Managing Crises in the Online the Environment: Social Media and Their Impact

Dominos Pizza and United Airlines Case Studies

Roxana Elena Olinic & Valentin Ilie Toia

Master Thesis September 2011 Supervisor: Steen Michael Hejndorf MA in Corporate Communication Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus University

Foreword

Although this paper has 92 pages, at a standard page requirement of 2.200 characters per page and putting front page, table of contents, foreword and references aside, the thesis counts 182.576 characters and takes up 83 pages (182.576/2.200=83). Roxana Olinic & Valentin Toia

Table of contents

I. Introduction (R.O.&V.T.)1 I.1. Chapter overview (R.O.&V.T.).2 II. Crises and crisis management (R.O.&V.T.).4 II.1. Understanding crises: definitions and characteristics (R.O.).4 II.2. Types of crisis (R.O.)5 II.3. Crisis management (V.T.)...9 II.3.1. Definitions and origins (V.T.)...9 II.3.2. Coombs crisis management model (V.T.)..11 II.3.3. The importance of crisis management (R.O.).14 III. Corporate reputation and crisis communication (R.O.&V.T.)...16 III.1. Corporate reputation (V.T.)16 III.1.1. Definitions and characteristics (V.T.)...16 III.1.2. Advantages of a favorable reputation (V.T.).17 III.1.3. Reputation management (V.T.)18 III.2. Crisis response strategies (R.O.)..21 IV. Social media and corporate crises (R.O.&V.T.).30 IV.1. The impact of new communication technologies (R.O.)....30 IV.2. Social media (V.T.)................................................................................................................................32 IV.2.1. Definitions and origins (V.T.)..32 IV.2.2. Types of social media (V.T.).....35 IV.3. Social media and crisis communication (R.O.&V.T.)44 IV.3.1. Social media and their effects on crises (R.O.)...44 IV.3.2. Managing a crisis online Gonzalez-Herrero and Smith model (V.T.)...48 V. Case study (R.O.&V.T.)...54 V.1. Dominos Pizza crisis (R.O.)..54 V.1.1. Dominos Pizza: company background (R.O.)..54 V.1.2. Crisis facts and timeline (R.O.).55

V.1.3. Crisis type and characteristics (R.O.).57 V.1.4. Dominos crisis management strategies (R.O.).59 V.1.5. Dominos crisis response strategies (R.O.)..65 V.2. United Breaks Guitars (V.T.).68 V.2.1. United Airlines: company background (V.T.)...68 V.2.2. Crisis facts and timeline (V.T.)..69 V.2.3. Crisis type and characteristics (V.T.)..72 V.2.4. Uniteds crisis management strategies (V.T.)74 V.2.5. Uniteds crisis response strategies (V.T.).79 VI. Discussion and conclusions (R.O.&V.T.)..83 VI.1. Discussion (R.O.&V.T.)..83 VI.2. Conclusions (R.O.&V.T.)...90 References 93

I. Introduction

In the last decade, no other phenomenon has impacted society as hard as the internet has. According to the United Nations International Telecommunications Union, at the end of 2010 the worldwide internet user population surpassed the two billion threshold, and the number is continually growing (ITU, 2011). This clearly shows that more and more people of all ages now use the internet in their everyday life to communicate with friends or colleagues, to buy products, to read books and watch movies, to perform work activities or to simply search for information relevant to them. Corporations have been drawn into the phenomenon just as fast, and the internet has forever changed the way business is performed. In only a few years, it has unarguably become the most popular way for organizations to communicate with customers, shareholders, employees, the media and other stakeholders, radically transforming the field of corporate communication (Gonzalez-Herrero & Smith, 2008). Research has demonstrated that two closely related parts of corporate communication, namely crisis response and reputation management, have been particularly affected by the way people use internet-based technologies such as social media, and it is this dimension that represents the main focus of our paper. The purpose of our work is to determine just how important the use of social media (or lack of use) really is for companies that face corporate crises and in order to accomplish this we shall use two well-known crises as case study. Because they both developed almost entirely in the online environment and because their corporate approach led to significantly different outcomes, we consider it relevant to analyze the crises that Dominos Pizza and United Airlines experienced in 2009. Both crises were triggered on YouTube, one of the most popular social media platforms, and quickly spread to other online and offline channels, giving the two American companies very little time to react. The paper focuses on two major aspects: first, we try to discover just how should the traditional crisis management strategies be adapted to avoid the risks and grasp the benefits of todays online environment and second, what crisis response strategies (in terms of channel, language and tone) should companies use during an online crisis to successfully reach an ever-growing network of stakeholders in order to preserve its reputation.
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With this in mind, we will try to find an answer to what we believe is a current and interesting question: How are social media shaping corporate crises in todays technologyoriented society and how can companies use them effectively? To reach a relevant answer to this main question, we have broken it down into three questions on which we shall rely our research. First, an analysis of the two companies approach will help determine what crisis management and communication strategies they used and to what degree were social media integrated within them. Second, we shall try to determine how their efforts were perceived by stakeholders and how could they have been improved. Finally, we should be able to determine whether social media channels are important enough for organizations to make the adaptation of traditional crisis management and communication plans necessary. The theories that will guide us in our search for answers explore the fields of crisis management, crisis communication, corporate reputation and social media. Particular focus will be given to the crisis management model and crisis response strategies of Timothy Coombs (1995, 2007) as well as to the online-oriented crisis management model of A. Gonzalez-Herrero and S. Smith (2008), all of which will be used as theoretical frameworks in the papers two case studies.

I.1. Chapter overview Chapter 1 Introduction: contains a brief overview of todays technology-oriented society which provides the context of this paper; it also explains the motivation and purpose of our work and sets the thesis problem statement, research questions and main theoretical frameworks. Chapter 2 Crises and crisis management: the first part of the chapter offers relevant information on crises and their definitions, characteristics and types while the second part deals with crisis management and explores Coombs crisis management model. Chapter 3 Corporate reputation and crisis communication: offers insight on reputation and reputation management, showing its tight connection to crisis communication; the second part of the chapter deals with Coombs crisis response strategies.

Chapter 4 Social media and crisis communication: during this chapter we acquire insight on social media and their various types and examine their relation to crisis communication; in the second part we also explore the crisis management model of Gonzalez-Herrero and Smith. Chapter 5 Case study: the papers case study is separated in two main parts, each dealing with an individual crisis; the two crises will be analyzed from a strategic (crisis management) and communicative (crisis response) perspective. Chapter 6 Discussion and conclusions: in the final chapter of the paper we present and discuss our findings and draw the final conclusions, thus answering the three research questions.

II. Crises and crisis management

II.1. Understanding crises: definitions and characteristics Crisis is a turning point for better or worse Steven Fink, 1986 Society is frequently affected by natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes or tornados and by man-made crises such as terrorism, industrial accidents or corporate malfeasance (Ulmer, Sellnow & Seeger, 2007). These crises are becoming common parts of the social, psychological, political, economic and organizational landscape of modern life. They affect people more than ever, becoming a phenomenon with tremendous effects on individuals and communities, on society as a whole. In the last three decades, interest in crises and their effects on organizations and their stakeholders has brought along tons of research findings and best practices observations in the field of crisis communication and management. In a context of research diversity, we present a few definitions of crisis for a better understanding and settlement of boundaries. A well-known definition comes from Moore and Seymour (2005), who view corporate crisis as an intrusive event such as an accident, scarce, damaged product or scandal that sparks widespread and critical public attention, radically disrupts a companys regular operations, shakes its culture and reputation, at the very least retards its future prospects, and at the most destroys the company. In the words of Barton (2001), a crisis is an incident that is unexpected, negative, and overwhelming. In a classic study, Hermann (1963) found three characteristics of crises, separating them from other unpleasant events. He argues that an unpleasant event cannot reach the level of a crisis without the element of surprise, the high level of threat and the need for a short response time. The urgency of the situation is outlined in Sellnow and Seegers (2007) definition of crisis as a specific, unexpected, and non-routine event or series of events that create high levels of uncertainty and threaten or are perceived to threaten an organizations high-priority goals. Thirty years later, Pearson and Mitroff (1993) elaborated five dimensions of crises which share certain similarities with Hermanns view: they are highly visible, require immediate attention, contain an element of surprise, have a need for action and are outside the organizations complete control.
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Coombs (2007) tries to capture all the common traits of a crisis, his definition being a synthesis of various perspectives of researchers: the perception of an unpredictable event that threatens important expectancies of stakeholders and can seriously impact an organizations performance and generate negative outcomes. Through his definition, Coombs introduces the notion of crisis being perceptual, explaining that stakeholders perceptions are the ones that define a specific incident or event as crisis. Stakeholder concerns play an important role in co-creating the meaning of crisis. If stakeholders (individuals or groups of individuals who can affect or are affected by an organization Bryson, 2004) believe that an organization faces a crisis than the crisis really exists and they will react to the organization as if it is in crisis (Coombs, 2007). That is why it is very important for PR practitioners to be able to see the events from the stakeholders point of view to properly react to the potential crisis situation. The impact of crises on organizations has been pointed out by many practitioners and academics, who argue that corporate crises damage central areas important for the success of a company, outlining sales, profits or quality procedures. The damages can be assessed in financial terms, loss of corporate reputation, employee morale or stakeholders confidence and are usually very hard to quantify and especially, to restore. Intangible resources are damaged when stakeholders expectations are being violated and therefore crises are considered very dangerous to the companys reputation. The close connection between crises and reputation will be further explored in the second part of the paper.

II.2. Types of crisis Researchers have developed various classification systems of crises, which are meant to help in the planning process and to reduce the level of uncertainty. Starting with the negative and undesirable outcomes of a crisis, we can classify them according to the physical nature of such outcomes, determining that crises can be violent (involving human harm or loss as a result of explosions, accidents, natural disasters, terrorism etc.) or non-violent (bribes, nonethical behavior, management error etc.) (Newsom & Scott & Turk, 1993). Crises also fall into a great number of distinct kinds of crises (Mitroff, 2004) where accidents, boycotts, natural disasters, chemical leaks, rumors, strikes or product harm are just a few. Mucchielli (1993) distinguishes between four types of crisis:
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o adaptation crisis occurs when an organization is overwhelmed by environmental changes (mergers or acquisitions, retail markets decline, product launches by competitors at a much lower price, etc.); o organizational crisis happens when management becomes improper (wrong management system, conflicts due to power transfers, ineffective internal communication, etc.); o coherence crisis attacks the organizations fundamental values, weakening the organizational culture and questioning corporate identity and objectives; o motivational crisis occurs when individuals lack the will to invest personal energy in the organization. In Mucchiellis opinion, it represents a breaking of the tacit psychological contract, resulting in the shift from satisfaction to dissatisfaction.

Linke (1989) identified four types of crises according to how much time they allow managers to respond. The first is an exploding crisis, an accident or a natural disaster with instantaneous consequences where a reaction time barely exists. The second type is an immediate crisis, such as a government hearing or TV news report that takes the organization by surprise but gives some time for a response. The third kind is a building crisis, like major layoffs, that can be anticipated and gives the organization time to prepare and influence the crisis situation. Finally theres the forth type, a continuing crisis which builds in time and does not quickly dissipate, such as a public debate on issues like stem-cell research. Coombs (2005) identified four different types of crises an organization can face. He made a simple division based on two factors, origin and cause, and then placed the factors on two types of axes: internal-external and intentional-unintentional. The internal-external dimension sets whether the crisis resulted from something performed by internal stakeholders of the organization or by another person or group from outside the organization. The second dimension establishes the level of crisis control the crisis event can be deliberately committed by some actor or not. Put together, the two axes describe four types of crisis: faux pas, terrorism, accidents and transgressions.

UNINTENTIONAL EXTERNAL INTERNAL Faux Pas Accidents

INTENTIONAL Terrorism Transgressions

Crisis type matrix (Source: Coombs, 1995) A faux pas is an unintentional action of an organization that it is transformed by an external factor into a crisis. A common example of faux pas would be inappropriate declarations by a politician that through a casual comment marginalizes a minority group, thus attracting media attention and creating a crisis. In general, faux pas refers to unwritten social norms and expectations (Cornelissen, 2008). Accidents are also unintentional actions which occur during the organizations normal activities. Examples include product breakdowns that require recalls, workers injuries or natural disasters. These kinds of accidents are generally random incidents that the organization is not responsible for. Furthermore, accidents can be divided into natural accidents (hurricanes, earthquakes, epidemics) and human-error accidents such as workplace injuries, industrial accidents or product defects (Cornelissen, 2008). The reasoning behind this division is that stakeholders are less likely to blame an act of nature than a human-error mistake. On the intentional axe of the matrix, transgressions are actions taken by an organization that have the potential to affect or harm its stakeholders. Consciously, organizations break different rules of behavior like withholding public interest information, distribution of dangerous products or law violations. For example, Dow Chemical committed a transgression when the organization withheld safety data about breast implants from the government. An act of terrorism is an intentional action taken by external actors against an organization. The purpose of these deliberate acts is to harm the organization directly by hurting employees or customers and indirectly by reducing sales or disturbing the production process. Product manipulation, hostage taking, sabotage, workplace violence are just a few examples of terrorism acts against an organization. Coombs (1995) created the four-type crisis classification with the purpose of providing a basis for identifying the most appropriate crisis communication strategy, strategies which will be further explored later on in the paper.
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Many researchers in crisis management have drawn attention on the fact that crises do not always have to be perceived in negative terms. A crisis is indeed a rupture that affects the organization, creating stress and discomfort, but in the same time it represents an opportunity. Friedman (2002) states that a crisis is not necessarily a bad thing [since] it may be a radical change for good as well as bad. This concept can also be found in Chinese culture, where the symbol for crisis is interpreted as dangerous opportunity, an opportunity for learning and improvement that can make the organization stronger than it was before the crisis occurred (Russell, 1991). Guth and Marsh (2000) quote Gerald Meyers (former chairman of the American Motors Corporation) formula saying that a crisis is a window of opportunity, window that opens only when an organization hits a no turning back point in its lifecycle. Meyers formula outlines several opportunities that an organization can benefit from: o crises creates heroes if well managed, public attention is focused on those persons that made the right decisions; Lee Iacocca, former CEO at Chrysler, could be an example of a hero that saved Chrysler Group from bankruptcy in the 80s; o crises accelerates change in general, organizations have difficulties in accepting changes, but under the pressure of a crisis situation, the acceptance of change is accelerated; a relevant example is the oil corporations being accused of environment harm (oil spills) by NGOs that developed research policies in order to find solutions to reduce pollution and contamination of the environment; o crises shed light on problems normally ignored many problems are ignored during normal times even tough warning signs are present; during crisis situations, organizations are forced to deal with them and find proper solutions. o crises change people a crisis can show reasons to replace employees with new ones, which might bring fresh ideas and motivation, leading to a better working environment; o crises lead to the development of new strategies after recovering from a crisis, an organization can discover new paths to reach its objectives, exploring new opportunities of potential reevaluation; o crises allow the development of prevention strategies after the crisis, an organization learns to monitor more carefully its internal and external environment and also gains the ability to recognize the warning signs of a potential future crisis;

o crises increase competitiveness after experiencing a crisis and taking different measures to improve their activities, organizations become stronger and more competitive on the market. Meyer highlights the opportunities that an organization can seize by learning from its own mistakes, and for this reason Ulmer (2007) considers it necessary to add four more, claiming that if organizations try to be adaptive and focus on effective organizational learning, then they should also be able to: o treat failure as an opportunity of recognizing and preventing a potential future crisis o avoid crises by learning from other companies crises and failures o put emphasis on past experience making the organizational memory a priority of their actions o forget their old and inefficient strategies in order to learn new crisis management strategies. As mentioned earlier, crises clearly have the ability to harm the organization, its stakeholder and the general public and share three common characteristics they represent a threat to the organization, they have the element of surprise and they impose immediate action from the management. In order for organizations to avoid dramatic consequences, it is essential that they adopt various strategies in which prevention, response and communication play essential roles, allowing them to identify, assess and overcome any serious situation. The whole process of dealing with the crisis, but also trying to prevent it and coping with its effects are all activities which summed up form crisis management.

II.3. Crisis management II.3.1. Definitions and origins It is unanimously agreed among crisis researchers that no organization, small or large, is immune to crises. According to Coombs (2007), if no organization is immune, then every organization should be prepared for a crisis. The past showed us that even the biggest corporations such as Pepsi, Johnson and Johnson, Nike or Ford, just to name a few have been seriously affected by various types of crises more than once throughout their history,

despite their strong brands and capable managers. In every case, it was the strategic actions of a group of people that led to successfully surpassing the crisis, actions which collectively have been termed crisis management. T. Coombs (1999, 2007) defines crisis management as a set of factors designed to combat crises and to lessen the actual damages inflicted, [] seeking to prevent or lessen the negative outcomes of a crisis and thereby protect the organization, stakeholders, and/or industry from damage. Drawing attention on the evolving nature of a crisis, the same scholar states that a crisis does not just happen, it evolves (Coombs, 2007). For this reason, crisis management should be thought of as a process with many parts, including preventive measures, crisis management plans (CMP) and post-crisis evaluations. Another well known definition comes from K. Fearn-Banks (2002), who defines crisis management as a process of strategic planning for a crisis or a negative turning point, a process that removes some of the risk and uncertainty from the negative occurrence and thereby allows the organization to be in greater control of its own destiny. Just like Coombs, Fearn-Banks also draws attention on the fact that crisis management is a process, adding the term strategic planning to highlight the importance of strategy in dealing with crises. Crisis management is a relatively new discipline within the centuries-old broader discipline of management. Although only a few decades old, the field quickly received massive attention by the professional and academic community alike, and the number of researchers who now study it has recently increased substantially. Just like all other disciplines, crisis management was not created from scratch. Instead, it has evolved from emergency and disaster preparedness, from which it draws a set of four interrelated factors: prevention, preparation, response and recovery (Coombs, 2007). Prevention represents the steps organizations take in order to avoid crises (includes the detection of signs which might warn of a crisis and the actions designed to prevent it). Preparation includes the creation of a crisis management plan (CMP). It also involves selecting and briefing a crisis management team (CMT) and spokespersons and creating a crisis communication plan (CCP). Response consists of the actual application of the preparation components. Given the fact that internal and external stakeholders eyes will be pointed at the company during the crisis, good communication strategies are essential for successful management. Recovery consists of efforts to restore business operations to normal. Revision, while missing from emergency preparedness, is the last factor of crisis management. It involves the analysis and evaluation
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of the organizations response and the resulting data should be used in the future to better handle potential crises. II.3.2. Coombs crisis management model Coombs and Fearn-Banks are not the only scholars who consider crises as evolving and who subsequently view crisis management as a process. This view is of course shared almost universally among scholars. What differs, however, is the way crisis researchers perceive this process and how they view the ideal crisis management model of dealing with the crisis. Most models are shaped around the different stages of a crisis, the sum of which has been termed crisis lifecycle. Three of those models are frequently cited in crisis literature as being the most accurate and complete: Mitroffs (1994) five stage model, Finks (1986) four stage model and Coombs (2007) basic three stage model. Mitroff (1994) divides crisis management into five stages: a. signal detection: organizations identify a crisis warning signs and act upon them; b. probing and prevention: organizations identify the crisis factors and work to reduce their potential for harm; c. damage containment: organizations try to prevent the crisis damage from spreading into uncontaminated sectors; d. recovery: organizations work on returning to usual business operations as soon as possible; e. learning: organizations review and analyze their crisis management strategies and learn from their actions. Finks (1986) model is a metaphor of the stages of medical illness and consists of four stages: a. prodromal: clues of a potential crisis emerge; b. crisis breakout or acute: the occurrence of a triggering event along with the damage; c. chronic: effects of the crisis persist as efforts to surpass it continue; d. resolution: signs that the crisis is no longer a threat begin to appear and the crisis eventually ends. Although it has only three main stages, Coombs (2007) crisis management model is the most complex of the three and contains the major characteristics and ideas of the others. In Coombs own words, Both the Fink (1986) and Mitroff (1994) models fit naturally within this general three-stage approach. According to him, the set of factors that constitute crisis management can be divided into three stages directly related to a crisis lifecycle, namely pre-crisis, crisis and post-crisis (which constitute the macro level), each having two or three additional sub-stages (the micro level). In this part, we explore the model in more detail, as it will represent a useful theoretical framework when analyzing our case studys two crises, offering a view of the traditional, overall crisis management strategy in addition to Gonzalez11

