Factors Influencing Crisis Arena Crossovers

A revised digital media–arena framework guiding strategic communication in digital environments

“…The literature on public relations, strategic communication and corporate communication tends to conceptualise communication in the digital environment as a collection of either (1) vehicles of organisation-managed communication ( media ) for organisational messages or as (2) spaces of interactions ( arenas ) where messages about organisations are discussed and debated by a plurality of stakeholders and publics (Badham et al ., 2022a). Digital communication technologies have enabled organisations to communicate directly with a large quantity of stakeholders through media predominantly controlled by organisations, such as corporate websites, electronic newsletters, corporate apps and social media corporate accounts.…”

“…Frandsen and Johansen, 2010, 2016; Luoma-aho and Vos, 2010; Juholin and Luoma-aho, 2017; Vos et al. , 2014), arenas are understood as places of interaction where individuals and organisational actors more, or less formally or informally communicate with each other and where relationships are formed, maintained and discontinued (Badham et al. , 2022a).…”

“…Nor do they help us examine the behaviour of digital publics in framing organisational messages, particularly in digital arenas. To our knowledge, the only existing theoretical framework in strategic communication, corporate communication and public relations research that offers practical guidelines to address this balance is the digital media–arena framework by Badham et al. (2022a).…”

“…Many organisations still plan and execute their communications as forms of dissemination of messages to one or more target stakeholders utilising a combination of modalities (visual, text and audio). Within digital interactive spaces, stakeholders and publics (who may be viewed as potential stakeholders not yet having a contractual or relational stake in the organisation) have a high degree of control over organisational messages because they are empowered to not only reinterpret these messages but also transform them into different messages and subsequently spread these reshaped messages fast and formatively through, for example, their social media accounts, resulting in crisis arena crossovers (Badham et al. , 2022b) and questionable corporate reputations (Etter et al.…”

“…This paper aims to address this question in two ways: first, by discussing the macro-level transformations in the digital communication environment that are empowering the engagement of an increasingly diverse range of voices in organisational message (re)production and (re)distribution; second, by offering a theoretical framework to help communication professionals understand and navigate the chaotic and multi-vocal digital environment in which anyone can be an organisational communicator. In this regard, we propose to draw on Badham et al .’s (2022a) digital media–arena (DMA) framework. Although much research has examined the challenge of managing organisational messages in the digital environment, the DMA framework offers an analytic tool encompassing a wide range of communication possibilities between minimum and maximum control over organisational messages involving a diversity of participating voices.…”