Influence of the medium on the hearer’s stance towards crisis communication: differences between tweets and online newspaper articles; differences between customers and employees

Abstract: In an experimental study with 134 participants (employees and customers) we investigated the influence of the medium (online newspaper article or tweet) on the credibility of the message and participants’ inclination towards secondary crisis communication. Bad news messages were framed as purely informative, containing an apology or expressing sympathy. Supporting Summary: In line with Schultz, Utz & Göritz (2011) we set up an experiment investigating people’s reactions to bad news messages in different media and with different wordings. With this research we aim to make a substantial contribution to the discussion about media use in crisis communication and to offer experimental data in order to set up a crisis communication model that can serve as a base to companies under fire. Our experiment was conducted with 134 participants (one sample consisting of employees of the company under fire; the other sample consisting of customers of that company). They received bad news messages in an online survey, phrased as a standard informational message, as a message containing sympathy for the persons involved, or as a message containing an apology for the harm done. In the information condition the crisis message merely gives information, in the sympathy condition the company expresses its compassion for the victims, and the apology condition offers excuses by the company. Six scenarios were presented in all conditions. All the scenarios were examples of preventable crises (Coombs 2007), i.e. crises in which the company is responsible for the events. Messages were either presented as tweets or as short online newspaper articles. Analyses showed that the manipulation was successful. Participants thought the company took responsibility for the events most in the apology condition. Participants thought the company expressed sympathy with the persons involved both in the sympathy and apology condition, but much more so than in the information condition. Participants were tested about their idea of the reputation of the company before and after having seen bad news messages concerning the company. The reputation of the company was higher with its employees than with its customers. Interestingly, employees of the company were not influenced by seeing six messages containing negative events related to the company. The image the customers had of the company, however, dropped significantly after having seen these negative messages. So, after having seen negative crisis messages, customers thought even less of the company, while the personnel remained positive. Questions were also asked about the participants’ inclination towards secondary crisis communication: would they forward the message or react to it, or tell friends about the message? Overall, participants were much more inclined to secondary crisis communication when they viewed the message in the format of an online newspaper article than in the format of a tweet. In other words, respondents would sooner share the newspaper articles than the tweets with their friends and family. However, we could spot differences between employees and customers. While employees would engage in secondary crisis communication in the apology and sympathy conditions for newspaper articles and in the information condition for tweets, customers would rather spread tweets in the information condition and newspaper articles in the sympathy condition. Related to this finding, is the effect of credibility of the medium. Online newspaper messages were rated as much more credible than tweets by both employees and customers.status: publishe