Herrero and Smiths (2008) more online-oriented crisis management model (which we will discover in part III of our paper). First stage: Precrisis In the first stage, the organization should actively monitor for and deal with warning signs that could point to a potential crisis. In order to benefit from this process, organizations have to proactively address the issues discovered by the warning signs, thus preventing an issue from turning into a crisis. According to Coombs (2007), prevention is the ideal form of crisis management, as the best-managed crisis is the crisis that never happens. In this stage, the model comprises three sub-stages: signal detection, prevention and crisis preparation. The sub-stages represent actions that must be taken to reduce any possible risks in advance, thus avoiding or at least minimizing the impact of the crisis. o Signal detection: Signal detection is a three-part process, in which sources of information to be scanned must first be identified, then collected and in the end evaluated for their crisis potential. The process represents a measure for reducing or even eliminating the risk of crisis outbreak (for example, taking corrective action towards a customer complaint about a product can prevent further complaints or even recalls). Crisis managers must regularly search for information which might contain warning signs and both internal and external sources must be scanned due to the diverse nature of crises that could befall an organization. o Prevention: During this second sub-stage, the goal is to defuse a potential crisis by attending to the warning signs previously detected. Prevention is a two-part process, in which the organization first makes necessary changes to minimize or eliminate the likelihood of a warning sign becoming a crisis and secondly monitors the changes to make sure the crisis is indeed avoided. o Crisis preparation: Considering that a crisis could not have been completely avoided by following the steps listed above, organizations have to be prepared for the inevitable crisis that will befall them. This step is necessary because no matter how much organizations work on avoiding crises, some crises prove unavoidable, showing little or no clear warning signs. Organizations should prepare for a crisis by addressing six major concerns: diagnosing vulnerabilities (in accordance to the organizations industry, size, location, personnel, etc.), assessing crisis type, selecting and training a crisis management
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team (CMT) (responsible with creating and applying the CMP), selecting and training a spokesperson (part of the CMT, representing the voice of the organization during the crisis), developing a crisis management plan (CMP) and reviewing the crisis communication system. The crisis management team must be prepared and must have all the necessary resources when the crisis occurs. Second stage: Crisis event The second stage of the model starts with an event that marks the beginning of the crisis (the trigger event) and ends when the crisis is considered to be resolved (Coombs, 2007). Communicating with stakeholders is essential during this phase, and crisis communication (crisis response strategies) represents a large, essential part of both this and the post-crisis stage. Being particularly important for our case studies, these strategies will be discussed in more detail in the second part of the paper. As we have pointed out earlier, crises are influenced by perceptions and organizations must accept that an event is a crisis if that specific event is perceived by key stakeholders as a crisis. Therefore, the organization must acknowledge that it is facing a crisis and must take appropriate actions. However, this is not always easy, as some crises lack an obvious trigger event and are much harder to spot than others. For this reason, it is essential for the CMT to first identify the start of a crisis and to convince management that the organization is truly facing a crisis so it can start dealing with it as soon as possible with full support. This process is divided by Coombs into two sub-stages: o Crisis recognition: Once it acknowledges an event or issue as a real crisis, the CMT begins to collect data, analyze it, and pass it on to internal and external relevant stakeholders (such as experts or governmental organizations). CMT members will have to respond rapidly and to effectively communicate with upper managers and other stakeholders. o Crisis containment: Once a crisis hits, the crisis team must work to a) prevent the crisis from spreading and to b) limit its duration as much as possible (Mitroff, 1994; Coombs, 2007). Internally, information must be analyzed and decisions must be taken to end the crisis while externally, stakeholders must be continuously informed about the progress of the crisis and about the organizations actions to address it. Speed and transparency are two important elements, and the need for both in crisis response continues to escalate as
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technology accelerates the spread of information, thus reducing the amount of time the CMT has to respond to the crisis and increasing the level of transparency in communication (Barton, 2001; Coombs, 2007). Third stage: Postcrisis After the crisis is over and the affected organization returns to its usual business environment, crisis managers must evaluate their crisis management actions so that they can discover if anything could have been done better and if the organization is able to effectively face a similar crisis in the future. This stage is divided into three sub-stages: o Recovery: After the crisis, the organization must take corrective actions in order to return to a normal business environment. All issues regarding the crisis must be taken into consideration because its consequences are usually extensive and hard to surpass. Communicating with stakeholders continues in order to assure them that the crisis is over and that their expectations have been met. o Evaluation of crisis management: In this sub-stage, CMT members analyze the actions taken during the crisis to discover if better decisions could have been made. Data of the crisis is collected and analyzed and resulting information is stored and taken into account when handling a future crisis. o Monitoring of issues related to the crisis: The issues that led to the appearance of the crisis must still be monitored even after the crisis is over. Monitoring might involve cooperating with investigators or supplying stakeholders with updated information. II.3.3 The importance of crisis management We live in an era of crises Lerbinger, 1997 Todays environment seems to be placing higher premiums on crisis management and unprepared organizations having more to lose than ever (Coombs, 2007). As Barton (1993) observed, organizations are becoming more susceptible to crises due to a variety of environmental developments. These developments, which increase the need for an effective crisis management strategy, are stakeholder activism (through communication technologies) and reputational value. Organizational crises are typically associated with an event that has actual or potential consequences for stakeholders interests as well as the reputation of the
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organization suffering from the crisis (Heath & Millar, 2004). If poorly managed, the crisis main consequences are a compromised reputation and image and a damaged relationship with its stakeholders. Nowadays, dissatisfied stakeholders are more likely to generate crises. Consumers, shareholders, activists, NGOs and employees are all becoming more vocal when dealing with organizations (Coombs, 2007). New communication media are empowering them with an unprecedented degree of information access and public influence (Badarocco, 1998). Stakeholders are now using the internet as a means of expressing their concerns. Message boards, online community forums or blogs permit stakeholders to share their thoughts, link with other like-minded stakeholders, influencing each others meaning systems (Coombs, 1998). Collectively, all these internet stakeholders expressions are known as consumergenerated media (CGM). Stakeholder activism is the result of recent major advances in communication technologies, which for years now have begun to significantly shape crisis management. These advances make the world more visible, transforming an isolated issue that could have gone unnoticed a decade ago into a highly visible global crisis. Consequently, the rise of stakeholder activism through new media leads to a reinforcement of their power to generate and intensify conflicts and crises (Barton, 1993; Coombs, 1999; Mitroff, 1994; Moore, 2004). As we have already discovered, a crisis may have many and diverse effects on a company, some more serious than others. However, there is one important element that is usually affected by most types of crises, an intangible asset that all organizations work hard on preserving and building, and that is corporate reputation. The link between corporate crises and reputation is undeniable and a much debated topic among crisis researchers. In the following chapter, we shall point our focus on corporate reputation, exploring its meaning, identifying the benefits good reputations have on organizations and examining the role of reputation management in a normal business environment as well as during a crisis.

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III.

Corporate reputation and crisis communication

III.1. Corporate reputation III.1.1. Definitions and characteristics Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial. My reputation, Iago, my reputation! Cassio (Shakespeare, Othello, Act 2 Scene 3) In its broadest meaning, reputation is defined as the opinion that people in general have about someone or something, or how much respect or admiration someone or something receives, based on past behavior or character (Cambridge Dictionary). Because it directly influences basic human emotions such as trust and confidence, reputation is considered to be one of the most valuable assets a person owns. In their everyday social and professional lives, people go to great lengths to build up and maintain a good reputation in the eyes of others, be it family, friends, colleagues or bosses. Corporate reputation is no different in this regard, and organizations as well work hard on earning and maintaining a good reputation, knowing that this will lead to more clients, to satisfied employees or shareholders and to a sure path towards competitive advantage. According to Wartick (1992), corporate reputation is defined as the aggregation of a single stakeholders perception of how well organizational responses are meeting the demands and expectations of many corporate stakeholders. A more recent definition comes from Gotsi and Wilson (2001), who view corporate reputation as a stakeholders overall evaluation of a company over time. This evaluation is based on the stakeholders direct experiences with the company, any other form of communication and symbolism that provides information about the firms actions and/or a comparison with the actions of other leading rivals. Both definitions show two important aspects of corporate reputation. First, the way a company communicates with its stakeholders has direct influence on reputation. Information about a company reaches stakeholders through various channels and from many sources, including traditional media (TV, newspapers, magazines, radio, etc.), new media (websites, blogs, forums, social networks, etc.) or simply by word-of-mouth from friends or family who have had past experiences with the company. Second, a good reputation leads to
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corporate differentiation. For an organization, reputation is a way of distinguishing itself from competitors because it represents an asset that cannot easily be imitated or replicated (Fombrun, 2001). Reputation building is a long-term effort, and corporate reputation is the result of a shared judgment socially expressed by stakeholders, judgment based on the actions of the organization and on its ability to satisfy stakeholder needs and expectations (Fombrun, 1996; Weiss et al., 1999). So reputation is built on the trust established with stakeholders through direct and indirect interactions. Positive interactions build a favorable reputation while unpleasant interactions lead to an unfavorable reputation (Coombs, 2007). It is the perceptions of stakeholders that shed light on the differences between two terms often wrongly used as synonyms or variables of reputation, namely image and identity. While reputation is identified as being both internal and external stakeholders perception of the company, image is distinguished as being the impression that outside stakeholders have of the organization (Cornelissen, 2008) (customers, government, media, suppliers, NGOs, local community, etc.) and identity only the perception of internal stakeholders (employees, managers and shareholders) (Whetten & Mackey, 2002). III.1.2. Advantages of a favourable reputation Many researchers have written about the advantages that a strong, good reputation brings organizations. In short, a favorable reputation attracts and retains employees, builds strong relationships with partners and suppliers and increases customer loyalty, thus representing a firm competitive advantage. According to research by public relations firm Weber Shandwick and market/opinions research firm KRC Research, 63% of a company's market value is attributed to reputation. In Fombruns (1996) own words, good reputations increase credibility, making us more confident that well really get what were promised. A good reputation offers organizations the opportunity to distinguish themselves in the era of globalization, transparency and rising corporate citizenship expectations: For these reasons, more and more organizations are recognizing the link between corporate reputation and competitive advantage. A strong corporate reputation can attract and retain the best stakeholders whether they be consumers, investors or employees. It can attract customers, ensure a license to trade and, in times of crisis, win the benefit of the doubt. A sound corporate reputation allows an organization to achieve its business objectives better. (Frost and Cooke, 1999).
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Cornelissen (2008) summarized the major strategic advantages of a favorable reputation under three headings: o Distinctiveness: a good reputation helps stakeholders find or recognize an organization. Externally, a corporate image creates awareness, triggers recognition, and may instill confidence among stakeholders, as they will perceive the organization positively. Internally, a strong identity of the organization can help raise motivation and morale among employees by allowing them to identify with their company. o Impact: a good reputation provides a basis for being favoured by stakeholders. Accordingly, this directly impacts the organizations performance when it leads to stakeholders supporting the organization in the form of buying its products or services or investing in the company. o Stakeholders: in relation to the organization, individuals sometimes have more than one stakeholder role. When organizations project a consistent, positive image if themselves, they avoid potential pitfalls that usually occur when conflicting, negative images are sent out. Employees, for example, are often consumers of the products that their company produces. When the company acquires a bad reputation or fails to send out a consistent image, employees perceptions of their company are threatened, as they are told one thing by their managers but perceive something different in the marketplace. Organizations know how fragile a reputation is and how much time it takes to build a favourable one. In the words of renowned entrepreneur Warren Buffet, it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. In 2003, a survey of over 100 large European companies by multinational Aon Corporation found that loss of reputation was perceived as the second biggest of 17 listed threats to business, after business interruption and ahead of more material threats such as product liability, tampering, brand protection or employee accidents (Moore and Seymour, 2005). For these reasons, organizations go to great lengths to preserve a good reputation or to repair a damaged one, attributing substantial human and financial resources to reputation management. III.1.3. Reputation management In general terms, reputation management is the sum of an organizations efforts to build, preserve or repair its reputation. A more complex definition comes from OConnor (2005),
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who defines it as the strategic use of a companys resources in order to influence in a positive way the attitudes, opinions and behavior of all of the companys stakeholders, including employees, consumers, shareholders, investors and the media. Reputation management mainly consists of two broad, apparently simple but in fact highly resource consuming activities: acquiring information about the company and acting upon that information. In the last decade or so, these activities have become a lot more complex than before, mainly due to modern societys lightning-speed technological development. The Internet has substantially reshaped the process of reputation management and has led to the creation of the term online reputation. An online corporate reputation is the reputation an organization has on the Internet, on all new media communication channels such as websites, blogs, forums, online newspapers and magazines, social networks and chat rooms, just to name a few. Online reputation lies in contrast with reputation perceived by stakeholders in the offline environment, through traditional channels such as television, radio and print or direct interaction. Managers designate people from inside the organization and/or resort to outside professional help (reputation management firms) to identify relevant issues by tracking and scanning information about the company on both traditional and new media and by conducting statistical analysis of its reputation among stakeholders. The constant improving technology and the increasing impracticability of manually tracking online reputation led to the recent growth of the online reputation management technology and services sector (E-Consultancy, 2008). According to research published by digital marketing firm E-Consultancy in 2008, in the United Kingdom alone the sector grew by around 30% in 2008 to an estimated value of 60 million. Based upon research on large Fortune 500 companies, leading global PR agency Weber Shandwick identified several strategies to effectively manage corporate reputation: benchmarking and monitoring reputation online, assessing the right proportion of online and offline communications, scanning sources on the internet to detect potential risks and issues, using search engine optimization (SEO strategy through which search engine result rankings are improved), buying all company-related domain names (thus avoiding the purchase and use of negative term domain names by others who might try to damage the companys reputation) and maintaining a constant dialogue with employees, customers and other key stakeholders before, during and after problems arise.

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Elixir Systems, an American marketing agency specialized in online reputation management, proposes a three-step strategy to manage an online reputation (Elixir Systems, Online Reputation Management, 2006): o Monitoring: organizations must monitor and track what is being said about them online (using internet monitoring technologies and services); o Analyzing: organizations must analyze and determine how the new information found affects its brand and reputation (determining the seriousness of an issue, the influence of a certain blog author, etc.) and analyze its own online assets (corporate sites and micro-sites, corporate and employee blogs, partner sites, etc.); o Influencing: finally, organizations must influence the results by actively participating in the conversation and, if necessary, take corrective actions (such as eliminating negative websites, using SEO, using trademark infringement litigation, developing own online assets, etc.). According to Cornelissen (2008), an important outcome of effective reputation management is the alignment between an organizations vision, culture and image. This alignment means that the same consistent image of the organization is projected to senior managers (vision), employees (culture/identity) and all other stakeholders (reputation), thus ensuring that the organization is respected and accepted as legitimate by all stakeholder groups. The strategies mentioned above help organizations obtain and preserve a favourable reputation, which in turn brings many advantages, as previously discovered. However, these strategies are mainly fitted for a normal business environment. When facing a crisis, which disrupts the business environment, an organization must adapt its strategies to a specific situation to minimize damage to its reputation or to repair a tarnished one. During such tense situations, organizations focus more than ever on direct and constant two-way communication with their stakeholders and reputation management mainly becomes what has been termed crisis response (or crisis communication). In the next part, we shall explore several crisis response strategies, as they represent an essential part of crisis management (dealing with the communicative part of the process) and have the power to impact a reputation even more than the crisis itself.

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III.2. Crisis response strategies If the media can communicate the news the instant it happens, crisis communications dictate that a company must be prepared to respond almost as fast. The inability to communicate your message skillfully during a crisis can prove fatal. And it would be a totally needless demise, a wrongful death.- Steven Fink

Communication is the essence of crisis management, and each stage of the crisis management process requires an important flow of communication, creating a need to send, collect and interpret information. Crisis communication can be defined as the collection, processing, and dissemination of information required to address a crisis situation (Coombs, 2010). Fearn-Banks (2002) defines crisis communication as the dialog between organization and its publics prior to, during, and after the negative occurrence. Technological progress and the capability of media to live broadcast and report to a global public have forced organizations to reconsider and reevaluate their communication strategies during a crisis. Therefore, the pressure for effective crisis communication has grown as crises can create threats to public safety, environmental wellness or organizational survival. Communicating effectively during the crisis with stakeholders, employees, customers and the general public is a vital activity but also a true challenge. Many researchers have shown that during or after a crisis, the public shows great interest in whether or not the spokesperson and the organization can understand or empathize with its discomforts. A wrong communication approach by the company may lead to loss of public trust and to an unfavorable reputation. Therefore, crisis communication relies on intangible resources that managers use to prevent reputational damage or to restore an already damaged reputation. Each crisis characteristic determines which crisis communication strategy needs to be approached. Hence, identifying and carrying out a series of communication strategies is essential for effective crisis management (Barton, 2001). In his work Accounts, Excuses and Apologies (1995), Benoit explains that a crisis response strategy should be based on two main premises. First, communication is an activity which aims to achieve objectives; people try to reach the objectives that are the most
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important when initiating the communication. The problem is that they do not always know what the best means of achieving those objectives are and even if the objectives and means are clear to the speaker, they may still remain unclear or hidden for the listener. Second, maintaining a favourable reputation is a major purpose of communication. People are afraid of negative images and social position loss and therefore they normally use explanations and excuses to improve that image. Many researchers have worked on the creation of different types of crisis communication strategies that could help managers cope with a crisis situation. Coombs (2005) claims that crisis communication strategies are the actual responses used by an organization in the process of addressing the crisis and names them crisis response strategies. We have chosen to discuss Coombs (1995) crisis response strategies as they also include other relevant strategies, being a synthesis of Allen & Caillouets (1994) research on impressive management and Benoits (1992) work on image restoration. Furthermore, Cornelissen (2008) made an important contribution by putting Coombs strategies on an axis, ranging from low level responsibility to high level responsibility. The strategies are based on the degree to which stakeholders perceive the organization as being guilty or responsible for the crisis and are in tight connection with Coombs four-type classification of crises that we have mentioned earlier above. On one hand, when stakeholders perceive that the organization is not responsible or guilty for the crisis, the organization attempts to distance itself from the crisis or even deny its existence, adapting low level responsibility strategies. On the other hand, when the organization is seen as being fully responsible for the crisis, the organization will then have to protect its position, apologize for the crisis or change its behavior, adopting high level of responsibility strategies (Cornelissen, 2008). In the following, we shall explore Coombs (1995) crisis response strategies which have been slightly adapted by Cornelissen (2008) since they will be used as theoretical framework in part of the papers two case studies.

