Powerpoint Presentation (Study guide attached) APA format

Social media is a fast and effective way to do much as the term suggests—connect socially with friends, family, and colleagues and share items of interest. These items include fun or significant events with photos and captions, posted or re-posted reports of events, and the authors’ ideas and feelings. As computer systems became more mobile via cellphones and tablets, making desktop or laptop computers quaint in some ways, it became clear that social media was not a fast-fading communications fad. Some users are continuously signed in to their favorite social media outlet, checking on feeds and posting or replying throughout the day and late into the night. This level of attention far exceeds that given to print newspapers of earlier decades. Social media is also an important aspect of crisis discourse and organizational crisis communications. Social Media as a New Entry to Public Discourse and Mainstream Media Social media has had an unprecedented effect on the preexisting public communications structures of face-to-face, mainstream media, e-mail, and Internet websites. It has captured people’s time and attention that used to be focused elsewhere, including on other, older media sources. Social media is fun and easy to use once a new user becomes familiar with the website. Once users proceed to regularly check in and participate in social media with others, they begin to stay connected with friends and family with a speed and quality that people have not experienced before. Just 15 years ago, we did not share photos, memes, and videos as we do now. Internet connectivity ensures that any of these items—including news—can be sent rapidly and spread in several orders of magnitude, which is why we refer to some of these items as “going viral.” Compare this dynamic to earlier practices that are still observed, such as reading a newspaper daily, reading a news magazine weekly, listening to the radio while driving, or watching television in the evening. Mainstream media continues to function, but it does so in an environment influenced by social media. Even online versions of periodicals have not kept popular attention from grasping and adopting social media in significant numbers. Accepting this new reality, senior executives of most periodicals have joined the trend and established social media pages and accounts. There may be some inevitable inequities among different brands of social media, but often, the differences are in how each brand is used and who sees others’ posts. Subscribers’ pages on Facebook are highly capable; a user can upload videos, photos, and posts. Twitter tweets are limited in size but can contain a powerful, concise, and memorable remark that can be published there. Limited social media accounts can be set up for neighborhoods, business associations, and internally within organizations. An implied job description for spokespeople is to know the up-to-the-minute world of social media, including what is trending and what is fading in popularity. Pictured are social media logos. By MacEntee is licensed under CC BY 2.0 (MacEntee, 2010) MSL 5200, Crisis Communication Management 3 UNIT x STUDY GUIDE Title With so much to admire about social media, it can also be a hub of conflict. Given the dynamics of human nature, not everything posted on social media is pleasant. Before monitors step in to block a post or account, you can read items that are grim, disgusting, menacing, and totally lacking in fact. Unlike mainstream media and professional organizations, social media has no respected tool for conforming to standards. Instead, social media, along with blogs and individually owned websites, has enabled any interested person in the world to become a published writer. By publishing, we are not talking in the conventional sense of a writer’s words being mass-produced in print or other media. Social media has helped us learn that if anyone else can access what a person wrote, then that person is published. This

sudden widespread freedom of the written word, unleashed in the past 15 years, is what has upended how public conversations are conducted. As a result, social media is emerging next to, and gaining on, mainstream media in relevance and popularity. This is what has made the modern spokesperson or organizational leader’s job that much harder. How Social Media Can Carry Crisis Communications The characteristics of social media, especially those of speed, rapid spread, and multiple authors, enable organizations to quickly or easily post communications in concert with other media. As noted by Beaubien (2016), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found its Facebook and Twitter sites as good places to post news updates on the Zika virus, along with instructional videos, tips, and links. The most important communications, perhaps of breaking news or urgent announcements or updates, should primarily be done in person (e.g., during an internal organizational meeting) or, for external audiences, in a press conference. Social media’s added value in these examples would be as an accessible location to post the recordings or transcripts of the announcements, along with follow-up news and background information. From the aforementioned descriptions, the organizational spokesperson cannot neglect social media because it has so quickly and firmly emerged as a part of social communications. On the other hand, it has not completely replaced mainstream media or other means of communication, but instead, complements the traditional means of communication. When responding to a crisis and planning their crisis communications, for example, organizational leaders must not neglect to communicate with their own organizational members. Historically, this is often missed when external audiences are clamoring for urgent answers or information related to the crisis. Social media may work well as a means of communication in this example but only if the leaders are sure that their members are regularly monitoring the organization’s own social media sites. If they do not, then a mass e-mail may be more effective while being followed up soon afterward with social media updates. The same messages must be posted to ensure that one posting does not contradict another one on a different media platform. Hospitals, law enforcement offices, and other organizations that have had to send out reverse 911s or shelter-in-place warnings have experienced success with those tools (Ferenc, 2014). What Organizations Should Be Ready to Receive and Send on Social Media Below are some of the ways social media can backfire on an organization. Though media is a two-way street—just not always with even flow of communications in both directions—and an opportunity for spokespersons, communications have been posted that challenge or even overtly threaten organizations. Pictured is a crisis communications panel. By Barron is licensed under CC BY 2.0 (Barron, 2013) MSL 5200, Crisis Communication Management 4 UNIT x STUDY GUIDE Title An organization can be swatted. Though this prank or malevolent act of falsely reporting an emergency at an organization’s physical location is usually passed as a 911 call over a phone, perpetrators may also post this false warning as a comment on an organization’s social media page. This possibility underscores the need for continuous monitoring by empowered and trained members who can rapidly get a message approved to refute a comment and to erase unwanted comments (Trump, 2015). A perpetrator may open a false organizational social media page. Like other acts on social media that are clearly criminal in nature, this can be remediated by a complaint to the social media owner’s help desk or complaint office. Additionally, the organization’s social media monitors may post a notification/warning about the false site on their real site. A key communicator (known or

