Date of Award
5-2020
Degree Type
Honors College Thesis
Department
Mass Communication and Journalism
First Advisor
Jae-Hwa Shin, Ph.D.
Advisor Department
Mass Communication and Journalism
Abstract
The purpose of this research study was to better understand the evolving crisis communication methods used on traditional media and social media following organizational crises such as the Manchester Arena bombing. The research was primarily conducted by analyzing the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) online article archives and stakeholder Twitter accounts, including @ManchesterArena, @ManCityCouncil, @ArianaGrande and @GMPolice. Tweets under the hashtags #ManchesterBombing, #Manchester, #OneLoveManchester as well as the Manchester Bombing Twitter Moment were also analyzed for crisis communication responses to understand how traditional media and social media were used to communicate with the public following this crisis.
The results of this study assist future public relations students and practitioners in bettering the understanding of how crisis communication responses are evolving with each crisis. By understanding and adapting to each change in crisis communication responses via traditional media and social media, public relations practitioners can yield better crisis management responses and feedback from the publics being communicated with. The study also shows how important it is to communicate information with the public and ensure people remain informed no matter if traditional media or social media is used by the target audience.
Copyright
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Recommended Citation
Staton, Allyson R., "Evolving Crisis Communication in Social Media Era: Analysis of Tweets and News Stories of the Manchester Arena Bombing" (2020). Honors Theses. 740.
https://aquila.usm.edu/honors_theses/740