TY - JOUR
T1 - Understanding motivated publics during disasters
T2 - Examining message functions, frames, and styles of social media influentials and followers
AU - Zhao, Xinyan
AU - Zhan, Mengqi Monica
AU - Liu, Brooke Fisher
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
PY - 2019/12/1
Y1 - 2019/12/1
N2 - There has been a growing body of research regarding how organizations and general publics communicate on social media during crises. Integrating the uses and gratifications perspective, the social-mediated crisis communication model, and the framing approach, our study offers a consolidated framework explaining how and why motivated social media publics communicate during crises. Namely, we examined whether and how influentials and followers employed different message functions through communicative devices including frames and styles. A content analysis was conducted on 800 tweets sampled from influentials and followers discussing the 2017 Ariana Grande concert bombing disaster. Our results (N = 800) suggested that influentials and followers adopted distinct communicative functions on social media during the disaster. Influentials engaged in information sharing and support exchange, whereas followers engaged in opinion expression and emotional coping. Influentials and followers also adopted specific frames and styles to achieve these communicative functions. Our findings can help crisis communicators understand the needs, concerns, and communication features of different publics and construct effective messages to reach them.
AB - There has been a growing body of research regarding how organizations and general publics communicate on social media during crises. Integrating the uses and gratifications perspective, the social-mediated crisis communication model, and the framing approach, our study offers a consolidated framework explaining how and why motivated social media publics communicate during crises. Namely, we examined whether and how influentials and followers employed different message functions through communicative devices including frames and styles. A content analysis was conducted on 800 tweets sampled from influentials and followers discussing the 2017 Ariana Grande concert bombing disaster. Our results (N = 800) suggested that influentials and followers adopted distinct communicative functions on social media during the disaster. Influentials engaged in information sharing and support exchange, whereas followers engaged in opinion expression and emotional coping. Influentials and followers also adopted specific frames and styles to achieve these communicative functions. Our findings can help crisis communicators understand the needs, concerns, and communication features of different publics and construct effective messages to reach them.
KW - crisis communication
KW - framing
KW - social-mediated crisis communication model
KW - uses and gratifications
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85074736868&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/1468-5973.12279
DO - 10.1111/1468-5973.12279
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85074736868
SN - 0966-0879
VL - 27
SP - 387
EP - 399
JO - Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management
JF - Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management
IS - 4
ER -