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Proceedings: Conference on Corporate Communication 2012 Page 1

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Negotiating Crisis in the New Media Envir<strong>on</strong>ment<br />

Evoluti<strong>on</strong> of Crises Online, Gaining Legitimacy Offline<br />

Augustine Pang, Nasrath Begam Binte Abul Hassan & Aar<strong>on</strong> Chee-Yang Ch<strong>on</strong>g<br />

Wee Kim Wee School of Communicati<strong>on</strong> and Informati<strong>on</strong><br />

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore<br />

augustine.pang@ntu.edu.sg, nasrathb@gmail.com & aar<strong>on</strong>ccy@gmail.com<br />

This study examines how crises originate <strong>on</strong>line, how different new media platforms escalate<br />

crises, and how issues become legitimized offline when they transit <strong>on</strong>to mainstream media. We<br />

study five social media crises, which includes United breaks guitars and Southwest Air’s too fat<br />

to fly. Crises are triggered <strong>on</strong>line when stakeholders are empowered by new media platforms that<br />

allow user-generated c<strong>on</strong>tent to be posted <strong>on</strong>line without any filtering. Facebook, YouTube and<br />

Twitter emerge as top crises breeding grounds due to their large user base and the lack of<br />

gatekeeping. Facebook and blogs are resp<strong>on</strong>sible for escalating crises bey<strong>on</strong>d the immediate<br />

stakeholder groups. Mainstream media, legitimizes issues offline when there are inherent news<br />

values like, human-interest, policy-making, celebrity or novelty factors present. This study<br />

suggests recommendati<strong>on</strong>s to manage reputati<strong>on</strong>al impact <strong>on</strong> organizati<strong>on</strong>s and instruct<br />

practiti<strong>on</strong>ers <strong>on</strong> how they can use different new media tools to counter crises <strong>on</strong>line and manage<br />

the transiti<strong>on</strong> of crises to mainstream media.<br />

Abstracts of <str<strong>on</strong>g>C<strong>on</strong>ference</str<strong>on</strong>g> <str<strong>on</strong>g>Proceedings</str<strong>on</strong>g>: <str<strong>on</strong>g>C<strong>on</strong>ference</str<strong>on</strong>g> <strong>on</strong> <strong>Corporate</strong> Communicati<strong>on</strong> <strong>2012</strong><br />

<strong>Page</strong> 42

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