The Amplified Crisis: Assessing Negative Social Amplification and Source of a Crisis Response

Abstract

Extending the situational crisis communication theory, this research evaluates how the consequences of a crisis extend to social media and how using internal and external sources influence crisis response processing. A structural equation model assessed the conceptual link between organizational reputation and the negative amplification of a message on social media using data derived from an online experiment. Findings contextualize crisis communication to suggest source and social amplification could lead to a vanguard of future SCCT research that guides researchers and professionals in optimizing a crisis response.