Media and crisis response strategy: Which one is more important?

1. Introduction
The correct crisis communication strategy with the right words at the right time is essential (Coombs, 2004) because how the image or reputation was damaged depends on the messages of the organization during the crisis times. Benoit (1997) gave a list of restoring organization’s reputation strategies during the crisis. Additionally, Coombs (2004) developed previous crisis theories into situational crisis communication theory (scct) which guides for crisis managers to select appropriate crisis strategies to crises.
Most of the researchers had the same conclusion that apology is the best strategy, the second effective strategy is compensation, and then sympathy is much less effective than others. However, the research of Coombs and Holladay (2008) showed that apology, compensation, and sympathy have the same effect on increasing the satisfaction of victims' needs. Considering to the financial aspect, expression of sympathy is evaluated less expensive strategy than apology and compensation. Obviously, it is necessary to consider what the effect of sympathy strategy is.
Besides that, social media have played an important role in how organizations communicate crisis situations to audiences and how stakeholders were informed about a crisis (Prentice & Huffman, 2008). By using social media, the organization can easily spread the messages, preventing a boycott, and maintaining the reputation in crisis situations. Social media is, thus, seen as a powerful tool in crisis communication. Coombs and Holladay (2009), and Schultz et al. (2011) argued that the impact of different media types on crisis response strategies is still understudied. The research has only very recently begun to investigate the media’s role in crises.
Therefore, mindful of those research gaps, this article uses a crisis in university caused by an unexpected accident as crisis scenario to shed more light on the effectiveness of crisis response strategies and media channels, based on experimental approach.
This research contributes to crisis communication field according to two ways. Firstly, this study affirms the previous study results about the impacts of crisis response, media on crisis responsibility, reputation, and anger. Secondly, the paper finds the combination of crisis response strategies and the medium is the best effect on responsibility, reputation, participants emotions. