Social media and crisis communication: Supporting best practice on university campuses

The primary purpose of this study was the exploration of social media utility as a crisis communication practice on three selected university campuses. The overarching research question for this study was “How and what social media technologies are selected, planned for, implemented, and monitored in crisis management in selected universities?”. This study examines how these institutions used social media during crisis, pinpoints the emergent themes, analyzes the engagement between the selected universities and their social media audience, and analyzes the effectiveness of social media during campus crisis situations. The findings of this study include the documentation of institutional practices that contribute to successful social media crisis communication integration. These elements ultimately coalesce into the identification of a series of best practices that can help inform the field and contribute to the establishment of best practices for social media use during campus crisis situations. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.