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Low level of responsibility High level of responsibility

Nonexistence strategies Distance strategies Ingratiation / Association strategies Suffering strategies

Mortification / Acceptance strategies Accomodative strategies

Crisis response strategies [Source: Coombs (1995) & Cornelissen (2008) Source: (2008)] Organizations that use nonexistence strategies seek to weaken the linkage between them and the negative events, claiming the denial of the crisis. There are four types of nonexistence , strategies: o denial a statement saying that a crisis does not in fact exist; o clarification an extension of denial which attempts to explain why ther is no crisis there (one example is Pepsis revelation that the syringe scare was a scam); one scam o attack a rather aggressive strategy that confronts the individual or group who ggressive wrongly report that a non-existent crisis exists (Exxon Mobil chose this strategy, t non Exxon attacking TV broadcasting network CBS for a fabricated story about price gouging) gouging (Coombs, 1995); o intimidation the most aggressive nonexistence strategy, it threatens to use organizational power against individuals or groups (lawsuits and physical violence are ( two forms of intimidation). intimidation Distance strategies acknowledge the existence of a crisis by expressing public acceptance but at the same time they distance the company from responsibility for its occurrence. The occurrence purpose of this strategy is to minimize the chance of tarnishing the organizations image and reputation as much as possible. The two distance strategies are: . str

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o excuse minimizes the level of responsibility and includes denial of intention and volition by scapegoating others for the crisis; this tactic is hard for the organization to control even if the crisis is caused by a third party; o justification strives to minimize the damage caused by the crisis, denying its seriousness and convincing stakeholders that the situation is not that bad compared to other previous crises; Benoit (1995) gives the example of some oil companies that compare their spills to other previous similar accidents, thus apparently minimizing the damage of the actual crisis. Ingratiation strategies, also called association strategies by Cornelissen (2008), are used to gain the public approval of the organization, connecting it with things that are positively valued by the general public: o bolstering informs or reminds stakeholders of the positive aspects of the organization in order to offset the negative impact of the crisis; past charity works or a history of fair worker treatment are just two examples; o transcendence places the crisis in a more desirable context (Benoit, 1992), forcing the attention of the public away from the current situation and into a more abstract view; the negative aspects or loss arising from the crisis are associated with higher and desirable goals; for example, after the explosion of Apollo I stakeholders were asked to accept the death of three people as part of a legitimate search for knowledge on the universe. o praising others is often used by organizations that want to win approval from the target of praise, leading to an improved image of the organization.

The suffering strategy is considered to be a rather unique crisis response strategy in which the company claims that it is suffering as a victim of the crisis: o victimization the purpose is to gain sympathy from the public, portraying the organization as a victim of a malicious external factor; Johnson & Johnsons playing as victim after a well-known product tampering incident is a tactic of victimization. Mortification or acceptance strategies involve a high level of responsibility, accepting full culpability for the crisis:

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o remediation gives some form of compensation or help to the victims of the crisis (money, goods, aid etc.); o repentance involves apologizing and asking for forgiveness for the crisis and for the organizations misdeeds; o rectification involves prevention mechanisms to avoid future crises and protect stakeholders against potential future harm. Cornelissen (2008) considered it necessary to make a separation between acceptance and prevention as strategies. In this respect, he added a second category to the high level of responsibility strategies the accommodative strategy. He claims rectification as part of this strategy, being a tactic of taking corrective action to prevent a reoccurrence of a future crisis. As we have discussed in the previous chapter, Coombs identified four types of crises based on two dimensions, internal/external and intentional/unintentional. We will further analyze the process of strategy selection using only two of these crisis types, both of which are relevant to our case study accidents and transgressions. Considering stakeholder perception of the level of responsibility an organization has when dealing with a crisis situation, natural accidents are unintentional and lead to attributions of minimal organizational responsibility (Coombs, 1995). The organization has no control and therefore such accidents can be approached with a distance strategy, reinforcing the weak link between the organization and the crisis cause. Human-error accidents are more difficult to explain and require an acceptance strategy where repentance and remediation tactics are meant to protect the organizations reputation. Transgressions are intentional actions taken by an organization that knowingly place publics at risk or harm (Coombs, 1995). In this kind of situation, nonexistence or distance strategies are considered useless since the crisis already happened and stakeholders are aware that the organization is responsible for it. Instead, organizations should adopt a mortification strategy by accepting blame and an accommodative strategy by taking corrective actions. As a result, the organization has to remediate the crisis by offering help and compensation to stakeholders involved, should publicly ask for forgiveness and should also adopt a long-term strategy of repentance that will help the organization prevent future crises. For example, after being found responsible for fraudulent bookkeeping, the Dutch retailer Ahold chose to apologize for the crisis and started to make important changes to its corporate governance.

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According to Coombs (1995), apart from typology, a crisis situation has three more important variables that impact the final choice of an effective crisis response strategy: veracity of evidence, damage and performance history. Veracity of evidence refers to proof that a crisis situation has occurred or not. It can be true, false or ambiguous. Physical evidence like an explosion or oil spill indicates that a crisis did really happen. False evidence develops when crisis reports are mistakenly made public. For example, rumors can create serious problems and must therefore be fought by clearly presenting the truth to the public as soon as possible. Ambiguous evidence is found only with the faux pas type of crisis and involves questions of morality and ethics. Nonexistence strategies can be used in cases of false and ambiguous evidence. Damage can be classified as minor or severe. Minor damage involves negligible injuries or property damage whereas serious injuries, death or massive property destruction constitute severe damage. Furthermore, damage can be done to the organization itself or to its external stakeholders. The severity of a crisis is in fact a matter of interpretation, since stakeholders perceptions of the incident are directly influenced by their cultural background and by what the media covers. Therefore, damage represents an important feature in crisis situation typologies and it is related to a significant amount of organizational responsibility. Coombs outlines that the strategies used must fit the damage done by the organization. Mortification strategies can be use since they all seek to straighten things up, accepting responsibility for the crisis even if this means jeopardizing the organizations image. Contrary, Burke (1966, 1970) sees this acknowledgement of responsibility as a foundation for repairing the organizations image. The impact of the crisis on stakeholders is another important aspect when it comes to crisis damage. Stakeholders can be divided in victims (physically, mentally or financially affected by the crisis) and non-victims. Mortification strategies are often used to provide closure in different ways for the victims of the crisis. Non-victims seek assurance that the crisis will not affect them or other persons and that the crisis will not repeat itself. Therefore, rectification strategies are the key to prevent reoccurrences, and mortification and distance strategies assure stakeholders that the crisis is over and cannot spread and harm anyone. Classified as positive or negative, performance history of an organization is also very important during a crisis. A positive history performance means credibility and trust in the eyes of its public. Stakeholders are more willing to forgive an organization with positive past

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performance than an organization with a history of problems (Barton, 1993; Griffin, Babin & Attaway, 1991). Therefore, a positive reputation helps the organization overcome the crisis more easily. Sometimes, the public does not know anything about the companys past and this represents an opportunity to transform a neutral history into a positive one by citing past good actions. A history of similar crisis makes the cause of the crisis more obvious, while a positive performance history makes the cause of the crisis more ambiguous and stakeholders are less likely to perceive the organization as being the cause. On the other hand, a negative history performance means negative attributions assigned to the organization. Performance history influences the process of strategy selection in two ways. First, as a form of credibility, positive performance history enhances the effectiveness of a source, making stakeholders more willing to accept claims made by the organization. Therefore, nonexistence and distance strategies are considered effective if backed by a positive past performance. Second, having positive performance history is essential for ingratiation strategies since past or present actions are used to create positive impression of an organization with the purpose of minimizing the negative effect of the crisis. After analyzing every range of response possibilities to a crisis and the main factors that shape the public perception of a crisis situation, we will further explain the decision process in terms of these crisis variables. Starting from the crisis type, evidence, damage and history performance, we will also use Coombs (1995) decision flowchart to visually present which response strategy best fits a particular crisis situation. In case of accidents, the evidence can be true or false. In case of true evidence, damage and history performance must be evaluated. So, if the damage is considered severe, than any form of mortification strategy is relevant for the victims. A positive performance history

requires the use of mortification strategies together with ingratiation ones for victims and non-victims while an excuse strategy is used mainly for non-victims. An organization with a negative performance history makes mortification strategies relevant for non-victims, in order to assure them that no other crisis will happen again. Based on the organizations credibility in the eyes of stakeholders, ingratiation and excuse strategies are receptive to non-victims while in the case of a negative performance history, these strategies would be ineffective. Minor damage imposed distance strategies. Victims and non-victims are more likely to accept excuses and justifications is there is no severe damage. In this case as well, a positive performance history provides the necessary credibility to use ingratiation strategies. In case the evidence is false, than the organization should adopt a nonexistence strategy where

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clarification explains the situation. Coombs (1995) draws the attention on the fact that the difference between acts of nature and human-induced errors matters in case of accidents.

As with accidents, the evidence can be true or false for transgressions. If the evidence is true then the damage and history performance should be taken into consideration. A crisis with severe damage requires mortification strategies for victims as well as for non-victims. If the organization has a positive performance history then an ingratiation strategy should couple with the mortification ones, evidencing its positive qualities while apologizing for the harm done. Even if the damage is minor, mortification strategies should be used because of the fact that the crisis event is intentional. A positive performance history adds justification and/or ingratiation strategies to further minimize the damage. Mortification strategies are unnecessary for non-victims because they do not see a potential reoccurrence or spreading of the crisis if the damage is minimal. In case of negative performance history, ingratiation strategies are used for both victims and non-victims while justification is used only for victims. Mortification is also used as response strategy for victims since the organization has intentionally performed actions that have harmed them. Minimal damage can be proved to

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non-victims through justification strategies. Finally, in case of false evidence, the organization should follow the same process outlined in accidents cases by choosing nonexistence and clarification strategies to eliminate the crisis.

To conclude, crisis response strategies are meant to shape stakeholders perception of responsibility for the crisis and to maintain a good relationship between them and the organization. As we have seen, choosing a good strategy involves taking into account many factors related to the crisis. However, effectively employing these strategies is just as important and other factors need to be considered. In the next part of our paper we take the theoretical foundations of crisis management and reputation already explored and we place them in todays much debated online environment with the purpose of observing their connections.

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IV.

Social media and corporate crises

IV.1. The impact of new communication technologies

A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter and getting smarter faster than most companies (Levine, Locke, Searls & Weinberger - The Cluetrain Manifesto, 1999)

Communication studies have been concentrating on interpersonal communication until the first mass-media technologies have been introduced. The term mass-media appeared in 1920 when the radio was invented and some of the first mass-circulation newspapers got printed (Laughey, 2007). Being a message-driven communication, traditional mass-media was considered a single-way or one-to-many communication channel witch targeted isolated groups. In the 1990s, we experienced a complete digitalization of all forms of information transmission. Thanks to the development of the internet and its widespread usability, new forms of social interaction and activities (new media) have been made available to the public. New media definitions are still evolving and are focusing primarily on computer technologies and digital content production. Dewdney & Ride (2006) define new media as a range of media practices that employ digital and computer technologies. One key feature of new media is that they are often portable and facilitate mobility in communication due to recent wireless and digital improvements. This mobility in communication leads to the conclusion of Terry Flew (author of the book Understanding Global media, 2007), who believes that the evolution of new media is one of the key factors that facilitated globalization. The author argues that computer generated communication lifted previous restrictions which required physical machinery, thus shortening the distance between people and creating a shrinking world. Croteau & Hoynes (2003) strengthen this idea stating that new media radically break the connection between physical place and social place, making physical location much less significant for our social relationships. Moreover, new media allows people from all over the world to express themselves though the availability of email, text messaging, online chat, blogging, websites and other consumer-generated media, radically transforming the rather unidirectional social
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interaction available technologically over a decade ago into a complex symmetrical communication. Therefore, traditional single-way communication is now replaced by many-to-many communication channels in a dynamic communication system where information is transmitted through computers, where sound, image, voice or text can travel at a speed almost unimaginable a few years ago. In 2007, more than one billion people had internet access, which represented 244% more than in the year 2000 (Internet World Stats, 2007). For companies, this undoubtedly makes the internet the most popular peer media platform today to communicate with customers, employees, shareholders and the media. The Cluetrain Manifesto was one of the most important works which drew attention on the effects of the internet on human interaction and on the significant differences between traditional and new media. Written in 1999 by Levine, Locke, Searls & Weinberger, the work is a set of 95 theses organized as a manifesto (initially a website and later a book), which aims to examine the impact of the internet on both consumers and organizations. The manifesto argues that the internet is very different from traditional media, as it enables people to interact more with each other, thus having the potential to completely transform traditional business practices. According to the theses, internet users have developed their own communication language online, language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It cant be faked. (Levine et al., 1999). This, the four authors claim, lies in strong contrast with the communication language of most organizations, who only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal, [] same old tone, same old lies. Because of the contrast present in corporate-social interaction, it is argued that if organizations will not adapt their communication tone to the one used by its stakeholders, providing a human face in some way, they will acquire a hard to correct reputation for poor customer service (Newson, Houghton & Patten, 2009). The use of the internet as an interactive platform of communication is a topic that has received tremendous attention by PR practitioners, who now see new media channels as standard aspects of PR practices. Yet, many practitioners are struggling with the impact of the internet research shows that they are not fully prepared to embrace digital environment, that they are ill-equipped or have a fear for technology (Alfonso & de Valbuena Miguel, 2006). Research findings have shown that new communication technologies have in recent years
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started to be perceived just as important (if not more important) as traditional ones and are now deeply affecting all business practices. Information now travels astoundingly fast from an astounding number of directions (Stephens, 2007) and anyone with an Internet connection has access to global information and in the same time the possibility to express his opinions because he sees the internet as a place of free social interaction. As a result, practitioners will have to be able to cope with these revolutionary changes and to analyze how new media can help or hinder their business practices in different fields such as media relations, reputation management, stakeholder relations, marketing communication, investor relations and issues and crisis management (Taylor & Kent, 2007).

IV.2. Social media

IV.2.1. Definitions and origins Before exploring the definitions of social media and the role they play in crisis communication, we must first understand where the phenomenon originates from and how it evolved. In order to do this, we have to draw our attention on the bigger picture, on one of the most important technological breakthroughs of the last century, namely the internet. The history of the internet dates back to the late 1950s, when the United States Department of Defense created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), an agency responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military. One of the agencys main goals was to develop a technology that would interconnect computers between strategic headquarters of the US military. After years of development, the worlds first network of digital communication (ARPANET the precursor of the internet) was created in 1969 to serve military and research laboratories but also universities in the United States. However, it took many years before the internet would become available to the general public. This happened in 1991 at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland, when two scientists created the WorldWideWeb (WWW), a system which allows all links to be made to any information anywhere, using the internet as channel (Berners-Lee, one of the WWWs creators, 1991). The web represented an innovative method of quickly accessing and sharing information from different parts of the globe and for this reason its usage spread rapidly, particularly
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throughout the developed world. However, in the first years following its creation, the system syste did not offer the full communication liberty it offers today. Creation of content on the web was limited to information technology (IT) professionals, who presented it in a rather static, unidirectional way to users, often using an official, rigid language. This stage of the web is language. known as Web 1.0. In the past decade, technological development as well as the always increasing interaction between internet users at a global scale led to the second stage of the nternet WWW, the current Web 2.0. e In contrast with the first stage of the web, during which internet users were limited to passively viewing content created for them, Web 2.0 focuses on content created by its users. In Web 2.0, applications offer their users the possibility to collaborate and interact with e each other in a virtual environment, promoting dialogue in a natural tone and the sharing of user-generated content (UGC). T. Flew (2008) generated described the evolution of the web from 1.0 to 2.0 as a move from personal websites to blogs and blog site aggregation, from publishing to , participation, from web content as the outcome of large up-front investment to an ongoing and front interactive process, and from content

management systems to links based on tagging (folksonomy). Folksonomy (also called social tagging or social indexing), a defining characteristic of ), Web 2.0, is a method of classifying and finding user-generated generated content by collaboratively

creating and managing tags (Peters, 2009). Through tagging, web users attribute their own words and expressions to content created by themselves or by others (such as pictures and ent videos) so that it can be retrieved later or easily found by everyone else. The practice is a major characteristic of the current stage of the web, showing the important role that the internet has acquired in recent years, namely to act as a true channel of social interaction and s collaboration and not just a means of obtaining information. It is this stage of the web that saw the creation of many services for social interaction, aimed at bringing together people

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with similar interests from any corner of the world, services which together form social media. According to Kaplan and Haenlein (2010), Web 2.0 acted as a platform for the evolution of social media, which they defined as a group of internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content. A second definition comes from Newson, Houghton and Patten (2009), who view social media as online tools and utilities that allow (1) communication of information online and (2) participation and collaboration. In other words, social media are media for social interaction, focusing on information that users create by themselves and share with others. Because social media are continually evolving, it is nearly impossible to develop an exhaustive list of all their types, but common forms of social media today include blogs, social networks, wikis and media-sharing websites. Social media have had a strong impact on human interaction in the past few years, significantly changing the landscape of both social and corporate communication, and it is agreed by many researchers that there are three major characteristics which together contributed to their huge impact (Rainie, Purcell & Smith, 2011; Lenhart & Fox, 2009; Madden, 2010): o Immediacy: all forms of social media facilitate instantaneous information sharing through the use of various technologies connected to the internet (such as personal computers, laptops, tablets or mobile phones); o Ubiquity: a 2011 study of the United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ITU) concluded that the number of internet users worldwide has surpassed the two billion mark at the end of 2010 and that the number of mobile phone subscriptions worldwide reached 5.28 billion at the end of the same year. Since a great number of those users are also users of social media, its very clear that social media are practically everywhere, making it very easy to spread information to massive audiences all over the world; o Availability: as most social media platforms are free and require only an internet connection, they are available to everyone, regardless of social status or IT skills.

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IV.2.2. Types of social media As previously mentioned, its very difficult to categorize social media given their evolving nature. However, many authors have created classifications based on various factors, insisting on the non-exhaustive nature of their lists. Newson, Houghton and Patten (2009) have proposed one classification of social media and elaborated on a few examples from each category, noting that although they placed some media services in a particular category, these often contain features from other categories as well. According to the three authors, social media can be roughly classified in: blogs, professional networks for businesses, consumer-oriented media (which contains social networking sites, consumercontent distribution sites and virtual worlds), wikis, online office applications and podcasting and videocasting. In the following part, each category will be further explored and some of the most popular services at the time of writing (and relevant to our paper) will be briefly examined. Blogs According to Newson, Houghton and Patten (2009), blog is a term derived from web log and is defined as a website where information is displayed in date order, with the most recent information at the top of the page. A similar definition is advanced by Kaplan and Haenlein (2010), who state that blogs represent the earliest form of social media and are special types of websites that usually display date-stamped entries in reverse chronological order. Becoming extremely popular in the early 2000s, blogs have had a massive impact on the internet and are today extensively used under many variations, from personal diaries written by a single person to corporate blogs managed by organizations in order to engage employees, customers or shareholders (Newson et al., 2009; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Blogs have led to the appearance of several terms very often heard today: maintaining a blog by adding information to its content is called blogging, the information is usually shaped as individual articles called blog posts (also simply posts or entries), while the person who posts the entries is called a blogger (Newson et al., 2009). Blogs can be categorized in many different ways, but most blog directories divide them according to subject matter, and major categories include: personal, business/professional, academic, entertainment, gastronomy, technology, sports, arts, politics, etc. A trait common to almost all blogs is the frequent connection to other blogs and websites. Most bloggers often use content (such as text,
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pictures or videos) taken from other sources and mention this by directly linking to them. This allows the reader to discover new blogs and other sources of information on similar topics. Writing a blog can bring organizations many benefits. Newson, Houghton and Patten (2009) have listed some of the most important: o Blogging offers the ability to reach a huge number of people instantly over the internet, as the blogs content is accessible directly or through web searches of the companys name or brand names; o Not having to understand HTML code or requiring specific IT skills means that companies act as their own publisher and have full control over the information they send out; o In tone with the message of the Cluetrain Manifesto discussed earlier, companies are able to communicate directly with their stakeholders in a social environment using a simple, natural language. In contrast with communication performed through PR or marketing firms, blogging does not dehumanize the message. For example, the CEOs of Sun Microsystems and General Motors maintain personal blogs to improve their companies transparency and give them a humane side; o Blogging is a great way of networking with people and businesses from the same industry. Frequent online interaction may lead to strong connections being formed between people who would probably not normally meet offline; o Blogs represent a powerful tool for internal communication. Employees and shareholders can be constantly kept up to date with information on past and future activities or events of the company; o A major benefit of blogging is the feedback received from stakeholders. Blogs offer readers the possibility to comment on posts, which means that customers and other stakeholder groups will feel comfortable to share their opinions and concerns in a warm, non-corporate environment. As a result, their views can be taken into consideration when creating new products and services or when making corporate decisions, thus acquiring competitive advantage.

