How publics use social media to respond to blame games in crisis communication: The Love Parade tragedy in Duisburg 2010
- 作者：Andreas Schwarz ; andreas.schwarz@tu-ilmenau.de
- 关键词：Crisis communication ; Situational crisis communication theory ; Attribution theory ; Social media ; Love Parade
- 刊名：Public Relations Review
- 出版年：2012
- 期刊代码：71_03638111
- 类别：bus
- 出版时间：September, 2012
- 卷：38
- 期：3
- 页码：430-437
- 文件大小：248 K
摘要
Crisis communication scholarship has been criticized for its 鈥渕anagerial bias鈥?and for its tendency to marginalize the perspective of publics and audiences. However, the understanding of how publics cope with and interpret crises is crucial for developing the body of knowledge in crisis communication, from both critical and managerial/functionalist perspectives. This case study of the Love Parade crisis in Germany 2010 aimed at exploring how publics perceived the crisis response of the festival organizers and how they used social media to communicate about it shortly after the outbreak of the crisis. A content analysis of 1847 postings at two relevant message boards produced support for the assumption that attributions of cause and responsibility are important predictors of publics鈥?evaluations of organizations in crisis situations. Findings also revealed that stakeholders actively engage in such attributional inferences spontaneously without being prompted by researchers. The analysis of responsibility perceptions as well as evaluative judgments over time supported the situational crisis communication theory. Blaming others and denying responsibility in the context of a crisis that was perceived as human error accident triggered negative reputational outcomes for the organizations involved in the Love Parade.