Crisis Communication in the Digital Era

In times of economic turmoil, companies may have to go through crisis more often than otherwise. Needless to say, PR practitioners have to manage communication during these crises. Communication among stakeholders has undergone paradigm change owing to fast-paced development of communication media technologies. Citizen-generated content is attaining prominence, and it has been observed that traditional media tends to capture news from the citizen-generated content. The high interactivity feature of new media has tremendously increased the participation of external stakeholders in the organizational conversations in public domain. This high interactivity may cause positive or negative consequences for the organization, and hence, public relations managers have to worry about the implications of this wider, faster and unmediated communication. This research paper presents an exploratory study conducted to understand how practitioners have leveraged various digital media channels to combat crisis situations. An in-depth interview was conducted on ten senior-level corporate communication executives from varied industries. They were asked to rank 13 digital media channels in the order of their preference that they would choose to control a crisis situation. They were also asked to elaborate on advantages and disadvantages of each medium they chose. This paper presents the findings and draws up guidelines for practitioners to manage crisis communication in the digital era and directions for future research in this domain for researchers to take up.