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Professional networks for businesses Professional networks are services designed to allow businesses and business people to network online with each other (Newson et al, 2009). Professional networks are widely used today by organizations from all industries, by freelancers and increasingly by young graduates who work on establishing a strong network of contacts from the same industry. Popular professional networks include LinkedIn, Xing, Ryze and Inventube. LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) is currently the most popular business-to-business social networking website (Newson et al., 2009). In the 2007 Webbys web awards, it was awarded best social networking site as well as best services site. Launched in 2003, LinkedIn claims it has over 120 million members from over 200 countries and territories (LinkedIn, Aug. 2011). The official website states that it serves members from all 2011 Fortune 500 companies and that 75 of the Fortune 100 companies use its corporate hiring solutions. Newson, Houghton and Patten (2009) list several key uses of LinkedIn, which also apply to the majority of professional networks: it offers an accurate and up to date list of professional contacts (as users update their information themselves), it helps establish contact with potential partners and clients through existing contacts, contacts can recommend a user to others, good way to publish a CV online, answering LinkedIn Answers (website feature) correctly can help increase a good reputation, research a person or organization and probably most important, it offers a specific service for job searching, advertising and head hunting. Similar to most professional networks, LinkedIn is available to its users free of charge in its basic version (which offers the majority of features) and requires payment for the premium version. Consumer-oriented media In the words of Newson, Houghton and Patten (2009), consumer-driven websites have become the rising stars of the internet in recent years and are among the most popular sites on the web, many innovations in social media having originated in this category. Consumeroriented media lead to the creation of large online communities that can be constantly shaped by the user, who has freedom over what content he views and control of personal content that others view. This type of media is of particular importance for companies whose target audience uses them, and because they represents an easy way of reaching massive stakeholder groups many organizations have nowadays started to use consumer-oriented
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services. Consumer-oriented media can further be classified in three major categories, which will be briefly explored in the following. Social networking sites Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) define social networking sites as applications that enable users to connect by creating personal information profiles, inviting friends and colleagues to have access to those profiles, and sending e-mails and instant messages between each other. User profiles normally include a short biography and photo albums, but also videos and audio files. Many popular sites offer their users a wide range of features (such as blogging, gaming or instant messaging), thus blurring the boundaries between different types of social media (Newson et al., 2009). Facebook (www.facebook.com) was launched in 2004 and is currently the most popular social networking site on the web, with over 750 million users worldwide (Facebook Statistics, Aug. 2011). Facebook is a privately-held company headquartered in California, US and defines itself as a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers, [] facilitating the sharing of information through the social graph, the digital mapping of peoples real-world social connections. The service is one of the best examples of the massive influence that social media have on human interaction at a global scale, as official statistics on the website show: out of the 750 million users, about 70% are outside the US; the average user has 130 friends and is connected to over 80 community pages, groups and events; more than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, blog posts, notes, photos, videos, etc.) are shared each month; over 300.000 users collaborated on translating the site (more than 70 translations available); over 2.5 million external websites have integrated with Facebook using the sites platforms (including over half of comScores Global Top 100 websites). Facebooks success was assured by a combination of powerful networking facilities, entertaining features and ease of use (Newson et al., 2009). Although during its first years the service was mainly popular among American college students, it is today widely used around the world by teenagers and adults alike. According to Kaplan and Haenlein (2010), social networking sites are of such high popularity [] that the term Facebook addict has been included in the Urban Dictionary, a collaborative project focused on developing a slang dictionary for the English language. Facebook has recently started to play an important role
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in the business environment as well, as more and more companies are very attracted by the huge business potential of an online service with nearly a billion users. For some of the same advantages that blogging also brings, nearly all large organizations have now created corporate Facebook pages, through which they actively interact with large stakeholder groups in a natural, social environment. A Facebook page is a great opportunity for companies to acquire feedback from existing customers and to attract potential ones, but also to network with fellow-professionals and partners in a non-corporate environment. Business advertising on Facebook is another opportunity for companies to enforce their online presence. Many well-known companies have created large Facebook campaigns to promote their products or services. An example is Warner Brothers who, in order to promote its 2007 comedy movie Fred Claus, created a Facebook profile through which visitors could watch trailers, download movie-related content and play games (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Twitter (www.twitter.com) is a service worth mentioning in this category, although it is often described as a micro-blog and could therefore be placed in the blogs category. According to Kaplan and Haenlein (2010), Twitter is a micro blogging application that allows sending out short, text-based posts of 140 characters or less (called tweets). While many social networking sites available today tend to get more and more complex by adding lots of features to their service, Twitter is characterized by simplicity and it is probably this aspect that makes it so appealing to many users. The service saw a massive increase in popularity in recent years, growing from 1.5 million users in May 2008 to around 200 million in March 2011 (BBC News, Mar. 2011). Because many people use Twitter from mobile devices and due to its ease of use, it is often called the SMS of the internet (Business Standard, Aug. 2011). Just as other popular social media platforms have, Twitter has caught the attention of the business world and many companies now use it frequently to keep their stakeholders (e.g. employees, customers, shareholders) updated on various issues, praising its ability to reach large numbers of people instantly. Examples include UK newspapers BBC News and The Guardian or IT giant Dell. Consumer-content distribution sites As stated by Kaplan and Haenlein (2010), who name them content communities, the main purpose of consumer-content sites it to share media content between users. There is a
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large number of consumer-content sites available today, the majority being focused on a specific media type such as videos (e.g. YouTube, Vimeo, Metacafe), text (e.g. BookCrossing), photos (e.g. Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa) or music (e.g. Last.fm, SoundCloud). YouTube (www.youtube.com) was launched in 2005 and has in recent years become by far the most popular video-sharing website. A quick look on the statistics page of the site helps explain why YouTube is today a social phenomenon and one of the best examples of social medias true power: around 3 billion videos are viewed every day; 48 hours of video are uploaded every minute, resulting in almost eight years of content per day; 70% of traffic comes from outside the US; YouTube reached over 700 billion video playbacks in 2010 (YouTube Statistics, Aug. 2011). The service offers its users many features, including instant communication with other users and integrated video sharing on other social media platforms. Since its launch in 2005, YouTube has helped many regular people become internet celebrities after their uploaded videos turned viral (term commonly used to describe internet content that is massively popularized through user sharing). From a business perspective, the platform offers the already discussed advantages of reaching mass audiences instantly, obtaining feedback from user comments and easily spreading information through content sharing. That is why small and large companies alike now use YouTube campaigns to attract new customers, in which users are invited to view company videos, upload clips of themselves singing about or using products (e.g. Procter&Gambles 2007 Pepto-Bismol campaign) or even participating in interactive videos (e.g. Tipp-Exs Hunter shoots a bear and Hell Pizzas Deliver me to hell campaigns). For the news and entertainment industry, consumer-content sites may present the risk of being used as means of sharing copyright-protected materials (such as TV shows, music videos or film extracts), and YouTube is often in the spotlight when it comes to such issues, having been sued by large corporations several times (Newson et al., 2009). However, many media companies have recently understood the great potential that the service has as an entertainment channel, often being considered a direct competitor to regular television (Newson et al., 2009). MGM, Lions Gate and CBS, among others, have all created partnerships with YouTube to offer full-length films and television episodes directly on the site, usually accompanied by advertising.

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Virtual worlds Virtual worlds are defined as platforms that replicate a three-dimensional environment in which users can appear in the form of personalized avatars and interact with each other as they would in real life and come in two main types: virtual game worlds and virtual social worlds (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Virtual game worlds (also called massively multiplayer online role-playing games or MMORPGs) require users to behave according to strict rules and in a predefined context (such as in-game missions or campaigns) and are often accessed via game consoles such as Microsofts X-Box and Sonys PlayStation. Popular examples include World of Warcraft, which had over 12 million subscribers worldwide in 2010 (Blizzard Entertainment press release, Oct. 2010) and Final Fantasy XI, which counted over 2 million subscribers in 2009 (Square Enix Co., Apr. 2009). In contrast to MMORPGs, virtual social worlds give users more freedom to choose their behavior and are allowed to live a virtual life similar to real life (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). As in virtual game worlds, users create an avatar (a graphical representation of themselves) and interact in a 3D environment with other users, but they are not required to act within a specific context, choosing instead social activities normally performed in everyday life, such as dancing, shopping, swimming or going to work. The most popular virtual social world today is Second Life, a service that counts around 20 million registered users (Forbes, Apr. 2011). Just like all other social media types, virtual worlds have also caught the attention of companies, drawn by their business potential. Many organizations have created virtual offices in Second Life to ensure a constant communication channel with the worlds residents, including news agency Reuters or IT companies Cisco, Dell, IBM and Sun Microsystems (Newson et al., 2009). Other companies have targeted virtual world users in marketing campaigns, a recent example being Toyota, who used World of Warcraft content in its Tundra commercial to reach the games fan base (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Wikis According to Newson, Houghton and Patten (2009), a wiki is a type of website that allows its users to add, remove and otherwise edit and change the content of the website. Wikis are tools that focus entirely on user-generated content and for this reason they could also be placed in the consumer-oriented media category. However, wikis differentiate
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themselves from other types of social media because their content (which is primarily text) is made possible only through a great degree of collaboration by users, who participate using a simple text editor. Common wikis include community websites, corporate intranets or note services. Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) is a free online encyclopedia and the worlds most widely used wiki. The service defines itself as a multilingual, web-based, free-content encyclopedia project based on an openly editable model (Wikipedia About, Jul. 2011). Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia has rapidly become one of most accessed websites on the internet (7th place, Alexa Internet, Aug. 2011), attracting around 400 million unique visitors each month (ComScore, Aug. 2011). Wikipedia counts over 19 million articles in 270 languages, written collaboratively by mostly anonymous volunteers who have access to modify almost any article on the site (Wikipedia About, Aug. 2011). Because of this aspect, the service has been the subject of controversies regarding the reliability of its articles, but a 2005 research conducted by the science journal Nature on articles from Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica concluded that the 4-year old online encyclopedia written by internet users was just as accurate as its 237-year old counterpart written by full-time editors (Newson et al., 2009). Wikipedia and other wikis are tools that present several advantages from a business perspective. Although as a public wiki, Wikipedia is firmly against corporate participation in its online community (it does not allow advertising or other corporate presence), companies can still benefit from the service by using it as a general information source when researching a particular subject. However, other private wikis may be actively used by organizations as great tools for internal communication and knowledge sharing. Employees and managers can use corporate wikis to write notes or even larger content, which would instantly be accessible throughout the companys intranet or a secure internet website. Online office applications Online office applications are tools that allow online access to applications such as word processors or spreadsheets (Newson et al., 2009). Suited for both personal and professional use, they are the online equivalent of traditional software-based office applications such as Microsoft Word and Excel, with the obvious advantage of being easily accessible from any place that has an internet connection. Another advantage is the fact that they require no
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installation and provide safe keeping of content on internet servers. They are considered a valuable social tool because in contrast to traditional office applications, they allow multiple users to collaborate simultaneously online on the same piece of content and then share that content with anyone on the internet. Popular online office applications include Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Adobe Buzzword, Zoho and Microsoft Office 365, all of which are used for both private and corporate use. Podcasting and videocasting According to Newson, Houghton and Patten (2009), podcasting and videocasting are means of sharing sound and video recordings over the internet. The casting of music and video files is made possible through RSS feeds (software used to provide internet users with frequently updated content), which are received using tools called RSS readers (or aggregators) (Newson et al., 2009). RSS readers help users get access automatically and in an organized manner to online content such as text, images, videos and music files. A type of podcast very common today is the internet radio station. Using podcasting, people are able to create online radio stations by sharing content that any internet user can find and subscribe to. Similarly, videocasting enables individuals to easily share video files online with massive audiences. In recent years, organizations have started to show strong interest in business podcasting and videocasting. Companies from many industries have successfully incorporated podcasts and videocasts into their corporate websites or blogs to keep internal stakeholders updated on various activities or to communicate relevant issues to customers and other external stakeholders. Using podcasts and videocasts provides many advantages, as they are instantly accessible to anyone with an internet connection on many devices, even portable ones such as media players and smartphones (trait common to most social media services) and can be successfully integrated with other social media types (such as blogs or social networks). We have discovered the major categories of social media and some of the most popular services available today, highlighting their main features and several benefits that they bring for both personal and corporate use. In the next part, we focus only on the corporate usage of social media, exploring their main advantages and disadvantages and their role in crisis communication.
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IV.3. Social media and crisis communication

IV.3.1. Social media and their effects on crises

Most real crises have an important and central communication challenge Pines, 2000

Until recently, organizations used TV, radio, newspapers and magazines to address their audiences. The information was filtered by media, determining which information to publish and the audience had almost no chance to respond. Nowadays, the internet changed this practice and companies switched to peer media platforms such as blogs, social networking platforms or content-distribution sites. According to Forrester Research, 75% of internet users used social media in the second quarter of 2008 by joining social networks, reading blogs or writing reviews on shopping websites (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010). Compared to 2007, this meant a significant rise of 57% of internet users, mainly due to the fact that social media are no longer limited to young people older adults are now increasingly populating the ranks of joiners, spectators and critics. In this online business landscape, as the Cluetrain Manifesto also outlined, audiences expect transparent and honest conversations with organizations. Stakeholders now have the possibility to express their opinions and respond to the information they access trough peer media. Due to this growing popularity across generations, social media represent a revolutionary new trend that should be of great interest to organizations operating both online and offline. According to Kaplan and Haenlein (2010), social media is now positioned at the top of every business executives agenda. Therefore, social media are becoming very popular in many business fields, but one important area that shouldnt be overlooked is crisis communication. This trend definitely changes the outcome of a corporate crisis, where the speed of communication and the power of stakeholders have serious implication. The explosion of social media everything from social networking websites, to blogs, to broadcast text messaging has changed the way in which anyone involved in risk communication must look at overall communication plans. Especially in times of emergency, social media can and should be employed to transmit critically important information immediately to as many people as possible (American Public Health Association, n.d.). Hughes (2008) mentions the connection between social
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media and crises, observing that more and more people participate in disaster responses due to the disappearance of temporal and geographic barriers. Leysia Palen (2008), a researcher in the field of crisis informatics (area of research that examines the technical, social and information aspects of crises and disasters) at the University of Colorado, argues that investigations of recent disasters showed that online social media were used as an emergent, significant and often accurate form of public participation and backchannel communication. Moore & Seymour (2005) conclude that social media is gaining power both in times of disaster and over active but yet erupting risks or threatening issues. Today, some organizations are starting to accept the communication shifts and understand that they create urgent issues in the field of crisis management. They are focusing on finding new ways in which they can use internet applications such as Facebook, YouTube or Twitter to communicate during crises. Many researchers have outlined the fact that PR practitioners who use new media are perceived within their organizations as having more power, in that they are willing to be leaders in the industry and use new tools to better reach target publics (Porter et al., 2007). Moore and Seymour (2005) outline two important aspects that entail changes in the traditional crisis management: o social media affect the way groups, individuals and societies communicate and it reshapes their global attitudes towards organizations that affect them; o social media are not only about information exchange on global issues but they are also the cause, participant and agent of corporate solutions (Moore & Seymour, 2005). They also suggest that social media impose radical changes in organizational culture and that the reinvention of crisis communication strategy should be a priority for any organization. Being a double-edged sword for crisis communication (Crisis communication & Social Media Summit report 2009), social media offer PR practitioners a unique opportunity to collect information, to monitor public opinion on different issues and to engage in real-time interaction with their public. First, social media can help crisis communicators conduct environmental scanning to detect potential issues that can transform into crises and second, they represent a valuable resource since they can help organizations communicate their decisions very quickly to stakeholders and get feedback from the public, preventing the escalation of a crisis (Perry, Taylor & Doerfel, 2003).
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During crises, stakeholders seek to understand what is going on around them Weick (1998) names this tendency sensemaking. As a result, social media users often take pictures or videos of interesting events and, due to mobile technology and photo-sharing websites, make the information accessible to the world very quickly. An example of stakeholder sensemaking happened during the Katrina hurricane or the shooting at Virginia Tech when a group called image aggregators has been set up on Flickr as a way to help stakeholders cope with the crisis. Another advantage social media have on crisis communication is that they serve as a means of expanded communication in times of disasters, enabling survivors, observers or people who simply wish to help connect with each other and actively participate in peer-topeer events (Palen & Liu, 2007). Stakeholders affected by the crisis are the first ones to have knowledge of the event and they act as communication facilitators, linking people and information through social media platforms. For example, in 2007 when wildfires began destroying Southern California, people used Google mashups (web client applications that use and combine data or functionality from two or more sources to produce new and enriched results) to create maps that showed evacuated areas, burn areas, destroyed homes and other important information. These mashups where created by groups of volunteers that used the latest news sent via Twitter as information source (Sutton, Palen & Shklovski, 2008). Apart from the many ways in which social media can positively impact the development of a crisis, they undoubtedly also present some risks. According to Gonzalez-Herrero and Smith (2008), the internet, through the use of social media, can affect business in two ways: it can act as facilitator but also as trigger of crises. On one hand, the authors explain, social media can facilitate the appearance of a crisis by acting as channels of communication and spreading information on various issues. Having the same role as mainstream media such as radio, television or print, social media can merely transmit information of a negative event that happened offline to massive audiences, although obviously in a much faster and viral way, thus leading to an issue becoming a real crisis. A famous example is Kryptonites 2004 crisis, started when posts on a small blog stated that the companys high-end locks could be opened with a ballpoint pen. Because Kryptonite ignored the issue and the blogospheres power, it was soon faced with a serious crisis which cost the company millions of dollars when the issue spread to both new and mainstream media.

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On the other hand, social media can also directly lead to the appearance of a crisis and not just help its escalation. In other words, it is the existence of social media and the web that permits a crisis to appear, and such a crisis would not be possible otherwise. Examples include hacking, web security breaches or copy-cat websites. Many large companies were targeted by copy-cat websites in United recent times, including Mercedes-Benz or Ford

(www.mercedesproblems.com.ar),

Airlines

(www.untied.com)

(www.flamingfords.info). The websites are often more than annoyances for companies and can pose serious problems if issues are left unattended, as they have the capacity of reaching millions of people worldwide (Gonzalez-Herrero & Smith, 2008). Another risk that social media present is their ability to spread misinformation about the organization. In this regard, social media act like traditional media but in a faster way and crisis communicators have trouble controlling this negative information. Furthermore, social media are capable of creating lots of noise among stakeholders, forcing companies to cut through the noise in order to send out useful information. Palen and Starbird (2010) present Twitter as a possible solution to this, which can be used to send relevant information online in a direct and clear way.

