Crisis Management Information Research Articles

Corporate crisis management from a strategic operations perspective: the importance and impact of information management

Corporate crisis management is important and influential from a strategic operations perspective, and information management plays a key role in crisis management and is critical to the success and sustainability of a company. This study aims to explore the importance of information management in corporate crisis management from a strategic operations perspective and its impact on companies. Firstly, this paper provides an introduction to crisis management, focusing on the dynamic process of crisis development, including the prevention, identification, handling, and aftermath of crises. At the same time, this paper provides an in-depth introduction to the importance and key elements of corporate crisis information management. In the section on information management, this paper compares the key elements of data collection and analysis, information dissemination and communication, and decision support, and introduces the challenges faced by contemporary enterprise crisis information management. Finally, this paper proposes an early warning model for enterprise crisis information management based on theories related to data analysis. The early warning model is built from three aspects: users, data, and applications, and the indicators of enterprise crisis pressure table are obtained, through which the possibility of an enterprise crisis and the impact value of the crisis on the enterprise can be seen more subjectively and corresponding measures can be taken.

Reinforcing data bias in crisis information management: The case of the Yemen humanitarian response

The complex and uncertain environment of the humanitarian response to crises can lead to data bias, which can affect decision-making. Evidence of data bias in crisis information management (CIM) remains scattered despite its potentially significant impact on crisis response. To understand what biases emerge in complex crises and how they affect CIM, we conducted a combined interview and document analysis study. Focusing on the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, i.e., the conflict in Yemen, we conducted 25 interviews with managers and analysts of response organizations, and assessed 47 reports and datasets created by response organizations in Yemen. We find evidence of a cycle of bias reinforcement through which bias cascades between field, headquarters and donor levels of crisis response. Researchers, as well as practitioners, need to consider these underlying biases and reinforcement loops because they influence what data can be collected when, by whom, from whom, and how the data is shared and used. To the CIM literature, we contribute an in-depth understanding of how four types of data bias emerge in crises: political, accessibility, topical, and sampling bias.

Revealing the spatiotemporal characteristics of the general public's panic levels during the pandemic crisis in China.

The existing crisis management research mostly reveals the patterns of the public's panic levels from the perspectives of public management, sociology, and psychology, only a few studies have revealed the spatiotemporal characteristics. Therefore, this study investigates the spatial distribution and temporal patterns and influencing factors on the general public's panic levels using the Baidu Index data from a geographic perspective. The results show that: (1) The public's panic levels were significantly correlated with the spatial distance between the epicenter and the region of investigation, and with the number of confirmed cases in different regions when the pandemic began to spread. (2) Based on the spatial distance between the epicenter and the region, the public's panic levels in different regions could be divided into three segments: core segment (0-500 km), buffer segment (500-1300 km), and peripheral segment (>1300 km). The panic levels of different people in the three segments were consistent with the Psychological Typhoon Eye Effect and the Ripple Effect can be detected in the buffer segment. (3) The public's panic levels were strongly correlated with whether the spread of the infectious disease crisis occurred and how long it lasted. It is suggested that crisis information management in the future needs to pay more attention to the spatial division of control measures. The type of crisis information released to the general public should depend on the spatial relationship associated with the place where the crisis breaks out.

The role of information in crisis management

The article emphasises that current conditions for monitoring and ensuring homeland security are increasingly complex. The complexity of many processes and their difficult conditions emphasise the need to make relatively quick decisions. Following this requirement, much more attention is being paid to improving the functioning of information systems. It was emphasised that the increasing amount of information is, on the one hand, a positive phenomenon, but on the other hand it is not always conducive to making a reasonably quick decision. It is necessary to strive to obtain, through various channels (methods), reliable information, which will be the basis for making decisions, dismissing security threats and (or) minimising their effects. It was emphasised that the path to achieving the objectives is different in each case; no universal methodology can be presented. In addition to the conditions, a number of proposals aimed at improving the activities of those in leadership roles and the functioning of crisis management teams are presented.

