What amounts to a paracrisis? Interactivity as a lens for evaluating social media‐propagated crises

Abstract

The tendency for crises to erupt on social media raises the question: How can strategic communication professionals determine the likelihood that these social media-borne warning signs of an impending crisis (often referred to as a paracrisis) will impact the organization? This study evaluated paracrisis through a semantic network analysis of two cases of claims of racism against two brands, Prada and Gucci. Using interactivity as the lens for evaluating social media claims against an organization revealed paracrisis characteristics, including referencing activities, social tagging and calls for action against corporate misconduct.

Exploring hidden topics on hotel Facebook fan pages before and during the COVID-19 crisis

“…Our study focuses on Spain, the country with the second highest number of foreign visitors in the world, where the tourism sector accounted for 12.4% of GDP and 12.9% of employment in 2019 (Spanish Statistical Office, 2020). We applied semantic network analysis, using NodeXL software (Smith et al, 2010), to examine the messages published on Facebook by the five hotel chains with the greatest presence in Spain (Table 1). In particular, Facebook occupies third position in Spain in terms of number of global users (79.2%), behind WhatsApp and YouTube (Kemp, 2021).…”

“…Such techniques include semantic network analysis, which, unlike traditional analysis, does not require preconceived categories (Doerfel, 1998) and has been widely accepted as a helpful method for exploring word associations in texts (Jang et al, 2022;Smith & Smith, 2022;Yoon & Chung, 2018b). Semantic network analysis has been successfully applied to social networks in various fields, including medicine (Kang et al, 2017;Tang et al, 2018), political science (Park et al, 2020), social movements (Eddington, 2018;Xiong et al, 2019), public administration (Liu et al, 2018;Sevin, 2014;Wang & Xu, 2022), marketing (Hong et al, 2016;Youn & Jung, 2021), and hospitality or tourism (Feizollah et al, 2021;Jang et al, 2022;Park et al, 2018;Yoon & Chung, 2018a).…”

“Grace Space of Understanding”: The Third Space in Principal Leadership During the Covid Pandemic

“…In this study, what began as the crisis of navigating the pandemic was linked with an emerging crisis of distrust, or paracrisis. A paracrisis begins when there are external challenges form stakeholders that challenge the organization’s reputation and distract from the goals and mission of the organization (Coombs & Holladay, 2012; Epperly, et al, 2022; Smith & Smith, 2022). While there are several typologies of paracrisis, the two most notable for this study were (1) Challenge – where disconnected stakeholders paint the organization as unethical or irresponsible and (2) Misinformation –where false narratives are circulated about the organization.…”

“…A paracrisis can be deceptive in that it might not require full crisis mode, but with social media, negative information only increases participation, leaving the leader to decide what is legitimate. (Chen & Holladay, 2023; Coombs & Holladay, 2012; Smith & Smith, 2022). There are prescribed communication procedures beginning with refutation, which dispels the challenge and involves support from positive stakeholders.…”