Social Media as Amedium of Crisis Communication Amongst University Campuses in Kisii County

Abstract

Social media gives the ability to communicate quickly and effectively, revolutionizing the manner in which people communicate and gather information about stories and topics that are of interest to them. With the right tools in place, social media can play an important role in crisis communication. The use of social media in crisis communication has become common in the current digital age. The manifestation of social media usage is in the rapid growth and popularity of such social media platforms such as facebook, bandoo, flicker, twitter and whatsApp. As such this paper examined the applications of social media platforms in crisis communication in university management. The analysis targeted employees from different university campuses in Kisii County. The study sampled 108 employees of university campuses in Kisii County. Quantitative data that was collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics while qualitative data was examined and reported basing on various themes. Data indicated that various social media platforms are in use by the university campuses in their crisis communication. Whatsapp was noted to be the most used social media by the university campuses in Kisii County. As a tool for mobile devices, WhatsApp has several capabilities such as portability, ability to share several message formats such as graphics and geographical location, ability to send voice notes and ability to broadcast one message to many recipients. This makes it attractive to the majority of the users. Keywords: Crisis Communication, social media, digital age, telecommunication firms, crisis; crisis communication; whatsApp. DOI: 10.7176/NMMC/96-05 Publication date: May 31 st 2021