Crisis in the air: An investigation of AirAsia’s crisis-response effectiveness based on frame alignment

Abstract

This study explores the effectiveness of organisational crisis-response strategies and public online response by applying a framing perspective. This has been done to study the crash of AirAsia's flight QZ8501, in which a three-step methodological case study approach has been employed. First, a quantitative content analysis was conducted in order to identify AirAsia's (the sender) crisis-response strategy. Second, a semantic-network analysis was applied to analyse the response from the public (the receiver). Third, an extension of this semantic-network analysis was used to analyse to which extent the framing of AirAsia's online crisis communication had been aligned with the public framing of the crash. The results of the first step indicated that AirAsia predominately used an informational strategy (e.g., Adjusting Information). Moreover, the findings of the second and third steps revealed that there was an absence of frame alignment between AirAsia's response strategy and the public's response. Compared to the organisation, the public's reactions revealed more emotional aspects in their framing.

Lessons for Crisis Communication on Social Media: A Systematic Review of What Research Tells the Practice

“…Meanwhile, several studies argue that different forms of message strategies are needed in social media and web environments, depending on the type of crisis and the publics' emotions (Park & Cameron, 2014;Schultz et al, 2011). A concrete example is that emotional conversational message tactics on Facebook are argued to be more effective then informational messages and tactics during strongly emotionally laden crisis situations (Gerken, van der Land, & van der Meer, 2016). Effective social media crisis communication is also about choosing the right source for social media messages.…”

“…There are also studies that consider that updating too slowly may lead to loss of existing or potential followers (Wang & Zhuang, 2017). Other studies recommend timely use of social media to prevent the spreading of rumors (Crook, Glowacki, Suran, Harris, & Bernhardt, 2016;Fowler, 2017;Gerken et al, 2016). Crisis managing organizations are also recommended to use Twitter for "stealing thunder" and "filling the silence" during crises.…”

“…Johansen et al (2016) show that analyzing social media content creates opportunities for an organization to learn more about not only their "faith-holders, but also their hate-holders" (p. 302) during a crisis. Social media monitoring is also recommended as a way to evaluate the emotional character of a crisis (Gerken et al, 2016) and a way to perform preventive analyses of how people express their coping with different threats, such as food hazards (Gaspar et al, 2014). Some scholars also argue the importance of strategic organizations not only monitoring online news stories, but also monitoring audiences' comments about them in the digital sphere (Spence et al, 2017).…”

Crisis Informatics in the Context of Social Media Crisis Communication: Theoretical Models, Taxonomy, and Open Issues

“…During a critical event, communication serves several purposes from information collection, coordination, dissemination, planning and management, also building relationships according to [58] cited in [57]. It is no surprise why social media is such an important tool for crisis management services [59]. It is reported that social media are used as much as traditional media [35].…”

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“…In other words, analyzing the (co-)occurrence of words allows one to quantify meaning in measurable units of analysis, thereby avoiding subjective bias. Research has already successfully applied this method, for instance, to compare discourses (Leydesdorff, 2005) or to explore crisis frames (Gerken, Van der Land, & Van der Meer, 2016;Van der Meer, 2014;Van der Meer et al, 2014). Thus frames in this research will be operationalized as (co-)occurrences in communication, which generate latent semantic networks that convey their meaning (adapted from Hellsten et al, 2010).…”