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To sum up, social media represent an important method of receiving and transmitting information, transcending time and space. Even if social media can sometimes play a negative role in crisis situations, their advantages outweigh the disadvantages and make the difference between overcoming the crisis and sinking even deeper. Because their worldwide usage can no longer be ignored by any organization, regardless of its size or brand power, social media must play a key role in dealing with crises. Several ways in which social media should be incorporated in crisis management and communication are explored in the next part. IV.3.2. Managing a crisis online Gonzalez-Herrero & Smith model Although the current phenomenon that is social media greatly influences crises of all kinds, whether social or corporate in nature, traditional crisis management strategies must not be completely changed and replaced with brand new ones. Instead, just as A. GonzalezHerrero and S. Smith (2008) explain, the tools to apply them need to be revised and adapted to todays digital environment. The two crisis researchers agree that the basic principles that stood at the foundation of traditional crisis management, principles such as issues monitoring, preventive planning and quick, credible crisis responses are valid today and must still represent the focus of any organization dealing with a crisis. However, organizations must be aware of the absence of time and geographic barriers introduced by the internet and by the importance of constant two-way communication with stakeholders, who expect companies to use a more honest and human tone in communication. Because of this, they must adapt their traditional corporate communication strategies and channels to the current needs of stakeholders, including their crisis response strategies. In 1995, Gonzalez-Herrero and Pratt proposed a four-stage model for crisis management, tailored on the different stages of a crisis. But the passing of time also meant the progress of technology, which brought along the already discussed shift in social and corporate communication. As a result, in 2008 Gonzalez-Herrero and Smith adapted the model to the online environment, placing great emphasis on social media. This new model is very similar to Coombs (2007) three stage model of crisis management presented in the first part of the paper, and even though it has an extra stage (issues management), this phase is basically the same as Coombs signal detection sub-stage of pre-crisis. What differs, however, is a much stronger focus on internet technologies and an overall web-orientation, due to implications of the new digital ecosystem (Gonzalez-Herrero & Smith, 2008).
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Just like many other models of crisis management (including the one of Coombs), Gonzalez-Herrero and Smiths model is built on the crisis lifecycle. As a result, its four main stages are issues management, planning-prevention, crisis and post-crisis. The following visual representation was created to offer a better understanding of the model and presents readers a quick way of identifying each stage if later required.

A. Issues management The purpose of this stage is to identify and manage any issues that might pose problems to the organization before they turn into crises. As social media are very effective tools for stakeholders to express their dissatisfaction and share it with the world, more and more corporate crises now occur and/or develop in the online environment. Additionally, disgruntled customers or employees can easily find others online who share their discontent on a certain issue and use social media to organize and coordinate actions from anywhere in the world. In the words of Gonzalez-Herrero and Smith (2008), an individual writing a blog that has several links to other sites can have as much influence as a communications department of a major firm. Because of this, issues management and constant monitoring of signals online should be high on the agenda of every organization.
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Since people are now more vocal and powerful than ever, organizations must have a clear picture of their stakeholder groups and must identify their biggest online influencers. A frequent, clear and honest communication with them helps prevent issues from aggravating and rumors from spreading. Organizations must always be up to date with key influencers blog posts or tweets. Obviously, traditional media channels must not be forgotten, and radio, television and newspapers must also by scanned for potentially negative issues (together with their online websites, podcasts and videocasts). As we have seen in previous chapters, organizations can resort to outside help to preserve and build their reputation online and many companies today offer a wide set of monitoring services, including filtering and analyzing newsrooms, blogs and micro-blogs, social and business networks, consumer-content sites, etc. However, just monitoring issues is not enough, and organizations must also engage with stakeholders to prevent issues from aggravating. Participating in discussions with stakeholders on forums and consumer websites helps maintain a good reputation as a transparent and communicative company. As Perry (2003) observed, an organizations attempt to maintain relationships with its various audiences via the internet while under intense scrutiny may minimize the potential damage of a crisis with its stakeholders and maximize recovery. Specific actions that should be taken during this stage include: o Assigning human and financial resources to issues management and using an external monitoring agency if required (especially for larger organizations); o Training a team from inside the company to be familiar with the online environment and to think globally; o Establishing an efficient online monitoring system that includes all relevant websites and social media channels (blogs, social networks, etc.); o Drawing a full map of key stakeholders and online influencers; o Setting up corporate social media services (company blog, podcasts, social network profiles, etc.) to actively engage stakeholders; o Drawing up guidelines on the approach, tone and language used while engaging in online conversations non-corporate, honest and often informal tone.

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B. Planning-prevention This phase of the model is the equivalent of Coombs (2007) crisis preparation substage. Similarly, the goal here is for organizations to prepare for the worst-case scenario in which an issue identified and acted upon unsuccessfully in the previous stage becomes a serious corporate crisis. During this stage, recommended actions include: o Developing a crisis manual online, as it is easier to write and update collaboratively and offers the possibility to include various links to other sources of information and to databases; o Checking that both regular and online media are monitored effectively to stay up to date with relevant issues; o Registering all possible domain names, including the ones with negative connotations, to prevent harmful use against the company; o Drafting guidelines for internal stakeholders to respond quickly to the potential crisis; o Creating an intranet, wiki or chat room to allow CMT members and employees to communicate effectively; o Evaluating and preparing own online resources (corporate website, blog, etc.) for crisis response-related material hosting such as videos, podcasts, images, etc. o Including web experts and bloggers in the CMT and identifying potential allies (partners, NGOs, etc.); o Testing the online crisis plan.

C. The crisis The crisis stage includes all of the actions that organizations must take to overcome the crisis once it started. Most of these actions should have been clearly established by the crisis plan, along with the people in charge, so that they can now be performed. Organizations must react as fast as possible in both the offline and online environments (especially online) to contain the crisis from spreading. They must actively communicate throughout the crisis to all relevant stakeholders on all channels available to avoid being perceived as secretive or uncommunicative because as Taylor and Perry (2005) note, no response online may become synonymous of no comment. Apart from the actions already established by the crisis plan, other recommended measures include:
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o Using search engine optimization (SEO) to ensure important content is visible at the top of a search; o Placing visible links for crisis information on own online channels (website, blog, etc.); o Blogging and being active on social media channels to minimize reputation damage; o Using interactive tools such as surveys to gather stakeholder feedback on the management of the crisis; o Sending out personal messages (apology, assurance, etc.) from CEOs on various offline and online channels; o Combining the use of traditional media with new media to ensure full coverage.

D. The post-crisis Once the crisis is over, the organization must take actions to ensure a full recovery and learn from its successes and mistakes so that it can better prevent future crises. Although in traditional media news of the crisis normally disappear with the crisis itself or soon thereafter, in the online environment signs take much longer to be forgotten as videos, text or images may still be viewed by web users years after the crisis ends. However, if companies demonstrate that they learned from the crisis and took clear measures to prevent future ones, stakeholders will prove forgiving and show their support. Some actions that need to be taken post-crisis include: o Continuing to track the issue by actively monitoring social media long after the end of the crisis; o Thanking supporters of the company who played a role in its recovery (e-mails, blog and website messages, etc.); o Updating the companys own online channels; o Defining strategies to rebuild corporate reputation and evaluating the organizations actions before, during and after the crisis.

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Applying the theoretical frameworks

In the previous chapters of this paper we have explored the theoretical concepts behind crises and crisis management, reputation and its management as well as social media and their impact on crisis management and communication. We can now use these theories to analyze two corporate crises that gathered massive public attention in 2009, both being crises in which social media played an essential role. Each case study will be separated into two main parts: o the first part will consist of an analysis performed on the companys crisis management strategies from a strategic perspective, and Gonzalez-Herrero & Smiths (2008) online-oriented crisis management model will be used as main theoretical framework, with relevant references to Coombs (2007) more general model (with which the first model shares many characteristics) o in the second part, the companys crisis response strategies will be analyzed from a communicative perspective, using Coombs (1995) crisis response strategies as the second theoretical framework. Previously explored theories on crisis types and characteristics as well as on reputation will also be used to offer better understanding of the crises and thus allow a thorough analysis.

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V.

Case study

V.1. Dominos Pizza crisis

V.1.1. Dominos Pizza: company background

Founded in 1960 by Tom Monaghan and his brother James, Dominos Pizza started, like most corporate success stories, as a small pizza shop in Ypsilanti, Michigan, US. After 38 years of ownership, Tom Monaghan announced his retirement and sold his entire stake to a Massachusetts investment firm called Bain Capital Inc. (LA Times, 1998). The business expanded rapidly throughout the following decades and today, Dominos Pizza is a successful worldwide known pizza delivery corporation. According to its official website, Dominos Pizza is the worlds leader in pizza delivery, operating a network of company-owned and franchise-owned stores in the US and international markets. Dominos international expansion started back in the 80s, when the company opened its first international store in Canada, and now reached to more than 9000 stores in over 60 markets around the world. Dominos international restaurants and over 90% of its US ones are franchise-owned and operate in compliance with the standards of the Dominos brand (Dominos Pizza Annual Report, 2008). The company operates in a highly competitive food service industry market in the Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) sector. Competition in this business sector is very intense with regard to product quality, service and price. Pizza Hut is the main competitor of Dominos Pizza and together with Papa Johns, the three represent 47% of the pizza delivery market in the US (Dominos Annual Report, 2008). As stated by Dominos, its growth strategy focuses on values such as:

putting people first demanding integrity striving for customer loyalty delivering with smart hustle and positive energy winning by improving results

The company has one simple mission to be the best pizza delivery company in the world. With a motto like Sell More Pizza, Have More Fun, Dominos guiding principles
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combine the concepts of work and fun even if many people consider the two words as being in antithesis. According to Dominos corporate culture, the company values the contributions of its customers, team members, suppliers and all other stakeholders and views diversity as an important competitive advantage. The company considers diversity at the workplace as a stimulation of the working environment and in the same time, encourages innovation and creativity we believe we are stronger, more effective and more profitable because we use all the human resources our society has to offer (Dominos website, Aug. 2011). Along the years, Dominos continued to expand its product line and strengthen its brand, receiving much attention and positive reviews from different industry trade publications and financial newspapers. In 2003, Dominos Pizza was rewarded for the quality of its delivery systems and named Chain of the Year by Pizza Today magazine, a pizza trade publication. As main driver behind the companys growth, the strength of its franchises was recognized by Forbes magazine in 2011, who placed the Dominos on the first position of The Top Franchise for the Money (Forbes, Jan. 2011).

V.1.2. Crisis facts and timeline

We all have our secret ingredientsand in about five minutes they will be sent out on delivery where somebody will be eating these. Yes, eating them. And little did they know that cheese was in his nose and there was some lethal gas that ended up on their salami. Now, thats how we roll at Dominos! Kristi Hammond, creator of prank video (April, 2009)

We have created a timeline of the relevant facts relating to Dominos crisis, on which we shall develop a detailed exposure of the events that lead to the outbreak of the crisis. The facts are mainly taken from The PR Strategist article Dominos delivers during crisis: The companys step-by-step response after a vulgar video goes viral, an interview with Tim McIntyre, Vice President of Communications and spokesperson of Dominos Pizza.

Dominos Pizza: crisis timeline

Sunday, April 12, 2009 Monday, April Two Dominos employees shoot several amateur videos of themselves violating serious food safety standards Videos are posted on YouTube
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13, 2009

goodasyou.org and consumerist.com repost the videos on their blog Dominos is notified about the videos by a blogger

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Dominos Pizzas Special Ingrediants video reaches more than 250.000 views Dominos identifies the location and contacts the franchise store owner, local health department and local police Dominos fires the two employees The same video reaches more than 1.000.000 views

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Dominos creates a Twitter account (@DPZinfo) References to videos are in 5 out of 12 results on the first page of a Google search for Dominos YouTube removes the videos Dominos officially apologizes on YouTube

Friday, April 17, 2009

Dominos search in Google yields prank videos as third result while apology video fourth

The incident happened on Easter Sunday, April 12 2009, when two employees of Dominos Pizza shot four videos of themselves during their working hours in the kitchen of a pizza restaurant, doing unsanitary things to the food they were preparing for delivery. The first and most popular video Dominos Pizzas Special Ingrediants (sic) shows a male Dominos employee inserting pieces of cheese in his nose, waving pieces of salami behind his backside and violating other health code standards before placing them on sandwiches (The NYTimes, Apr. 2009), while his fellow female colleague provides narration (she was laughing and joking in the background about that being a usual behavior at Dominos). The other videos Sneeze Sticks, Poopie Dishes and Dominos Pizza Booger were also showing the male employee violating multiple food service industry hygienic rules. The next morning, on Monday April 13th, the two employees decided to upload the videos on the online video-sharing site, YouTube. In the evening, Tim McIntyre, Vice President of Communications at Dominos Pizza received an e-mail from an influent blogger, alerting him of the existence of some vulgar videos on YouTube. He also mentioned in the email that, for the public interest, he reposted the videos on his website.

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The next day, after checking the videos online, McIntyre realized that the videos were not a hoax and that the most popular video had already received more than 250.000 views on YouTube. We got blindsided by two idiots with a video camera and an awful idea. Even people whove been with us as loyal customers for 10, 15, 20 years are second-guessing their relationship with Dominos, and thats not fair, declared McIntyre for The New York Times (Apr. 2009). Within a couple of hours, Dominos managed to identify the employees and their location Kristi Hammond and Michael Setzer two full-time employees at Dominos Pizza franchise store in Conover, a small town in North Carolina. After locating them, Dominos contacted the local police to arrest the two felons and the local health department to sanitize the restaurant. The same day, McIntyre received an apologetic e-mail from Ms. Hammond, who said that it was all a prank and me nor Michael expected to have this much attention from videos that were uploaded. No food was ever sent out to any customer. (AdvertisingAge, Apr. 2009). In the beginning, Dominos took the decision to not respond publically, hoping that the crisis would blow over but by Wednesday, propelled by Twitter and other social media platforms, the YouTube post turned viral, reaching more than one million views. Under these circumstances, Dominos decided to post an official response on its website and uploaded a video on YouTube of Patrick Doyle, CEO of Dominos Pizza, apologizing for the situation and saying that the two workers have been identified, fired and arrested under a felony warrant. The company also took legal action to have the original videos removed from YouTube and created an official Twitter account to address the comments of its stakeholders (TimeUS, Apr. 2009). According to the Emerging Media Research Council, two days later, on April 17, Dominos search in Google yielded prank video as third result while the apology video fourth, with almost as many views as the remaining copy of the prank video. With the rise of social media, Dominos found itself in a middle of a serious online crisis situation with more than one million disgusted viewers and a badly damaged reputation.

V.1.3. Crisis type and characteristics

Before moving on to the analysis of Dominos crisis management and its response strategies, we must first identify the incident as a real crisis situation according to definition, then determine its type and main characteristics.
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In the first chapter of the paper, we have seen how well-known crisis management researchers such as Moore and Seymour, Sellnow and Seeger or Coombs define a crisis. Taking into consideration elements from all these researchers, we consider that the events that occurred at Dominos Pizza in 2009 represent a real crisis situation for three reasons. First, the incident triggered intense social media coverage, attracting massive attention from the public. Second, both internal and external stakeholders perceived the incidents as a serious violation of their expectations. In this case, Dominos failed to meet the first and most important conditions of the food service industry food safety and customer trust. This violation led to the loss of public trust, thus weakening the relationship between the company and its customers. As McIntyre stated in an interview with Vaughn and Peeples (2009), if a customer perceives a problem in product quality, price, service or convenience, the implications to future business success could be serious. For this reason, there is nothing more important or sacred to Dominos than the trust of its customers. This important aspect is also outlined by Patrick Doyle, CEO of Dominos Pizza, in his apology video on YouTube. Third and most important, the videos had a significant negative impact on corporate reputation and many effects on the companys activities, altering its normal business environment. Relating to Linkers crisis typology theory, the posting of the videos took the organization by surprise but allowed management some time to react and respond to the incident. In this sense, we can consider Dominos crisis as an immediate type of crisis. Coombs theory of crisis typology, as we have seen earlier in the paper, identifies crises based on two dimensions internal/external and intentional/unintentional, setting the cause of the crisis and its origin. Therefore, according to theory, we consider Dominos incident an act of transgression that places on the intentional/internal axis of the crisis type matrix. Knowingly breaking public health rules and tampering customers food, the two Dominos employees were unarguably responsible for intentionally harming company customers and the companys image. Another factor of organizational crises, as we have noted earlier in the paper, is the impact that they have on organizations. Dominos crisis obviously had a negative effect on the companys reputation as well as on the stakeholders confidence: the reputation of a brand thats nearly 50 years old [] has been ruined (McIntyre reaction on the impact of videos). According to BrandIndex, a tool for tracking public perception on thousands of brands across the world, after the videos have been posted on YouTube, Dominos buzz ratings
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started to fall from 22.5 points (before crisis) to 13.6 points (after crisis). Quality ratings, normally more stable, dropped from 5 to 2.8 within just 24 hours (AdvertisingAge, Aug. 2009).

V.1.4. Dominos crisis management strategies Issues management The first stage of Gonzalez-Herrero and Smiths model is the same as Coombs signal detection sub-stage of the pre-crisis stage of his model. Issues management can therefore be considered an active search and interpretation of warning signs, the purpose being to identify and manage any issue than might cause problems to the organization before turning into a serious crisis situation. Of course, retrospectively speaking, it is easier to identify the specific actions that could have helped Dominos prevent the crisis. When the the crisis occurred, Dominos was not very familiar with the vehicles of online communication nor with any social media strategy (Stull, 2009). Of course, even if Dominos would have already had a strong online stakeholder engagement approach, the company still could not have stopped the employees from posting the videos but it could have definitely reacted to the videos much quicker, preventing the videos from going viral. Thereby, the lack of online presence led to the transformation of an isolated incident into a serious crisis, affecting the customers and its reputation. Judging by the number of viewers the video had, we can see that Dominos management failed to scan negative issues online and thus permitted the videos to escalate into a crisis. Dominos found out about the videos from different bloggers who felt obligated to notify corporate headquarters as soon as the videos were found (Peeples & Vaughn, 2009). As Perry (2003) observes, in this stage, the Internet has the purpose to minimize the potential damage of a crisis and maximize the process of recovery after the crisis. The actions that Dominos could have taken during this monitoring stage are numerous and are supposed to be effective in preserving the online reputation and brand (Gonzalez-Herrero & Smith, 2008). With a trained team and an efficient online monitoring system that covers all relevant websites and social media platforms or with the external help of a monitoring agency to constantly scan for issues, Dominos could have been prepared to approach this issue in different ways, addressing the issue faster so that the video would not have spread to so many people. As we will see in the next stage, McIntyres internal communication team partnered
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with an external agency for future new media strategy work to ensure the online presence of Dominos. As McIntyre concluded in an interview, nothing is local anymore. Thats the challenge of the Web world. Any two idiots with a video camera and a dumb idea can damage the reputation of a 50-year old brand. (USA Today, Apr. 2009). Planning-prevention Just as in Coombs crisis preparation sub-stage, the planning-prevention stage focuses on actions made by the organization in order to be prepared when the crisis occurs. It mainly consists of selecting a crisis team and an online crisis plan that helps the organization in the process of dealing with the inevitable aspects of any crisis. According to Tim McIntyre, in 2009 Dominos was actively working on the creation of a social media team and had already created a strategy to launch the company in the online social environment: we were building a plan to introduce Dominos to Facebook, to Twitter and to some of the other relevant social media sites. The two major aims of the online strategy were to engage in an open dialogue with stakeholders and to allow the company to efficiently monitor mainstream and social media, thus staying up to date with relevant issues. Ironically, Dominos was planning to start implementing their online strategy just as the crisis occurred. McIntyre declared for The PR Strategist that [] we didnt want to just jump in without a strategy. We wanted to do it right. [] so we ended up having to jump in during the crisis, which was the opposite of how we wanted to do it. And our timing was off by a week. (The PR Strategist, Aug. 2009). In this context, Dominos was aware of the advantages of using the internet as an information resource. The company was already asking itself what actions it could proactively take to avoid a potential online crisis and minimize the negative consequences of such a crisis (Gonzalez-Herrero & Smith, 2008). Evidently, Dominos could have been much more prepared to deal with the challenges of an online crisis if the social media strategy would have been implemented at least a few weeks sooner. The experience gathered in the online environment, even if only for a short period of time, could have helped prepare the company better for the challenges of an unexpected online crisis that it was soon about to face.