On the Interplay of Data and Cognitive Bias in Crisis Information Management

Humanitarian crises, such as the 2014 West Africa Ebola epidemic, challenge information management and thereby threaten the digital resilience of the responding organizations. Crisis information management (CIM) is characterised by the urgency to respond despite the uncertainty of the situation. Coupled with high stakes, limited resources and a high cognitive load, crises are prone to induce biases in the data and the cognitive processes of analysts and decision-makers. When biases remain undetected and untreated in CIM, they may lead to decisions based on biased information, increasing the risk of an inefficient response. Literature suggests that crisis response needs to address the initial uncertainty and possible biases by adapting to new and better information as it becomes available. However, we know little about whether adaptive approaches mitigate the interplay of data and cognitive biases. We investigated this question in an exploratory, three-stage experiment on epidemic response. Our participants were experienced practitioners in the fields of crisis decision-making and information analysis. We found that analysts fail to successfully debias data, even when biases are detected, and that this failure can be attributed to undervaluing debiasing efforts in favor of rapid results. This failure leads to the development of biased information products that are conveyed to decision-makers, who consequently make decisions based on biased information. Confirmation bias reinforces the reliance on conclusions reached with biased data, leading to a vicious cycle, in which biased assumptions remain uncorrected. We suggest mindful debiasing as a possible counter-strategy against these bias effects in CIM.

Twitter Mediated Sociopolitical Communication During the COVID-19 Pandemic Crisis in India.

While Twitter has grown popular among political leaders as a means of computer-mediated mass media communication alternative, the COVID-19 pandemic required new strategies for socio-political communication to handle such a crisis. Using the case of India, which was one of the worst-hit countries and is also the world’s largest democracy, this research explicates how political leaders responded to the COVID-19 crisis on Twitter during the first wave as it was the first time such a crisis occurred. Theoretical frameworks of discursive leadership and situational crisis communication theory have been used to analyze interactions based on the usage patterns, the content of communication, the extent of usage in relation to the severity of the crisis, and the possible role of leaders’ position along with the status of their political party. The sample consisted of tweets posted by six prominent political leaders in India across the four consecutive lockdown periods from 25th March to 31st May 2020. A total of 4,158 tweets were scrapped and after filtering for retweets, the final dataset consisted of 2,809 original tweets. Exploratory data analysis, sentiment analysis, and content analysis were conducted. It was found that the tweets had an overall positive sentiment, an important crisis management strategy. Four main themes emerged: crisis management information, strengthening followers’ resilience and trust, reputation management, and leaders’ proactiveness. By focusing on such discursive aspects of crisis management, the study comprehensively highlights how political interactions on twitter integrated with politics and governance to handle COVID-19 in India. The study has implications for the fields of digital media interaction, political communication, public relations, and crisis leadership.

Information Support of Russian Media for the Tourist Destination of Crimea

Crimea is a very attractive tourist destination with a high rank of tourist values, being natural and cultural heritage, with high recognition on the international tourist market. Since 2014, the tourism economy has been in a protracted crisis, caused by both internal and external reasons. The annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in March 2014 significantly exacerbated the problems of the functioning of the tourism economy, preventing its sustainable development. The Russian authorities are taking political as well as socioeconomic measures to rebuild the tourism economy of Crimea, by taking steps to increase tourist traffic in Crimea, especially within the country, i.e., from other regions of Russia. One of the directions of actions to overcome the crisis is information support by the Russian media, the analysis of which is presented in this article. The aim of the study is therefore an attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of information support by the Russian media for the tourist destination of Crimea in 2014–2019. Media activities are part of the Russian government’s tourism policy in this area. The article deals with the following theoretical issues: tourism policy, sustainable tourism development, heritage as the subject of tourism policy impact, information management, crisis management, the role of information in crisis management. The empirical part presents: the genesis and development of the crisis in the tourist destination of Crimea, the activity of the Russian authorities in terms of impact on the crisis, an analysis of the use of information by the Russian media in overcoming the crisis in the Crimean tourism economy.

