Abstract
This study examines how inherent social media system cues may affect perceptions of an organization’s credibility during crisis. Due to their bi-directional nature, social media platforms generate system cues, such as user comments on Facebook and number of followers on Twitter. Thus, even if organizational messages are informative and articulate, they may be scrutinized or perceived as less credible due to system generated cues. This research details a five condition experiment that empirically examines trustworthiness, competence and goodwill of a university institutional webpage, Facebook account (with user comments and without user comments) and Twitter account (with followers and without followers). Findings suggest that system generated cues influence users’ perceptions of an organization’s credibility. Key words: Crisis messages, social media, credibility, PR tactics.
Highlights
Social media pervades all aspects of everyday life, including times of crisis
Considering that traditional age college students are digital natives and avid social media users (Lenhart et al, 2010), some (Snoijer et al, 2014) have suggested that researchers begin to explore how this population reacts to social media tactics, especially during crises
In each dimension of credibility the Facebook with comments condition was assessed most favorably (Table 1). While this condition consistently garnered the highest perceptions of overall credibility, it was only statistically significantly different in the goodwill dimension, F (4, 291) = 2.58, p =
Summary
Social media pervades all aspects of everyday life, including times of crisis. many authors (Augustine et al, 2014; Spence et al, 2014) have suggested that social media has transformed organizational crises due to its immediacy, narrative-nature, and ability to reach numerous stakeholders across multiple platforms. Is it important to understand which social media channel (e.g., Facebook, Twitter) is preferred in times of crisis, but consideration of the effects of system-generated cues is necessary. Due to their interactive nature, social media sites offer various mechanisms to encourage bi-directional connections among users. This is accomplished through an empirical study (N=296) that assesses college students’ assessments of trustworthiness, competence, and goodwill of a fictional university’s crisis communication messages on their homepage, their. Study stimuli are discussed in greater detail in the Methods section
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