unknown, such as a relatively ordinary citizen) may publish an accusation about the organization. There are several mitigating tactics for countering such defamation and pointed fingers. Some of the tactics are preventative. For example, establishing rapport beforehand with known key communicators is as important in social media as it is with mainstream media. Developing and acquiring executive approval of an organizational crisis communications plan ensures readiness (if the plan is followed) as it usually establishes a protocol for such contingencies. Ideally, this protocol includes quick fact-finding to determine any truth to the accusation, an efficient and rapid means of delegating or achieving approval of a response communication, and draft shells of likely formatting that might be used in such messages. Some of the best practices for organizational social media crisis communications that spokespersons and authors have noted can be found below. Make a crisis response plan, including a crisis communications plan, as noted above, including a social media portion. This plan should have at least two protocols: procedures for developing and getting approval of a series of response messages for the organization’s audiences (including internal) and approval of messages that will be the first notifications and communications in a crisis. Being that messages about the organization may not be fair, the best response and first notification is to decide on a fact-based message and stick with it. In addition to descriptions about the crisis and what the organization is doing to address it, consider all messages from the receivers’ perspective. What can be added or planned for a follow-on message are tips for households, help desk contact numbers and addresses, and hours that the organization will be open for special stakeholders’ needs (such as extended warehouse hours if transportation is delayed on highways). Leaders should show courage when deciding on social media responses and messages. A crisis is the time when leaders’ determination is needed the most, but will harm the organization the most if not shown. “Hunkering down” or hiding will not protect the organization or its leaders, and such defensive acts will immediately be apparent. Spokespersons and associated planners need to artfully choose their messages, but leaders should remember that organizations are afforded some public tolerance, at least at first. A general rule has emerged for social media that if an organization could comfortably address a topic the day before the crisis, then it can do so effectively the day after a crisis as well (Ferenc, 2014). Leaders must have the courage to decide fast rather than waiting for perfect information, which will never arrive, and they must overcome the temptation to muzzle the spokespeople. Invest significant preparation time in establishing rapport with potential message recipients and social media contacts. Ideally, preparatory effort should be split between drafting and staffing the crisis communications plan and meeting or contacting people who will be important in times of crisis. These established relationships pay off when time is pressing, a public clamor is rising, and the organization needs a certain amount of trust and to be afforded time to explain the crisis from the leader’s own perspective. On social media, act as a professional organization rather than a court or a group ready for a vendetta. No organizational message should be seen as menacing, sarcastic, or comedian-class funny. None of these approaches will impress audiences who have turned to organizational messages to find out what has happened. Make professional social media messages optimistic and as light as appropriate—a gloomy outlook is rarely appreciated. This aspect, like all angles of a message, reflects the culture of the organization. Social media enables an organization to both forge goodwill and also defend itself from communicated

attacks and malicious accusations. MSL 5200, Crisis Communication Management 5 UNIT x STUDY GUIDE Title References Barron, C. (2013). Crisis communication panel [Photograph]. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/caitbarron/9976085235/in/photolist-gcy3zz-8Jhvq-qFqX9j-jiX2p2- 5WdpBW-nVq4LK-eZY3zb-aDLJxx-qin6to-kbN6tq-3fTs2u-jy6YrM-7K7X14-fggeVy-4sowhn-htFR 51- 69arnm-b8kKya-nHzGyS-kvkGbv-ktbw3M-uzZxJM-g9nosk-dqiGsg-NAwJ4-nYGGeC-d1XcgY-6 WP Beaubien, G. (2016). Crisis communications planes [sic] for the Zika virus. The Public Relations Strategist, 22(2). Retrieved from https://libraryresources.columbiasouthern.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx ?direc t=true&db=bth&AN=117136316&site=ehost-live&scope=site Ferenc, J. (2014). Social media can strengthen emergency communication. Health Facilities Management, 27(5). Retrieved from https://libraryresources.columbiasouthern.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx ?direc t=true&db=bth&AN=95972949&site=ehost-live&scope=site MacEntee, S. (2010). Social media [Photograph]. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/smemon/5209796269/in/photolist-9YEKTo-8WnyVB-g5jTWF-e1H pQqamC4jN-ax3fZ6-e5wZ3t-e1yRKg-dyxsH5-8h6sWa-aFy3bt-5XNfPs-firryD-6AX2Qo-nZU9tu-r BoGVq7ND8Xw-7TGMs7-dWUWcb-8onC9R-qMfqE7-auagJ4-e1LKVj-qV5hEJ-6wzM1U-gaAz Trump, K. (2015). Crisis communications in a digital world. Educational Leadership, 72(7), 74–78. Retrieved from https://libraryresources.columbiasouthern.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx ?direc t=true&db=a9h&AN=102241647&site=ehost-live&scope=site