The Importance of Information in Crisis Management

Threats have accompanied humanity since the dawn of time. Most of them can develop into crisis situations that can be interpreted in many different ways. The crisis situation is closely linked with the concept of crisis management, which is implemented in four phases. At every stage of work, various elements are significant in terms of crisis management. There are also elements that are very important at every stage. These include: threat analysis, estimation of the probability of their occurrence in a given area, and assessment of their sensitivity. An appropriate information flow system supports the implementation of the above elements. This system should be effective in such relations as between services and between services and society. The effectiveness of information flow depends on the reliability of this information and its flow channel. Information is of particular importance in the decision-making process. It should have appropriate features and properties. Based on the information, both good and bad decisions can be made. In crisis management, this can be relevant to human health and even human life. This article discusses issues related to the nature of information in crisis management.

What Caused the Outbreak of COVID-19 in China: From the Perspective of Crisis Management.

Since the first known case of a COVID-19 infected patient in Wuhan, China on 8 December 2019, COVID-19 has spread to more than 200 countries, causing a worldwide public health crisis. The existing literature fails to examine what caused this sudden outbreak from a crisis management perspective. This article attempts to fill this research gap through analysis of big data, officially released information and other social media sources to understand the root cause of the crisis as it relates to China’s current management system and public health policy. The article draws the following conclusions: firstly, strict government control over information was the main reason for the early silencing of media announcements, which directly caused most people to be unprepared and unaware of COVID-19. Secondly, a choice between addressing a virus with an unknown magnitude and nature, and mitigating known public panic during a politically and culturally sensitive time, lead to falsehood and concealment. Thirdly, the weak autonomous management power of local public health management departments is not conducive for providing a timely response to the crisis. Finally, the privatization of many state-owned hospitals led to the unavailability of public health medical resources to serve affected patients in the Wuhan and Hubei Province. This article suggests that China should adopt a Singaporean-style public health crisis information management system to ensure information disclosure and information symmetry and should use it to monitor public health crises in real time. In addition, the central government should adopt the territorial administration model of a public health crisis and increase investment in public health in China.

Proactive Suicide Prevention Online (PSPO): Machine Identification and Crisis Management for Chinese Social Media Users With Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors.

BackgroundSuicide is a great public health challenge. Two hundred million people attempt suicide in China annually. Existing suicide prevention programs require the help-seeking initiative of suicidal individuals, but many of them have a low motivation to seek the required help. We propose that a proactive and targeted suicide prevention strategy can prompt more people with suicidal thoughts and behaviors to seek help.ObjectiveThe goal of the research was to test the feasibility and acceptability of Proactive Suicide Prevention Online (PSPO), a new approach based on social media that combines proactive identification of suicide-prone individuals with specialized crisis management.MethodsWe first located a microblog group online. Their comments on a suicide note were analyzed by experts to provide a training set for the machine learning models for suicide identification. The best-performing model was used to automatically identify posts that suggested suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Next, a microblog direct message containing crisis management information, including measures that covered suicide-related issues, depression, help-seeking behavior and an acceptability test, was sent to users who had been identified by the model to be at risk of suicide. For those who replied to the message, trained counselors provided tailored crisis management. The Simplified Chinese Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count was also used to analyze the users’ psycholinguistic texts in 1-month time slots prior to and postconsultation.ResultsA total of 27,007 comments made in April 2017 were analyzed. Among these, 2786 (10.32%) were classified as indicative of suicidal thoughts and behaviors. The performance of the detection model was good, with high precision (.86), recall (.78), F-measure (.86), and accuracy (.88). Between July 3, 2017, and July 3, 2018, we sent out a total of 24,727 direct messages to 12,486 social media users, and 5542 (44.39%) responded. Over one-third of the users who were contacted completed the questionnaires included in the direct message. Of the valid responses, 89.73% (1259/1403) reported suicidal ideation, but more than half (725/1403, 51.67%) reported that they had not sought help. The 9-Item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) mean score was 17.40 (SD 5.98). More than two-thirds of the participants (968/1403, 69.00%) thought the PSPO approach was acceptable. Moreover, 2321 users replied to the direct message. In a comparison of the frequency of word usage in their microblog posts 1-month before and after the consultation, we found that the frequency of death-oriented words significantly declined while the frequency of future-oriented words significantly increased.ConclusionsThe PSPO model is suitable for identifying populations that are at risk of suicide. When followed up with proactive crisis management, it may be a useful supplement to existing prevention programs because it has the potential to increase the accessibility of antisuicide information to people with suicidal thoughts and behaviors but a low motivation to seek help.