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The crisis After the crisis outbreak, organizations need to put in practice all of the actions established by the crisis team in the planning-prevention stage. As Gonzalez-Herrero and Smith (2008) outlined in their model, the existence of the internet made Dominos crisis possible, acting like a triggering factor. The negative role of social media in this case was that within hours, the videos had been taken from YouTube and embedded or reposted on other sites, including popular blogs GoodAsYou and The Consumerist. Once this occurred, Dominos, as well as the two original posters, lost the ability to control the spreading of the videos or who viewed them (Peeples & Vaughn, 2009). McIntyre was obviously aware of the ability of online content to turn viral, as we can see in his response to the blogger who alerted him about the prank videos: the challenge that comes with the freedom of the Internet is that any idiot with a camera and an Internet link can do stuff like this [] and ruin the reputation of a brand thats nearly 50 years old. As a result, the posting of the videos on YouTube reflected some of the worst fears consumers have about food purchased in restaurants and represented the trigger event of Dominos online reputational crisis. Powered by social media, the videos and related discussions have quickly moved to Facebook, Twitter and many other social networking platforms. As we have mentioned earlier, Dominos did not have a well prepared crisis plan with actions ready to be performed after the outbreak of the crisis, but despite being unprepared, Dominos crisis team took some strategic measures to put the fire away and restore their online image. Once the organization realized that they were facing a real crisis situation the moment when McIntyre received the e-mail from the webmaster of GoodAsYou warning him about the presence of negative company-related videos McIntyres first reaction was to send the links to the videos to different Dominos key persons (social media team, head of security and senior management), informing them that This has been posted, we need to do something about it. Lets begin (The PR Strategist, Aug. 2009). According to theory, Dominos made sure that all its internal and external key stakeholders were aware of the crisis situation so that they could monitor and report all crisis outcomes from that moment on. When McIntyres social media team was alerted about the videos by a second blog, this time the well-known consumer affairs blog, The Consumerist, they immediately realized the
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dramatic impact on their stakeholders and on Dominos reputation. In this regard, McIntyre and his team began taking immediate actions to contain the crisis, identifying the employees and their location as soon as possible. Dominos captured stills of the videos and identified employees faces and distributed them to all of its US restaurants through the companys internal network. With the help of two readers of The Consumerist, who used different clues from the videos, innovative geo-mapping and other investigative tools, the company managed to find the location of the videos creators the same day. Next, Dominos contacted the local police and district attorney to investigate the incident and worked closely with the franchise owner to fire the two Dominos employees responsible for the crisis and bring in the local health department to sanitize the restaurant and discard all open food containers. Even though McIntyre received an e-mail from Kristi Hammond informing him that the food they had tampered with never left the store, he checked the orders system to make sure that none of the food had in fact been delivered. This way he found out that during that Sunday, no telephone calls had been registered, meaning that the sandwiches had never actually reached any clients. Both employees that appeared in the videos were now facing serious felony charges for violating multiple food health standards and were therefore arrested (TimeU.S. Apr. 2009). Taking note of legal implications in their strategic actions, Dominos acted according to law and made efforts to remove the videos from YouTube only after having obtained the copyright claim from Ms. Hammond, two days later after the initial posting. During the crisis, Dominos constantly used the internet to engage in two-way communication with its stakeholders in order to keep them informed on the development of the events, activity performed by only 44% of companies according to Perry and Taylors (2005) study on the use of new media tactics. At first, McIntyre and his team selected only readers of the two blogs that initially covered the incident as target audience for their crisis response, motivating his choice by stating that there are a lot of people who dont know about it; lets focus on talking to the audience thats talking to us.(The PR Strategist, Aug. 2009). The team kept the audience informed about all its ongoing actions and decisions by sharing updates and messages with both GoodAsYou and The Consumerist blogs. Dominos used the two popular blogs as communication channel to foster dialogue between the company and its audience.

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The decision to not issue a public press release right away was motivated by Dominos with the intention of not escalating the crisis by alerting even more people of the incident. This way, the company hoped that the crisis would soon blow over and considered that a public response to the videos would only attract more attention. However, the decision to not go public was in fact an unfortunate one because by Wednesday, just two days later, propelled by Twitter and other social media platforms, the first YouTube video turned viral and reached more than one million views. TV, radio and Web news stories ricocheted around the world and Dominos found itself right in the middle of the toughest situation [] in terms of a digital crisis, as stated by the managing director and head of the United States crisis practice at the PR firm Burson-Marsteller (The NYTimes, Apr. 2009). McIntyres social media team soon discovered that discussions of the incident spread on Twitter and that most reactions were now not about how terrible the videos were, but more focused on the companys reaction to them, as observed in comments such as Does Dominos know about this?, What is Dominos doing about it? and How come they [Dominos] are not talking to anybody? (Twitter, Aug. 2009). As a result, McIntyre acknowledged that Dominos initial crisis management strategy was inappropriate in terms of social media potential, admitting that what we missed was the perpetual mushroom effect of viral sensations (The PR Strategist, Aug. 2009). This so-called mushroom effect had spread the crisis very far in a very short period of time and the company learned that news outlets from Peru, China, Greece and United Kingdom were running the story and that Dominos as a search word had surpassed Paris Hilton for the first time ever (The PR Strategist, Aug. 2009). Moreover, references to the videos were in five out of twelve results on the first page of Google search for the same word (The NYTimes, Apr. 2009). Under these circumstances, Dominos took the next strategic step and adapted its strategy to include a much wider audience. As a result, the company posted an official statement on its corporate website, called Update to our Valued Customers, in which it explained the situation and the effect it had on the company. Additionally, an apology video was created and uploaded on YouTube and a visible link was added to it on the company website. The video had all of the elements required by an effective crisis management strategy, as theory suggests: it featured Dominos Pizza CEO, Patrick Doyle, who personally addressed stakeholders and described in detail the actions that Dominos had already taken and would
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take in the future (employees fired, warrants issued for their arrest, store shut down and sanitized, re-examining hiring practices). The CEO also apologized for the incident and thanked the online community for its support and for bringing the issue to the companys attention. To make the message spread even faster, Dominos asked all employees to use their own Twitter accounts to tweet links to both the video and website response. Later that day, Dominos created its first corporate Twitter and Facebook accounts in an attempt to engage as many stakeholders as possible in an open and honest dialogue (TimeUS, Apr. 2009). The post-crisis Eventually, all organizations return to their usual business environment after the crisis comes to an end, but even though the crisis is no longer the main focus of management, it still requires some attention. As recommended by crisis theory, Dominos took action and engaged its stakeholders in follow-up communication to keep them informed and to respond to inquiries, even though the crisis was no longer in public attention. Dominos thanked its customers for the support shown during the difficult moments on their corporate website and sent personal thank you e-mail messages to the bloggers who helped McIntyre right from the beginning of the crisis. Since stakeholder perceptions are very important during a crisis, an evaluation of what happened and how the organization responded was necessary. After an in-depth analysis of all internet content related to the events, as theory suggests, Dominos understood the huge importance of social media, especially during a crisis, and created a social media specialist position at the companys headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan to be the eyes and the ears of Dominos in the social media space (The PR Strategist, Aug. 2009). McIntyres social media team strengthened Dominos online presence by actively using the newly-created Facebook and Twitter accounts, in an effort to stay connected with all stakeholders: were using this to answer consumer questions - to promote new products []. And then when things happen, were aware of them, the Vice President of Communications noted (The PR Strategist, Aug. 2009). A crisis that happened in the online environment has long lasting effects that are almost impossible to eradicate (Gonzalez-Herrero & Smith, 2008). Negative publicity remains on the web even after the crisis ends even today, people can still view Dominos videos on GoodAsYou and The Consumerist but companies that clearly showed that they have learnt

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from their mistakes and changed their communication style, like Domino did, will be able to prevent and protect themselves from a similar future online crisis. The data collected and used to analyze Dominos crisis management strategy in relation to Gonzalez-Herrero and Smiths (2008) online crisis management model helped us realize the strengths and weaknesses of the companys strategy. They will be identified and discussed later on in the paper, but not before Dominos approach on the crisis response has also been analyzed.

V.1.5. Dominos crisis response strategies

The following section explores, from a communicative point of view, the response strategies Dominos used during and after the crisis in its attempt to rebuild the damaged reputation, using Coombs (1995) crisis response theory as point of reference. As we have already seen, Dominos found out about the videos on Monday and officially reacted only 48 hours later, after the incident had already become viral and was covered by mainstream and social media all over the world. At that point, Dominos was confronting with a serious reputational crisis in the eyes of the public. Since the two employees committed what customers of the food industry fear the most sanitary and health standard violations Dominos realized that it needed to adopt excellent response strategies to repair its stained reputation and regain its customers trust. According to Coombs (1995), an organization can respond to accusations of wrongdoing in many ways, ranging from complete denial to acceptance of blame and asking for forgiveness. Since we have already established that Dominos crisis is a transgression type, positioned on the intentional/internal axis, we will now consider the other factors that influence the approach of crisis response. The videos posted by the two employees represent proof of evidence that a crisis really exists, acting as testimony of the incident. When assessing the level of damage, it becomes obvious that the two employees did major damage to the organizations image. Reactions such as Oh, My God. Im never eating at Dominos again or My children eat at Dominos, I hope this is a bad joke (GoodAsYou, Apr. 2009) clearly demonstrate that stakeholders perceived the crisis as being severe, since customer health might have been affected. However, as the contaminated food never got delivered to customers, the incident did not have any victims. Judging by its worldwide success and its trustworthy brand, we observe that Dominos has a positive performance history, being

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perceived as a company that gained credibility in the eyes of its stakeholders by delivering quality food for many decades. According to what Coombs (1995) explained in his decision flowchart, a transgression action where the evidence is true, with major damage and a positive performance history requires a mortification strategy coupled with ingratiation. Just as theory suggests, Dominos took these aspects into consideration when choosing a response to the crisis and rightfully adopted ingratiation and mortification strategies. The companys first official response to the crisis was to post a statement on its corporate website. In it, Dominos used bolstering as tactic and reminded their valued customers of the positive history performance of the company: a couple of individuals suddenly overshadow the hard work performed by the 125.000 men and women working for Dominos across the nation and in 60 countries around the world. (dominosbiz.com). The company combined this ingratiation strategy with two mortification tactics repentance and rectification. Dominos assured its stakeholders that corrective measures had already been taken in order to prevent a similar situation: Since the videos first surfaced yesterday, the two workers have been identified, fired and the affected franchisee has filed a criminal complaint against them, and there are warrants for their arrest. (dominosbiz.com). At the end of the statement, Dominos asked for forgiveness and apologized for the crisis: We apologize for the actions of these individuals, and thank you for your continued support of Dominos Pizza. (dominosbiz.com). Shortly after posting the statement, Dominos realized that adopting the same mortification strategies, but this time using social media platforms, would reach even more stakeholders and would help restore a stained reputation. Therefore, Dominos posted a video on YouTube in which the CEO publicly apologizes for the crisis. The CEO used the same tactics of repentance, rectification and bolstering just as in the statement, adding that there is nothing more important or sacred to us than our customers trust (official YouTube apology video). Even though the CEO accepted blame and took responsibility for the crisis, he also adopted a suffering strategy and portrayed the company as a victim of the crisis. He separated the company from the two wrongdoers, emphasizing on the fact that their actions were a hoax and that this is not how things roll at Dominos. In an interview for AdvertisingAge, McIntyre explained that theres a limit to the things that a company can do to prevent a situation like this: you can be the safest driver, you know but there is going to be that Friday night someones drunk and comes out of nowhere; you can do the best you can, but
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theres going to be the equivalent of that drunk driver that hits the innocent victim, concluding that Dominos didnt do this, it was something that was done to us (Jaffe, 2010). Dominos considered that the apology video was not enough to regain its customers trust and in order to rebuild the strength of its brand, it created corporate Twitter and Facebook accounts in which it placed links to the video and issued bolstering statements such as we care about our customers and Dominos Pizza does great things for your community (Towner, 2009). Regarding the store in which the incident happened, McIntyre told a local TV news outlet that The franchise owner is responsible for his actions, and he will be held accountable (Independent Street, Apr. 2009). This response came right after Dominos executives found out from the local police department that the female employee was a registered sex offender. The company claimed that, according to law, the franchisee owner has autonomy in setting menu prices and hiring employees and that it was up to him to ensure that all operations and employees met the standards of Dominos brand. In accordance to Coombs (1995) theory, after finding out that the restaurant owner had hired a registered sex offender against Dominos standards, the company distanced itself from full responsibility and excused the company in the eyes of customers by partially scapegoating the franchisee owner for the incident. Dominos managed to find a suitable approach during the whole crisis and maintained a tone of customer gratitude and care throughout. The choice of accepting responsibility and culpability for the crisis ensured Dominos a successful crisis communication strategy. Benoit, researcher in the field of image restoration, generally applauded Dominos approach, by stating People do not like to admit theyre wrong, but they do like to hear other people admit it. When someone does fess up, people tend to respect you for having the courage to admit it. (The Washington Post, Jan. 2010).

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V.2. United Breaks Guitars

V.2.1. United Airlines: company background United Airlines Inc. is one of the largest and oldest commercial airlines in the world, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It employs around 48.000 people worldwide and has a fleet of 359 aircraft (UA press release, Aug. 2009). Uniteds history dates back to 1926, when a small airmail company called Varney Air Lines was founded in Idaho, US. Varney steadily increased its operations and in 1934 it merged with Pacific Air Transport, Boeing Air Transport and National Air Transport to form United Airlines (Davies, 1998). In the 1930s the company made history when it became the first airline in the world to introduce stewardesses on its flights, thus opening up the aviation industry to women (Chasing the Sun, PBS, 2011). A second merger followed in 1961 with Capital Airlines, turning United into the worlds second largest airline. In the coming decades the airline grew, increasing its fleet, destinations, number of passengers carried and subsequently its financial revenue. From the 1960s until the 1990s, United Airlines was highly cherished for excellent customer service and its famous slogan come fly the friendly skies was a well-known and well-deserved motto (Lawrence and Teinowitz, 1996). However, the 1990s marked the start of a period of decline for United and the airline experienced a decrease in employee and customer satisfaction (Johnsson, 2009). In the mid 90s, pilots and other employees went on massive strikes, resulting in the cancellation of over 30.000 flights and thousands of delays (Arndt, 2000). Although the 2001 September 11 terrorist attacks were a serious blow to the entire airline industry, they represented a true challenge for Uniteds future, as two of the four hijacked planes were UA flights. Because of the attacks and an overall company decline, United Airlines filed for bankruptcy in 2002 and managed to survive until 2006 when bankruptcy ended, although it had not fully recovered (Johnsson, 2009). According to the United States Bureau of Transportation Statistics, in 2007 United ranked next to last among 20 of the largest US airlines in terms of on-time performance and had the second most frequently delayed flight (a route that was late 97% of the time). The year 2009 brought United even more blows to its already damaged reputation, when the airline was seriously criticized for raising checked baggage fees from $5 to $20 as well as for the arrest of a UA pilot who intended to lead a transatlantic flight under the influence of alcohol
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(Bunch, 2009). The same year the airline confronted with the United Breaks Guitars crisis and with even more negative press coverage when the singers luggage which ironically contained CDs of his song about United got lost on a UA flight four months after the first song was posted online (Soule, 2010). These and many other events led to a serious decline in United Airlines once favourable reputation, fact confirmed by the University of Michigans American Customer Satisfaction Index in 2009: Uniteds customer satisfaction rates ranked last among American airlines in two of the three years examined (Johnsson, 2009). In the following part we focus on one particular event that greatly contributed to Uniteds decline in corporate reputation, namely the 2009 United Breaks Guitars (UBG) crisis, named this way by the media after the three songs which drew massive public awareness of the incident online. V.2.2. Crisis facts and timeline In order to understand why the incident is truly a crisis and to properly analyze the way in which United managed it we have drafted a brief timeline of the events that led to the crisis outbreak and of the airlines subsequent response. Introduced in chronological order, the data was taken from Dave Carrolls own recollection of the events as written on his official website (http://www.davecarrollmusic.com/ubg/story/). We shall then use the timeline to build a short description of the events, which will represent the starting point of a thorough analysis of the crisis and of the companys crisis management and communication strategies.

