Graduation Year

2022

Document Type

Honors Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Management, Marketing, and Organizational Communication

Program or Major

Organizational Communication

Faculty Advisor

Megan Hill

Abstract

The following thesis will surround social media and its impact on crisis communication. It will also aim to compile the most useful strategies businesses can implement when they are struggling with a social media crisis. To do so, the shift towards social media will be discussed, specifically why it poses an issue on businesses when involved in online crises. The topic of social media’s impact on crisis communication, as well as updated social media crisis communication research, will also be a topic in this paper. An incident from 2017 surrounding a United Airlines social media crisis (Chapter 4) will be used to exemplify how businesses should not respond to a social media crisis. The strategies listed in Chapter 5 are backed by multiple sources and were compiled in hopes of helping businesses deal with online crises in the future. There is a current need for social media crisis communication findings, as technology quickly advances faster than research available to the business world.

Included in

Business Commons

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