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

Abstract

The involvement application and use of crisis and emergency management and communication are increasing rapidly. This study conducts a systematic literature review to identify the development of theoretical models in the area of social media crisis communication and management. The study aims to review and analyse the relationship of social media-based crisis communication in the context of crisis informatics and its taxonomy and the related crisis communication theoretical models to derive the challenges and limitations. A total of 207 articles were selected for the evaluation based on quality, relevancy, and contribution. The findings revealed that the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) is the most dominant theory, followed by social-mediated crisis communication (SMCC) and integrated crisis mapping (ICM) models. The study identified theories such as the STREMII model, social media crisis management matrix/framework (SMSMF), and an interactive crisis communication model (ICCM) as emerging models. Moreover, the result of the finding shows that stakeholder interaction is an understudied field, while information reliability and processing for decision-making purposes, the wider application of social media sites, privacy issues, and how social media interaction can improve community resilience or build stakeholders relationships remain suitable topics for future research.

How social media crisis response and social interaction is helping people recover from Covid-19: an empirical investigation

“…They are helping to share new information as it becomes available and responding to individual concerns as they arise, knowing that public perceptions of risk vary widely. Accordingly, individuals sharing ideas and news with like-minded followers on social media can generate an “echo chamber” of media attention, encouraging social interaction as well as community resilience [ 3 ]. Hence, this study is the first to link social media crisis response and social interaction with resilience building and tested their relationship with primary data.…”

“…According to [ 3 ], the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) is the most prevalent. It focuses on reputation building, whereas the social-mediated crisis communication (SMCC) theory examined the impact of social media users on crisis communication, which is used to increase organizational reputation.…”

Social Media Crisis Communication Model for Building Public Resilience: A Preliminary Study

“…According to reference (12), in the effort to represent the nature of the interactions between various stakeholders and how this study concept is different from existing studies of crisis communication. The study reiterates this concept and introduces the ICCM model representing the interaction between crisis management and the public on the social media environment (21) as reported in the STREMII model (17).…”

Revisiting Social Media Crisis Communication Model for Building Resilience via Artificial Neural Network Analysis

“…The dominant theory in the crisis communication literature is situational crisis communication (SCCT) (Coombs, 2017;Bukar et al, 2020). The key strength of SCCT is the ability to examine response strategy to protect organizational reputation from negative public's response (Coombs & Holladay, 2002).…”

“…Hellsten et al (2019) used network theory to emphasize the three components of the issue: authors, topics, and addressed actors. Recently, social media crisis communication for resilience (SMCCR) building further represents the nature of social media crisis response and interaction and integrates crisis management and communication with resilience (Bukar et al, 2020;. The SMCCR builds upon the concept of SMDR, ICCM, and the dominant SCCT.…”