Deaf mis-interpretation during Hurricane Irma: A case study and evaluation

In 2017, Manatee County Government (Florida, USA) used an untrained sign language interpreter during a media briefing on Hurricane Irma evacuation orders. The individual signed incorrectly, resulting in confusion for the community and embarrassment for the organization. This case study presents the background of accessible information in crisis management -- why and how disaster preparedness information is interpreted for the deaf community; provides the event's consequences, as well as local and global implications; and discusses ways to incorporate deaf and hard-of-hearing stakeholders and groups into existing structures and programs.

A pragma-dialectical approach to governmental crisis communication

Abstract To explore an argumentative approach to governmental crisis communication, this research adopts the pragma-dialectical framework to analyze and evaluate a local Chinese government’s crisis discourse concerning disputes over a proposed chemical project. The discourse is collected from the popular local online forum Mengxi Forum. By reconstructing from the discourse the four stages of a critical discussion, analyzing the embedded strategic maneuverings and evaluating the argumentation in view of institutional preconditions, it is shown that in its use of co-ordinative argumentation structures and causal argument schemes, the local government’s crisis discourse is not dialectically reasonable enough to convince the other stakeholders of the necessity to implement the proposed project. The results also shed some light on the necessity for governments’ crisis information management to ensure in its crisis discourse both dialectical reasonableness and rhetorical effectiveness.

Toward a Legal Perspective on Crisis Information Management: Legal Values and Privacy-Sensitive Information at Odds?

Abstract Recently, crisis response organizations are adopting a networked communication structure, as a means to connect different sources of crisis information and enable a more effective crisis response. However, this change has introduced legal complications that so far remain unaddressed, for instance regarding the exchange of privacy-sensitive information aimed at rendering a coherent picture of the crisis. This paper examines how information managers interpret legislation during crises. We analyze our results by drawing on Radbruch’s tripartite taxonomy, showing that information managers oscillate between the values of certainty of law and purposiveness in regards to legislation, while the value of justice remains remarkably absent in their interpretation. By introducing a legal perspective on crisis information management we provide an important contribution to the crisis coordination debate.

Cyber-rumor sharing under a homeland security threat in the context of government Internet surveillance: The case of South-North Korea conflict

Cyber-rumors and falsehoods have increasingly become a hindrance to government strategic communication. Especially when there is a national security alert, anti-government rumors can become weapons that thwart government crisis information management. A key element for any government's successful cyber-rumor management is to understand what makes citizens prone to engaging in cyber-rumors. We focus on citizens' cyber-rumoring tendency that arises within the larger context of a nation's governance over the Internet. Specifically, this study examines how citizen's assessment of government Internet surveillance influences their engagement with cyber-rumors during a homeland security threat. Two surveys in South Korea find that citizens' government Internet surveillance concerns increased their cyber-rumor sharing intention, and the effect was particularly significant during the period of homeland security threat. This paper reconsiders the efficacy of government Internet surveillance in mitigating cyber-rumor propagation among general public, and expands the discussions by introducing the logic of ‘distrust effect’ on cyber-rumoring. Cyber-rumor monitoring through government Internet surveillance can be counterproductive to homeland security efforts unless government aligns its surveillance policy with citizens' informational norms on cyberspaces.