United Airlines crisis timeline

March 31, 2008 Dave Carroll and his band Sons of Maxwell board a UA flight from Halifax, Canada to Omaha, USA via Chicago and witness guitar cases (including Carrolls) being thrown on the tarmac by United baggage handlers Carroll notifies the flight attendants but is told to discuss the issue with the ground crew in Omaha (who is nowhere to be found after the plane lands) April 1st, 2008 April 8, 2008 Carroll discovers that the neck of his guitar is broken Carroll takes up the issue with a United employee, who tells him to start a claim at the Halifax airport In Halifax, an Air Canada employee acknowledges the damage and starts a claim but denies Air Canadas responsibility
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April June 2008 Carroll has several telephone discussions with United customer service agents from India regarding the claim but they are unable to help him July 2008 Carroll is eventually directed to the Chicago baggage offices of United and is asked to bring the guitar for inspection to Chicago (from Canada) The musician is told to contact the UA Central Baggage office in New York and then faxes United all of the documents relating to the issue August 2008 Carroll calls United again but is notified that no fax had been received The fax is eventually found and Carroll is told to call back in a few days, but when he does the number is no longer in service The musician pays $1200 to have his $3500 guitar repaired Carroll calls customer service agents in India again and is promised that a Chicago representative will contact him September 2008 Carroll receives a letter notifying him that he will soon be contacted regarding the issue The singer receives an email from a United representative (Ms. Irlweg) who denies his claim Carroll and Ms. Irlweg exchange a series of emails which conclude with the musician unsuccessfully asking for a settlement of $1200 in flight vouchers and promising to share his negative experience with the world using social media United Breaks Guitars (song #1) is uploaded on YouTube and gathers over 150.000 views in its first day (CBC News, 2009) News of the video and incident appear in traditional and new media (including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, ABC News, CNN, etc.) United Airlines tries to contact Carroll and issues the first statements about the incident on Twitter July 10, 2009 Carroll is contacted by a United representative, who apologizes and offers him money and flight vouchers United donates $3.000 to charity, as asked by Carroll, and tweets about the donation August 14, 2009 United Vice President of Customer Contact Centers gives an interview on
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October 2008

November 2008

July 6, 2009

July 7, 2009

a blog (elliott.com) regarding the incident and first video August 17, 2009 August 18, 2009 August 21, 2009 United Breaks Guitars Song 2 is uploaded on YouTube United spokesperson comments on elliot.com regarding the second video United spokesperson makes two comments on a National Post article that covers the incident United Breaks Guitars Song 3 United We Stand on the Right Side of Right is uploaded on YouTube

March 1st, 2010

In March 31st 2008, Dave Carroll, a professional musician from Canada, was traveling with his band Sons of Maxwell from Halifax, Canada to Omaha, Nebraska US as part of a concert tour in the United States. In Chicago, after having boarded a connecting flight, Carroll and other passengers witnessed how United baggage handlers were throwing guitar cases (including his) on the tarmac. The musician notified three flight attendants and was told to discuss the issue with the ground crew in Omaha, who was in fact nowhere to be found upon landing. The second day, Carroll noticed that despite having been packed into a padded hard case, his $3500 acoustic Taylor guitar had been broken around the neck. After their tour ended, Carroll and his band returned to Omaha where he brought up the issue with a United representative but was told to file a claim in Halifax. At the Canadian airport, Air Canada employees acknowledged the damage and helped Carroll file a claim, although they denied responsibility and instructed him to contact United. A long and unsuccessful period of around four months followed in which Carroll exchanged many telephone calls with customer service agents from Uniteds outsourced Indian offices, who eventually directed him to the baggage office in Chicago. He was then told to bring the guitar for inspection to Chicago and after explaining that the very long distance made him unable to fulfill their request, he was once again passed on to another office, this time in New York. This office was as well unable to help him and as the telephone number he was given got disconnected a few weeks later, Carroll had no chance but to once again contact the representatives from India. Around six months had already passed since the incident and the full-time musician was forced to have his guitar repaired for $1.200. Unwilling to give up, Carroll continued to correspond with United employees and after about a month he received a letter with no contact information informing him that a representative will get in touch soon. An additional month passed and a United employee
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named M. Irlweg sent Carroll an email rejecting his claim for the following reasons (Dave Carroll Music, Aug. 2011): o The incident was not reported to United employees upon landing in Omaha (although Carroll tried but could not find any) o He failed to report the damage to the Omaha airport within 24 hours (even though the musician had a tour schedule to follow) o Someone from United would still need to see the damage (despite the fact that Carroll had been forced to repair his guitar in the meantime and that the damage had already been acknowledged by United airline partner Air Canada) After having exchanged several emails with Ms. Irlweg, Carroll was denied permission to contact her manager and his final offer of settlement (consisting of $1.200 in flight vouchers) was irrevocably denied. In a final email to Ms. Irlweg, the musician promised to write three songs detailing his negative experience with United Airlines and to upload videos on YouTube for each song, aiming to reach one million views within a year. He then completely gave up contacting United Airlines but started working on the songs and as a result about eight months later, in July 2009, Carroll uploaded the first promised music video to YouTube, naming it United Breaks Guitars. The video quickly turned viral and drew massive attention from both social and traditional media, gathering over 2.5 million views and 13.000 comments on YouTube alone in just six days following its upload (Social Media Today, Jul. 2009). In the following part, we demonstrate why the incident qualifies as a corporate crisis and we continue by analyzing Uniteds crisis management strategies. V.2.3. Crisis type and characteristics According to Coombss (2007) definition, which encompasses the views of several other well-known researchers, a crisis is the perception of an unpredictable event that threatens important expectancies of stakeholders and can seriously impact an organizations performance and generate negative outcomes. With this in mind, we believe that the incident between Carroll and United Airlines represented a crisis for the airline for three major reasons. First, United clearly violated the expectations of many of its stakeholders (particularly customers) as it resulted from the huge number of comments to Carrolls first song (over 13.000 in under a week): content analysis performed on a sample of around 400
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comments concluded that an overwhelming 83% of commentators supported the musician and criticized United and the airline industry in general (Soule, 2010). Second, the massive media attention that the incident received had a significant impact on the company, who was forced to promise a revision of its customer service practices and take action to minimize damage to its reputation. And third, the event had serious negative outcomes for United, including financially, as reported by The Times (Jul.2009): [] within four days of the song going online, the gathering thunderclouds of bad PR caused United Airlines stock price to suffer a mid-flight stall, and it plunged by 10 percent, costing shareholders $180 million although this statement was later questioned in the media, as the huge stock price decrease was also attributed to other factors (The Huffington Post, Aug. 2009). The UBG crisis perfectly matches the characteristics of Pearson and Mitroffs (1993) crisis dimensions theory, which states that crises: are highly visible Carrolls videos drew massive online and offline public awareness of the incident; require immediate attention the issue was immediately placed on Uniteds agenda as they realized that the first video was turning viral; contain an element of surprise the airline did not anticipate the huge number of people and media channels that the video would reach; have a need for action United was forced to contact Carroll and to apologize, promising a remediation of the issue; are outside the organizations complete control United had no choice but to observe how the video was rapidly spreading on traditional media and especially on new media platforms, despite having promised to change their practices. Depending on various theoretical classifications of crises, UBG may be placed in more than one category. After a synthesis of several typologies explored in the first chapter of our paper, the event can be identified as a non-violent, organizational and immediate crisis. According to Coombs (2005) four-axis typology, UBG lies in the human-error accidents category, since Carrolls guitar was accidentally broken due to the negligent behavior of United baggage handlers, who are internal stakeholders of the airline. As it was triggered in the online environment, with social media acting as main distribution channels, the event may be viewed as part of the rather recent phenomenon of online corporate crises, which affected many organizations during the past few years. Additionally, since Carrolls purpose was to attract public attention on Uniteds defective customer service practices, thus weakening its already stained reputation, we identify the event as a reputational crisis.
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Having established the nature and characteristics of the UBG crisis, we can now try to shed light on its strategic dimension, analyzing United Airlines crisis management and communication strategies so that we can later conclude whether the airline employed effective actions or not and decide the role played by social media in the entire issue. V.2.4. Uniteds crisis management strategy Unlike Dominos crisis, which had no clear warning signs and was therefore very difficult to anticipate, Uniteds crisis was triggered more than a year after the broken guitar incident first appeared. Because the incident happened and developed in the offline environment (except for email exchanges), we shall analyze the airlines actions relating to both Coombs and the Gonzalez-Herrero & Smith models. Recognizing the potential of social media, Carroll chose to upload his videos to YouTube in order to share his experience with the general public, which meant that the online environment instantly became the main battlefield for the UBG crisis. Due to this aspect, Uniteds actions taken after the crisis blew will be mainly analyzed with reference to Gonzalez-Herrero and Smiths online-oriented theoretical recommendations. Signal detection/prevention (issues management) According to Coombs (2007), during the signal detection sub-stage organizations must actively scan for issues that have the potential of turning into crises and then properly evaluate their risks. During the prevention sub-stage, these issues must be then acted upon so that a potential crisis is defused. The purpose of both sub-stages is the same as GonzalezHerrero and Smiths (2008) issues management stage, who agree that companies must scan for such issues on both traditional and online media channels as well as in everyday company operations. In United Airlines case, it is obvious that Dave Carrolls claim to have his guitar repaired became a clear warning sign the instant it was started and continued to become even clearer as his efforts were increasing. However, United employees did not consider it necessary to treat it as such, especially since the airline (and basically all other airlines) often deals with similar claims. The fact that United completely ignored the crisis potential of the issue was made evident right from the start by the way several employees responded to Carrolls first efforts to draw attention on the seriousness of the incident. Seconds after the baggage handlers were spotted throwing his guitar case and dropping it on the tarmac, Carroll notified three United
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employees: a flight attendant, who told him to contact the lead agent, the acting lead agent, who refused to discuss the matter and a boarding gate employee, who told him to notify the ground crew in Omaha (Dave Carroll Music website, Aug. 2011). In other words, two company representatives denied responsibility, passing it on to others, while a third (who was probably in the best position to take measures) completely ignored him. After his plane landed, Carroll tried to notify United ground crew members of the incident, but was unable to find any so he left Omaha for his bands tour. A week later, the issue became even more serious after Carroll contacted United again upon finding out that his expensive professional guitar had been broken in the fall. Despite the fact that a relatively minor incident involving negligent employees turned into a legal case of property damage, United once again failed to properly assess the seriousness of the situation and passed their customer, who had already started a claim and showed the damage to Air Canada employees, from one representative to another. Throughout the following several months, United continued to demonstrate the inability to properly assess the issue as a potential crisis, even though Carroll insistently tried to obtain financial compensation for his loss but was clearly ignored on multiple occasions. Another clear opportunity for United Airlines to recognize the issues potential to damage the company came when a customer relations representative (Ms. Irlweg) eventually contacted Carroll as a result of his continuing efforts to have his claim fulfilled. A series of emails with Ms. Irlweg concluded with Carrolls claim and subsequent settlement offer being denied. The final and most obvious warning sign was Carrolls promise to Ms. Irlweg to share his entire negative experience with as many people as possible using social media. Even though the musician expressed his direct intention of damaging Uniteds reputation using a method through which many large companies had already been affected, the airline completely failed to consider the direct threat of a dissatisfied customer as the warning sign of a potential crisis. Crisis preparation (planning-prevention) Because United failed to properly assess the incident as a warning sign, the airline did not take any measures to prepare for a potential crisis. Coombs (2007) explains that in the crisis preparation sub-stage, organizations should prepare for an upcoming crisis by taking several measures: diagnosing vulnerabilities, assessing the type of the crisis, creating a crisis
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management team (CMT), designating and training a spokesperson, developing a crisis management plan (CMP) and finally reviewing the crisis communication strategy. GonzalezHerrero and Smith (2008) agree and add several recommendations: develop a crisis manual online, check both online and regular media, evaluate and prepare company online resources for the crisis (website, blog, social and professional network profiles, etc) and create and test an online crisis plan. While acknowledging and implementing all recommendations would have proven beneficial to United, the more online-oriented ones would have especially helped since the crisis developed primarily on the web. However, United was caught completely unprepared when the crisis finally erupted. The crisis As previously discussed, every crisis starts with a trigger event (Coombs, 2007). In UBGs case, the trigger event was the upload of Carrolls promised first song to YouTube. As the video turned viral almost instantly, United soon understood that it was facing a crisis and decided to take action in order to minimize the damage. According to crisis management theory, speed and transparency are two very important aspects that every company has to be aware of while managing crises. United has indeed shown speed in its initial response, although the single communication channel the airline initially chose proved insufficient. The second day following the videos upload, United posted four tweets on their Twitter page, which as resulting from their website at the time, was the companys only official social media channel (Soule, 2010). The tweets were all posted as responses to users that followed Uniteds Twitter page, informing them that United representatives had already tried to personally contact Carroll to make it right (UnitedAirlines, 2009). In less than 24 hours after Carroll posted his video on YouTube, the song had already spread on YouTube, Twitter and blogs and it was just a matter of time before it would start spreading to traditional media. This happened the same day (July 7), when news of the video and incident got covered by major publications, including the Los Angeles Times, USA Today and the Chicago Tribune (Social Media Today, Jul. 2009). United acknowledged that the issue was gaining more and more attention and that the crisis was escalating. As a result, Uniteds spokesperson R. Urbanski issued a statement which appeared on several traditional media channels, explaining that efforts to contact Carroll had been made and that his video
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had provided the airline with a unique learning opportunity (CBS News, Jul. 2009). However, it remains unclear whether United was approached by the media for the statement or if they issued it themselves. Contrary to what the Gonzalez-Herrero and Smith model suggests, the airline did not issue press releases or any other forms of information regarding the ongoing crisis on their website (Social Media Today, Jul. 2009). Although United had started a corporate YouTube channel one year before the crisis (http://www.youtube.com/user/uniteditstimetofly), this communication medium was not used by the company in its crisis management strategy. A third opportunity to engage with stakeholders who were actively searching for information on the incident was a United Airlines unofficial Facebook fan page (which counted over 9.000 fans in July 2009), but this channel was also ignored (Social Media Today, Jul. 2009). On July 10, when the video had already been viewed by over 1.3 million people on YouTube alone, Uniteds Managing Director of Customer Solutions personally contacted Carroll to apologize for the incident, admitting that the incident should have been resolved much sooner, and offered him $1.200 to cover the costs of the damage and a matching amount in flight vouchers (Rolling Stone, Jul. 2009; Dunne, 2010). This action was basically United Airlines main strategy to combat the effects of the crisis, namely to fulfill the request Carroll had made over a year earlier and to apologize for its poor customer service. However, the musician declined any financial compensation and suggested that the money should be donated to charity. As a result, United donated $3.000 to a music institute for children and posted three tweets informing of their actions, one of them in response to a users previous tweet (The Times, Jul. 2009). Interviewed about the incident, Uniteds spokesperson told reporters about the donation and declared that Carrolls video will be used internally as training for customer service agents in order to avoid future similar incidents. During the following days (July 13-14), United posted three more tweets on their Twitter account, replying to users that the airline had apologized to Carroll and that it has learned from its mistakes (United Twitter page, Jul. 2009). These tweets as well as several declarations in mainstream media (newspapers) reminding about their actions and promising to improve their customer services basically represented the airlines final efforts to stop the crisis from spreading.

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The post-crisis After the crisis ends and its effects start to diminish, crisis theory suggests that organizations must take several measures to ensure a full recovery, evaluate their strategies and monitor the issues that led to the crisis outbreak (Coombs, 2007). Specific recommendations include the monitoring of crisis-related issues on social media, continuing to engage stakeholders about the crisis, updating the companys own online channels and creating clear strategies to rebuild the damaged reputation (Gonzalez-Herrero & Smith, 2008). However, when dealing with crises that developed primarily online, it is almost impossible to determine their ending, because information on the events that led to their outbreak remains on the web and may be accessed years after. This is particularly true in Uniteds case, as Carrolls first video continued to gather views and information of the incident was still shared online many months after its upload. We could consider that the crisis started to die down in intensity after United made the donation, apologized to Carroll and promised to prevent future incidents from happening. However, the public attention given to the entire issue did not disappear that easily. In August 2009, Carroll uploaded his second promised video, which placed the spotlight on his negative experience once again. Of course, the effect of this video was not as powerful as the first one and it received significantly less media coverage and thus public attention. United Airlines did not make any official statements regarding the second video on their website or other social media platforms (YouTube and Twitter), although some efforts to reach stakeholders were made. The main action in this regard was an interview given by the United Airlines Vice President of Customer Contact Centers to a well-known consumer advocate and journalist on his website (www.elliott.org). In the interview, Uniteds VP stated that the airline regretted the incident, had taken measures to change their customer service strategy and had learned about the power of social media and the implications it has on reputation (Elliott, 2009). The day following the second videos upload, the airlines spokesperson commented on the same blog to remind stakeholders that Carroll had been contacted and to assure of the fact that the incident had been an isolated event (Soule, 2010). Several days later, the spokesperson commented once again on an online article of the Canadian newspaper National Post, in which she reminded readers that the airline regretted the incident and had already taken action to prevent similar ones from happening (National Post, Aug. 2009).
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Although United assured stakeholders that actions had been taken to prevent similar incidents from happening, the airline never issued any information regarding specific steps it had allegedly taken to change internal practices. In March 2010, around eight months after the second video appeared, Carroll uploaded his third and final music video to YouTube. This time, however, the video received even less public attention and was mainly seen as the promised final update to the entire issue, which had already reached its peak of audience a year earlier with the upload of the first clip. Even though the video and recollections of the events appeared on some media channels, United took no action as it had probably considered the issue long closed. V.2.5. Uniteds crisis response strategy In previous chapters of our paper we have seen that communication, under the form of crisis response strategies, is an integral part of crisis management. Because it obviously has different characteristics than Dominos crisis, United Breaks Guitars classifies in a separate category when placed in Coombs crisis typology and as a result a different response strategy may be required. Having already established that UBG is a human-error accident type of crisis, we draw our attention on Coombs three other factors to decide which strategy should United have used according to theory. The first factor, veracity of evidence, refers to the existence of proof that the incident which sparked the crisis occurred or not. In Uniteds case, the fact that Carrolls guitar had been broken was never denied by the airline, as evidence had been presented by the musician to Air Canada employees in the shape of damage acknowledgement and the subsequent filling of a claim. As damage is susceptible to perception, we consider the opinion of external stakeholders as relevant in this case, and damage worth $1.200 to an expensive, custom-made $3.500 guitar was mainly viewed as serious in the eyes of the public. As a result, Carroll rightfully posed as a victim of the airlines negligence, asking for financial compensation. The final factor, performance history, played an important role in the issue, as in recent years United Airlines had acquired a poor reputation for customer service. This was made evident by the mostly negative feedback stakeholders gave during the crisis, many of whom had suffered similar experiences with United. Given these factors, United should have theoretically chosen a mortification strategy, since this type of crisis response proved successful in the case of companies with a negative
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performance history that had been through accident-related crises with significant financial damage (Coombs, 1995; Cornelissen, 2008). Mortification (also called acceptance strategies) includes remediation, repentance and rectification, tactics used by companies perceived as being responsible for and that accept full culpability of the crisis. Considering the various messages (in tweets, comments and interviews) sent by United during and after the crisis, we can observe that the airline had in fact used all three tactics in their response strategy, but also several others. Remediation As previously mentioned, remediation is a tactic through which an organization promises some form of compensation or help to victims. This tactic was used right from the beginning by United, who wrote on Twitter the day following the upload of the first video: @Kelly_MacD This has struck a chord w/ us and weve contacted him directly to make it right (UnitedAirlines, Jul. 2009). The same tweet was reposted a few hours later, but United did not specify what make it right meant. The airlines spokeswoman, R. Urbanski, gave the same message on traditional media, in statements that appeared in several large publications (CBS News, The Globe and Mail, Los Angeles Times, etc.). Urbanski, who was quoted in most of the articles, added that a meeting had been scheduled with Carroll so that United could find out how to properly compensate him (Los Angeles Times, Jul. 2009). On July 10, after the meeting between Carroll and United representatives had taken place, the airline issued statements for reporters and tweeted twice that the musician had been offered financial compensation for his loss, but as he preferred a donation to charity instead of accepting the money, $3.000 had been donated to the Thelonius Monk Institute of Jazz (UnitedAirlines, Jul. 2009; The Times, Jul. 2009). Uniteds donation was mentioned in the media for the next several days, both online and offline, and represented a first attempt to gain public sympathy by compensating Carroll. Repentance and rectification While the first message sent out only announced that Carroll had been contacted to be given compensation, this response tactic was used in parallel with others. On several occasions, the airline expressed its regret for what had happened and apologized, first on Twitter and then on traditional media: @rockitdev Love your clients video. Not all r as honest as he. That is why policy asks for claims w/in 24 hours. No excuse; were sorry and
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@jtkola Nope. That was a mistake that we made, have apologized for, have fixed, and most importantly, learned from too.(UnitedAirlines, Jul. 2009). This was a tactic of repentance, in which blame is admitted and apologies are made, and was coupled with rectification (promising to take corrective action to prevent a similar crisis from happening): @JRGarcia It is excellent [the video] and that is why we would like to use it for training purposes so everyone receives better service from us (UnitedAirlines, Jul. 2009). The intention of using Carrolls video as internal training for better customer service was expressed again in a tweet and several times in a statement for journalists: "While we mutually agree this should have been fixed much sooner, Dave's excellent video provides us with something we can use for training purposes to ensure that all customers receive better service from us" (National Post, Jul. 2009). Uniteds VP of customer service reinforced the promise to make internal changes in the interview given on August 14, but even when asked about specific details, she only gave an ambiguous answer (Elliott, 2009). Apart from all three mortification tactics, United also used bolstering (drawing attention on positive aspects of the company) and praising others (seeking approval from others by praising them), both being ingratiation strategies. Bolstering and praising others In several occasions, United tried to minimize the crisiss damage by drawing stakeholders attention on positive actions and statistics of the airline. In one online comment, the companys spokesperson stated that 99.95 percent of our customers bags are delivered on-time and without incident, including instruments that belong to many Grammy awardwinning musicians (National Post, Jul. 2009). The statement was mentioned in mainstream media several times as well (The Globe and Mail, Jul. 2009; National Post, Jul. 2009). This tactic was again used by United VP in her interview, who said I think people would be amazed at our track record in which more than 99.95 percent of our guests bags are delivered on-time and with no damage whatsoever and added that we ranked No. 1 in ontime performance among the five major U.S. network carriers year-to-date through May and though we did slip a bit in June, we are back to fighting it out for the top spot in July (Elliott, 2009). Aiming to gain public sympathy, United applauded Carrolls efforts several times in its messages, praising his talent and integrity. On Twitter, United wrote love your clients
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video. Not all r as honest as he, cant wait 2 make music w/Dave and called the first video excellent (UnitedAirlines, Jul. 2009). Additionally, United VP mentioned the musical talent and expertise demonstrated by Mr. Carroll and the airlines spokesperson was quoted in mainstream media to have loved the song, which according to her was excellent (Elliot, 2009; USA Today, Jul. 2009; National Post, Jul. 2009). The spokesperson took this tactic even further, claiming in a comment that she and the musician have in fact become BFFs (best friends forever) since the incident: As Dave's new BFF at United, I look forward to making music w/ him on video three! (National Post, Aug. 2009). Surprisingly, United made use of another tactic in one of its messages, when the companys same spokeswoman tried to deny that a crisis still existed (using clarification), this time showing no sympathy towards the musicians negative experience with the airline: He has made his point, we have since worked with him directly to fix, and in addition to unfairly singling out one of our people, the second video is suggesting we do something that weve already done and that is to provide our agents with a better way to escalate and respond to special situations. While his anecdotal experience is unfortunate, the fact is that 99.95 percent of our customers bags are delivered on-time and without incident (Elliot, 2009). The statement came after the second video was uploaded, and United was obviously trying to convince stakeholders that the crisis was over, insisting on the fact that it had already contacted Carroll and taken measures to fix the wrongdoing.

