis. More recently we had hurricane Sandy hit the east coast and it was amazing how each town, community, state and the national weather service reacted differently with a crisis plan of their own. We will first take a closer look into the BP (British Petroleum) oil spill and how they used social media in their crisis plan. The Bp oil spill by far was one of the worst things to happen to the gulf coast, claiming 11 lives and spilled countless of thousands of barrels of oil into the gulf coast. The main thing to remember is that it did not just affect the gulf coast communities but nationally and even had repercussions worldwide. BP has been slammed up until this day with how they handled their crisis and their brand image during the aftermath of the spill. During just the first three months of the oil spill BP spent more than $90million in Public Relations efforts to just have most of their efforts fail and high scrutinized. (Beam, Oil Slick, How BP is handling its P.R. disaster, 2010) It has been stated that all the efforts that the PR team has tried to make have only back fired. The PR team is making all these promises but at the same time has tried to keep the entire documents under wraps even making scientist who are working with the company sign a three year confidentiality agreement. The first problem the BP team had was not taking full blame for what happen. The CEO Tony Hayward said on the Today show, It wasn t our accident but we are absolutely responsible for the oil, for cleaning it up. (Beam, Oil Slick, How BP is handling its P.R. disaster, 2010) Bp s traditional efforts of official statements, press releases and morning show interviews have been hit or miss with the perfect example of what the CEO stated on the Today show. On the other hand when it came to the PR teams efforts using social media it has been a different story, communications experts have given the company high mark on their efforts. BP

4 created a section of its Web site dedicated to the spill, complete with photos, videos and maps to track how the cleanup is going. The company also posted constant up dates to its twitter account. I am not saying that just because Bp would update its twitter account and post on their Facebook makes the lack of other communications or lack of taking responsibility ok but it does give on lookers or people who were directly affected by the spill up to date instant feedback on what is happening with the cleanup. (oil slick) A major plus for the company was when they tweeted a hotline number for anyone who found or saw oiled animals it is these small steps that will eventually build trust again. When looking through old twitter post it was actually challenging to find positive tweets. The tweets that were positive and showed some hope in getting the gulf coast back in shape came which is the companies twitter account. ( 2010) The oil spill not only damaged the reputation of BP but the oil industry as a whole. PR Week did a public poll it came to find that out of the 3,000 people who participated 45% gave blame to the oil industry and not just BP (Lea, 2010). Tweeter and other social media sites have been what have saved the BP Company from completely collapsing and giving them as well as the people affected hope that justice will be severed. Looking at a more recent environmental crisis would be hurricane Sandy. Who through the East coast for quite a loop last week and the coast is still seeing the repercussions from the hurricane. Hurricane Sandy hit the coast with nothing but destruction on its mind. One could even say that is what happens with the social media world as well. Hurricane Sandy exposed the dangerous underbelly of social media: false information can go viral. (Bello, 2012) Just like social media can make good things go viral in the wake of Sandy that was exactly what public officials did not want to happen with false pictures spreading like wildfire on twitter and

5 Facebook. The trials of social media come with both the good and the bad. It is just as easy to get real information as it is to get misleading information. The gamble with social media reports cannot just be assumed to be true they still need to have research done to make it a credible source. Even the National Weather Service had a report that soon later turned out to be untrue. (sandy shows dark side of social media) That was the gamble most people seemed to be having within the first few hours of the hurricane. When it came to government agencies and public officials they embraced social media like never before. Take the example of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York twitter account: 400 messages on Tuesday, 300 on Wednesday and over 100 on Thursday. The governor s followers increased from 20,000 to 50,000 in less than one week. (Preston, 2012) Why this number grew so drastically was because this is how people where getting informed. The regular TV stations were not able to get signals but the Web was still running, now more than ever was it time to have social media part of a crisis plan. J. Tucker Martin, the director of communications for Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia, Social media is an integral part of an emergency communication plan, a few years ago; it would have been considered a nicety, where it is now considered essential. (Preston, 2012) It was not just the states that went into crisis mood but many companies as well. Overall, the states have been well perceived with how they have handled the crisis; on a local note it is a little more challenging. Again social media has helped aid in calming

6 REFERENCES (2010). Retrieved 2012, from (2012). Retrieved November 4, 2012, from Dictionary.com: Badzmierowski, W. F. (2011). Managing a Crisis Beam, C. (2010). Oil Slick, How BP is handling its P.R. disaster. Beam, C. (2010, May 5). What P.R. experts this of BP's response to the oil spill. Slate Magazine. Bello, M. (2012, 10 31). Sandy shows darker side of social media. Retrieved 11 5, 2012, from Elliott, S. (2012). Capitalizing on Disaster, Sometimes With Results That Match. Lea, R. (2010). BP's reputaiton fallout. PR Week. Preston, B. S. (2012). In Crisis, Public Officals Embrace Social Media. Snow, N. (2010). BP working to rebuild trust as it responds to spill. Oil and Gas Journal.