Navigating anger in Happy Valley: Analyzing Penn State’s Facebook-based crisis responses to the Sandusky scandal

Abstract

Social media are important channels of communication during a crisis. This study examined the use of Facebook as a crisis management tool for Pennsylvania State University during the first month of the Jerry Sandusky scandal. A content analysis of all 129 posts made by the university during that time period and 2060 comments to the posts suggested that audience reaction to crisis information varies based on crisis response strategy, sources cited, and topics shared. This study has implications for social media crisis management models.