Who Sets the Tone? Determining the Impact of Convergence Behaviour Archetypes in Social Media Crisis Communication

Abstract

Convergence Behaviour Archetypes (CBA) describe the behavioural traits of individuals who spontaneously and collectively move towards emergency situations. If convergence is not managed effectively, unintended crisis management issues may emerge and lead to an exacerbation of the crisis situation. Social media users express different behavioural intentions while converging on a crisis. While these behavioural intentions have been analysed in previous research, an understanding of Convergence Behaviour facilitated by social media use to an effective and smart level of control, is yet to be achieved. Manual content and social network analyses were conducted on our Twitter dataset of the Manchester Bombing 2017 and this analysis identified three dominant convergence behaviour archetypes i.e. the Helpers, the Mourners and the Detectives. These archetypes had the highest crisis communications impact regarding their retweet behaviour. This work provides a better theoretical understanding of Convergence Behaviour archetype influence and impact on crisis communication, for Information Systems research and practice.