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VI.

Discussion and conclusions

VI.1. Discussion
The analysis performed on the two companies strategic and communicative efforts in managing the crises has given us interesting insight. Before drawing any conclusions, we consider it worthy to mention an obvious difference between the two crises regarding perception of responsibility for the events. In Dominos case, the incident that led to the outbreak of the crisis, namely the actions of the two employees, was not perceived as being primarily the companys fault and thus Dominos which also had a favourable reputation benefited of a somewhat supportive public. This does not mean, of course, that Dominos had an easier task in managing the crisis, as stakeholders were still expecting partial admittance of blame, clear corrective actions and openness to dialogue. In Uniteds case, however, the incident that sparked the crisis was different in nature and was entirely perceived as the companys fault. Coupled with the fact that in recent years United had acquired a reputation for poor customer service, it was evident that the airline would have to deal with a criticizing audience right from the start. This meant that United was expected to show full transparency and honesty in its crisis approach if it wanted a good chance of regaining public trust. Looking back at the overall strategy used by Dominos Pizza in its crisis management approach, we consider that the company made proof of good strategic efforts to successfully end the crisis and preserve a favourable reputation. The popular fast-food chain took most measures that Gonzalez-Herrero and Smiths model recommends, and its strategy was met with mainly critical acclaim by the general public and corporate communication practitioners for several reasons. First, Dominos decision to use its CEO to personally address stakeholders was very well received by the public and media and was one of the initial obvious attempts to connect to stakeholders on a non-corporate, more personal level. As Stock (2008) mentions, although unfortunately few companies choose to do so, using the CEO to address the public is a good first start in regaining public trust. Moreover, the companys unconventional decision to name the official apology video using bad grammar (Disgusting Dominos People Dominos Respond), just as the two employees had named theirs, was another attempt to reach stakeholders in the same non-corporate manner.

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Second, Dominos took effective actions during and after the crisis using resources from both the offline and online environments. In accordance to any traditional crisis management theory, the company took quick action to find out who the perpetrators in the videos were, took legal action against them, made sure that no customer had in fact received the food and sanitized the restaurant, all through close cooperation with internal (employees) and external stakeholders (web users, police, health department, etc.). Online, Dominos took many actions recommended by theory: placed visible crisis-related links on own online resources, sent out personal messages to supporters, engaged stakeholders for feedback, kept them up-to date and combined the use of traditional media with new media. Third and probably most important, Dominos acknowledged the power of social media to reach stakeholders and emphasized heavily on online communication. Even though it was already planning to use social media for everyday activities, the company understood that it had to hurry the process and created accounts on popular social media platforms sooner in order to combat the crisis effects. This ensured contact with all stakeholder groups in the same online environment in which the crisis had developed. With the same intention, Dominos chose to not only place a public apology on their website, but also on YouTube, to directly reach the same people that had viewed the videos of the two employees. From a communicative point of view, Dominos successfully chose an adequate response strategy by admitting blame, apologizing, promising corrective action and thanking stakeholders for their support. However, the approach was successful not only because the company chose the right tactics, but also because it made proof of transparency, informality and openness. A clear example was the apology video, in which Patrick Doyle, Dominos CEO, filmed an unrehearsed apology in one take (Peeples & Vaughn, 2009). The credit were getting and the comments were seeing [show] that we didnt hide and we havent been corporate, but responding like real people, stated McIntyre about the video (PR Week US, Apr. 2009). The fact that Dominos innovative communication approach had been efficient was made clear when the crisis died shortly after the companys response. McIntyre discussed the end of the crisis in The Consumerist: During the first week when this happened, awareness and chatter about Dominos just spiked. It was unprecedented. But then 24 hours later, bang! It fell right back down to normal levels. There was an incredible spike. People look at it [video], heard about the story, made their comments and went on. (The PR Strategist, Aug. 2009). A confirmation that Dominos had effectively responded to the crisis

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came a few months later, when Tim McIntyre, Dominos VP of Communications, was named Crisis Manager of the Year by PR News (The Realtime Report, Dec. 2009). Although Dominos was generally praised for the way it managed the crisis, it did however make two significant mistakes in their approach. In our opinion, as well as that of many PR practitioners, Dominos waited too long to respond to the crisis and did not effectively use search engine optimization for their YouTube apology video. The decision to initially not respond to the crisis hoping to contain its effect was, according to many communication experts, an unfortunate one and the 48 hours it took Dominos to respond to the crisis was too long in todays world of constant online communication. At first, Dominos underestimated the power of social media and permitted the prank video to receive more than one million views in two days, which may seem like a lifetime in the online environment. Just as the chief marketing officer of the social media firm Lotame put it, in social media, if you think its not going to spread, thats when it gets bigger (The NY Times, Apr. 2009). Apart from the slow reaction to the crisis, the other main problem with Dominos response was the apology videos ranking in Google search after its YouTube upload. As observed by a US search engine marketing firm, the video did not initially appear on the first page, which led the president of the firm to comment how effective can a crisis response be if it doesnt show up on the first page of a Google search? (Upsize Magazine, Aug. 2009). The company was also criticized for not having purchased ads to cancel out the negative reinforcement in Google results. If you searched for dominos and disgusting, the whole first page of results dealt with the incident. One link screams Never Eat At Dominos Again, observed a brand strategist from Nielsen Online (TimeUS, Apr. 2009). According to Gonzalez-Herrero and Smith (2008), the use of SEO is an important action that every organization should take, especially when dealing with an online crisis. Looking back at United Airlines efforts to deal with its reputational crisis and taking into account the mostly negative feedback received from stakeholders, we consider that the airline made proof of an overall poor crisis management approach, although we did notice several good points in the companys strategy. Unlike Dominos, United responded much faster to the crisis and issued its first statements on Twitter and mainstream media during the first 24 hours of the events. In this regard, the company seemed to understand right from the start that the crisis would spread fast and that a quick official response was required. In addition, United made a good decision by choosing to use Twitter and the blog of a popular consumer
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advocate as communication channels online, although unfortunately social media use did mainly stop there. From a crisis communication perspective, United initially chose a good response strategy, by admitting blame, apologizing to Carroll and promising to take corrective actions. Although considering the evidence that the musician had presented and the negative corporate reputation, the airline had no choice but to choose this response, as not using these tactics would have probably had dramatic consequences for its reputation. Despite having taken some good choices, United did too little when compared to the many important aspects it had overlooked. One of the major weak points of the companys strategy was its inability to effectively use social media in combating a crisis that was developing primarily online. This was one of the main reasons for which United got criticized by many PR and social media specialists, as observed by the Social Media Today professional network in a cover of the incident: companies need to take videos and their online response very seriously. [United] did speak to reporters, [] but key social media channels were neglected and United Airlines did follow the first rule of crisis communications by apologizing and trying to make amends. It's their failure to leverage and integrate their online channels that is at issue (Social Media Today, Jul. 2009). Even though it had already created an official YouTube channel in July 2008, United did not mention it on its website and did not use it during or after the crisis. Nor did it use the United Facebook fan page, which even though was unofficial would have represented an excellent opportunity to engage the over 9.000 users who were searching for answers. Using at least the most popular social media platforms, United could have engaged stakeholders, who were actively expressing their opinions on Facebook, YouTube, blogs and Twitter throughout the crisis. One month after the upload of the first video, media and marketing online magazine Sparksheet analyzed Uniteds YouTube profile to find out if the airline had engaged its profile visitors and reached the following conclusion: No airline today needs a first-class YouTube presence more than United Airlines. [] So far United Airlines has failed to respond in kind and its YouTube channel is littered with comments from angry musicians vowing to boycott the airline. We know were not the only ones waiting to hear an equally tuneful apology performed by musically-inclined United employees (Sparksheet, Aug. 2009). The second major mistake United made was to adopt response tactics towards the end of the crisis that differed from initial ones, which led to an inconsistent overall communication

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strategy. In addition, the way the airline responded to the crisis was heavily criticized for lack of transparency, honesty and openness. Although at first United admitted blame, apologized to Carroll and promised to improve its customer services, it also used a tactic of attack (confronting the person or group who claims that a crisis exists) when the companys spokesperson tried to deny the existence of a crisis by criticizing Carroll for singling out a United employee and for repeating himself in his second video (Elliott, 2009). The statement was negatively received by most internet users, who expressed their discontent with the companys response in web comments: Mr. Carroll has every right to DRILL THIS MATTER HOME. Resolved or not, No, I dont think Dave Carroll has finished making his point yet, United needs to sit back, shut up, and fix their problems. Then they can say we have had enough. (Elliott, 2009). Because United had a long-running poor reputation for customer service, it was absolutely necessary for the company to show full transparency and openness in dealing with the crisis. However, although many signs were showing that the public was expecting specific details regarding Uniteds promised strategy to change customer service policy, no details were ever given: When then Ms. Urbanski will United publicly disclose these changes? It is extremely easy and convenient for you to say this and not act or pretend to act (National Post user comment, Aug. 2009). Even when directly asked about the strategy during the only interview she gave regarding the crisis, Uniteds VP of customer service only gave an ambiguous, standard corporate answer (Elliott, 2009): Q: How, exactly, would a video like this be incorporated into training? A: It will provide all of us regardless of where we work or in which department with an example of how we can be more empathetic to our guests when situations suggest we should. In our business, how we conduct ourselves is important, and our employees understand that treating each other and our guests in a courteous and respectful manner is a vital part of running a good airline. Furthermore, Uniteds response demonstrated the companys inability to assume responsibility for the true problem that led to the crisis, and thus stakeholders were very vocal in stressing this out on many occasions, as one online comment out of many similar ones clearly shows: BUT miss Urbanski, you still miss the point. It wasn't THAT an accident happened, it was how the customer was dragged around for over 9 months before being told
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sorry-now scram. (National Post user comment, Aug. 2009). The general public and media were also critical of the airlines choice of words and language in several statements, accusing it of treating the serious incident lightly. For example, the United spokespersons expression has struck a chord with us to relate to the impact of the video, which was quoted in many mainstream and social media channels, was considered sarcastic and a too-punnyto-be-accidental response (CRM Magazine, Jul. 2009). The same spokespersons tactic of praising Carroll was also criticized on several occasions, along with her intention to show that the musician had in fact become her friend: I think it is bold of you to assume that you are now BFFs with Dave Carroll [] How about stepping up to the plate and acting like a grown up mature adult for your airline and post a real Press Release on your website.... do a news conference and stop hiding (National Post user comment, Aug. 2009). By making the above observations we have hopefully managed to answer the papers first research question. In order to present answers to our second research question, we propose several additional actions that, according to theory and field professionals, the two companies could have integrated into their strategies. Although the overall crisis approach of Dominos Pizza was praised by the public and the media, anyone would agree that there is always room for improvement. With this in mind, we believe that a broader social media presence right from the start would have definitely helped Dominos stop the crisis even faster. If the company would have implemented their already planned social media strategy sooner and adapted it to combat the risks of an online crisis, it could have gained valuable time and it could have responded officially in the first 24 hours. A proactive media monitoring service together with an intense activity on all relevant social media platforms would have helped the organization anticipate and dissolve the issue faster. For example, the web director of Node, a social media and reputation management firm, suggested that Dominos could have used a web content monitoring service, such as Google Alerts, to monitor what was being said about the company on blogs, YouTube, Twitter or other social media platforms (Upsize Magazine, Aug. 2009). Many PR and marketing professionals mentioned the creation of a blog on Dominos website, which can always serve as a powerful rapid response vehicle (TimeUS, Apr. 2009). Finally, Dominos should have used SEO more effectively to ensure that the CEOs apology video appeared on the first page in search result, ahead of the two employees videos.

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Uniteds crisis approach, however, was nearly unanimously criticized and was perceived by many as being just another corporate effort to shed light away from the real problems of the airline, namely poor customer service. An obvious first suggestion is that Dominos should have made better use of social media, especially since it already had four corporate online channels active (website, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook), three of which were completely ignored. The company should have made constant use of all of these and additional tools to inform stakeholders, including sending out press releases and placing links on its website to other crisis-related sources. Internally, United could have promoted active communication to detect any similar incidents, using for example internal wikis to allow close collaboration between all employees. Given the fact that all of Carrolls videos had been uploaded to YouTube and that this was the main platform that popularized them, thus triggering the crisis, it was evident that United should have placed a video apology (just as Dominos did) on the same popular video-sharing site. This was also stressed by the president of the Social Media and Online Consultancy Group Harbrooke, who stated about the incident: Dont just tweet your apology. Make a YouTube video as response to Daves first video, and have your CEO (yes, your CEO) say hes sorry about the treatment and the run around (Greenstein, 2009). A social media expert of the Social Media Today professional network commented on Uniteds crisis: I would advise them to examine their YouTube Channel for content and their response policy for comments. (Social Media Today, Jul. 2009). This statement leads to our next recommendation (which lies in strong connection to the first), namely that United should have placed strong emphasis on stakeholder engagement during and after the crisis. After the first video surfaced, tens of thousands of web users started writing comments regarding the incident, many of them sharing similar negative experiences with the airline (just one week after its uploaded, the first video counted over 13.000 comments on YouTube alone) (Social Media Today, Jul. 2009). The airline should have created a social media team to respond to stakeholders, using both personal text replies and mass video messages. Another statement on the same Social Media Today network advised United: have more videos on what you are doing to improve service and instructional videos on what to do if your baggage is damaged or lost, [] use this experience as way to monitor and respond to customer service complaints, and reach out to the people who tweeted (Social Media Today, Jul. 2009).

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A final suggestion is aimed at Uniteds response strategy, which was accused of being too corporate, dishonest and not transparent enough. United Airlines should have kept using its initial response tactics and not try to deny that a crisis still existed just because it had promised to take corrective actions against it, especially since the airline had failed to present any specific strategic actions in this regard. In addition, although United did use a noncorporate web-specific language tone in its tweets (as theory recommends), the overall tone and approach should have been better adapted to both the audience and situation, as the airlines spokesperson was many times criticized for her praising and attack tactics as well as for her language tone.

VI.2. Conclusions
The papers two case studies have presented us with insight on the close connection between corporate crises, reputation and social media, insight which allows us to now draw several conclusions. As Meyers (2000) points out, in addition to the many risks a crisis poses, it can also present companies and stakeholders with various benefits. This was indeed the case with both the crises we analyzed, and each crisis event had its positive aspects. In Dominos Pizza case, the crisis accelerated change by forcing the company to speed up its adoption of a social media strategy, which turned up to play an essential part in overcoming the crisis. According to Meyers (2000), crises create heroes by focusing public attention on key persons that made good decisions and Dominos crisis definitely shed light on McIntyres strong crisis management capabilities. At the same time, the crisis helped Dominos acknowledge the power of social media and understand their huge potential as communication tools. After the crisis, McIntyre stated in an interview for The Consumerist (Apr. 2009): If theres a crisis happening in the social media realm, or if theres a fire in the social media realm, theres a segment of the population that wants you to put on a microphone and a webcam and describe what youre doing as youre doing it. They want you to describe how youre putting out the fire. And thats an interesting phenomenon. In United Airlines case, the crisis did not appear to bring any clear benefits or changes, and the public sensed and expressed this aspect. However, a person that got to massively
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benefit from the crisis was Dave Carroll, as his musical career skyrocketed after millions of people witnessed his talent and charisma. The musician appeared on popular TV shows and his songs become downloadable hits on iTunes, thus joining the constantly growing number of regular individuals turned internet celebrities with the help of social media. In conclusion, the two crises had clear, measurable effects on both companies and their stakeholders, impacting their reputations for Dominos, who acknowledged the potential of social media, the crisis represented a way to maintain and reinforce its favourable reputation, while for United, who failed to integrate social media effectively into its strategy and showed no openness in communication, the crisis had a negative impact on its already stained reputation. The two companies crisis strategies and their overall reception by the public helped us notice three major dimensions in which social media directly affect crisis management and communication: 1. Timing. A fast response has always been one of the most important aspects of crisis management. However, recent technological development and an always increasing access of most of the worlds population to constant online communication made the already short crisis reaction time even shorter. Just as Dominos VP of Communications mentioned, companies are now expected to communicate their actions online just as they perform them, continually feeding stakeholders hunger for information; 2. Communication channels. While merely a decade ago companies had to only select a few communication channels to just send information during a crisis (which consisted of mainstream media platforms such as television, radio and newspapers and maybe a website), they now have to select multiple popular social media channels (including the one that triggered the crisis) to ensure active, two-way communication with as many stakeholder groups as possible. This is essential for a successful strategy in the online environment and sets the foundation of the next aspect; 3. Language. As demonstrated by The Cluetrain Manifesto, the internet has a massive impact on corporate communication, and crisis communication is no exception. Dominos is an excellent example to demonstrate that direct and transparent communication with stakeholders (during both good and bad times) is essential in order to effectively overcome a crisis and protect reputation. Stakeholder trust is

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obtained only by reaching out to them using a non-corporate, honest and human tone of language. This papers findings have led to our final conclusion and subsequent answer to our third research question: social media truly represent essential tools for managing and responding to a crisis and companies definitely need to actively integrate them into their strategies. Dominos crisis and United Breaks Guitars are both clear examples for why its necessary for crisis managers to rethink their traditional crisis management and communication plans. While social media may present some risks for organizations, they also represent perfect tools to effectively end crises and rebuild reputations. Whether they act as the former or the latter is up to each crisis manager and his team.

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www.facebook.com www.google.com www.linkedin.com www.twitter.com www.wikipedia.org www.youtube.com

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