Learning crisis management information system from open crisis data using hybrid soft computing

Crisis management is being dealt extensively with reliable data sources that are being collected continuously by na- tional and local authorities. These open data creating a radical opportunity for the successful prediction of crisis. At the same time, it poses some challenges to the researchers for its heterogeneity, real time and massive data. Recently, soft computing based data mining plays a very vital role as a source of innovation in crisis information management, in obtaining more valuable information. In this paper, we propose to use neural network based forecasting for obtaining post crisis scenario. Further, we use hybrid soft computing methodologies by combining attribute selection with PSO (Particle Swarm Optimization), GA (Ge- netic Algorithm) and EA (Evolutionary Algorithm); hybrid classification by fuzzy-rough VQNN (Vaguely Quantified Nearest Neighbor) and MLP (Multilayer perceptron neural network). We use three open datasets such as: rival crisis, dyadic and global terrorism data collected from World Bank for our experimentation. Finally, we conclude with encouraging results obtained from EA based VQMLP that provides best prediction in terms of various performance measures considered, for all crisis scenarios which will help us in understanding to take future course of action in such a situation.

Design Principles for Crisis Information Management Systems

Since Hurricane Katrina, a lot of research has gone into improving disaster management through the use of crisis information management systems (CIMS). There has been much interest in how to design dynamic CIMS, particularly with respect to web-based emergency management systems. In the authors' research, they set out to design and develop a distributed web-based training and research tool for emergency managers and scholars. In order to develop their training system, they needed to simulate the CIMS that emergency managers use during a crisis and with which they could run training and research simulations. This raised the question: What exactly is a CIMS, and how does one design one? In order to answer this question, the authors engaged in nine months of field research at the Miami-Dade Emergency Operations Center in Miami-Dade County, FL. Through their field research and the emergency management experience of one of the authors, they identified several additional design principles for CIMS in today's technological and communication landscape. This paper outlines the resulting recommendations.

MODELS OF GOVERNMENTAL CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

The research deals with the information system of public administration aimed at decision-making and communication with the society in a crisis. The system’s functionality depends on adequacy of goal-setting and on correspondence of the chosen strategy to a crisis type which differ by social response. The author substantiates traditional model of crisis communications and information management for solving conflict crises, while consensus crises require participative model, and polemic crises are recommended to be managed by negotiation and dialogue facilitation model. The negotiation and dialogue facilitation model for managing polemic crises is aimed at realization of a communicative action concept advocated by J. Habermas. As long as modern complex crises require participation of multiple actors which have different visions of a crisis situation and specific interests, “crisis decision making in such context can be seen as a negotiation process” [16]. On the level of information processing the primary step is to discover both major crisis tendencies in each of the core social systems, and social groups whose opinions and interests should be considered. After that definition of possible crisis triggers, forecasting and crisis planning are realized taking into consideration interests and expert recommendations of different social groups’ representatives. Two basic ways of coordination are suggested: public discussion of issues, or collaborative problem-solving. The first way requires organization of a public dialogue in a form of discussion, citizen jury, or negotiations. Coordination through collaborative problem-solving implies fragmentation of a complex subject which means reducing it into concrete practical questions that require discussion and decision-making. Communication within the framework of the described model is remarkable for the supra-communicative practice of facilitating the interaction of the crisis management participants.

Integration of Competitive Intelligence and Crisis Information Management

Integration of Competitive Intelligence and Crisis Information Management

Crisis Information Management: Communication and Technologies

Crisis Information Management: Communication and Technologies

Strengthening crisis information management in a networked world: A call for vision, leadership, and collaboration

How do we respond? How do we know when to respond? Two fundamental questions drive not only humanitarian relief and aid work, but also all responses to a wider range of emergencies and crises that the United Nations system is geared to prevent, mitigate and help recover from. The underlying principle of all UN operations is to help save lives, prevent unnecessary deaths and, in cases where mass scale atrocities have been committed, hold perpetrators accountable for their actions. As we move into the second decade of the twenty-first century, we realize that knowing implies having access to and leveraging information and communications technology (ICT), ranging from the web and the Internet through personal computers, to the mobile web through smartphones and Short Message Service (SMS). The human condition is now inextricably entwined with the availability of information online, from basic services to personal shopping, from banking and commerce to education and healthcare. Nations with better ICT infrastructure invariably show better human development indicators and stronger economic prosperity. At the same time, the recent riots in London (fanned by the use of web-based social media and ICT), the growing instances of cybercrime, online hate speeches, identity theft, data loss, surveillance by repressive regimes, and propaganda through digital media are but a few aspects of the flip side of our networked societies.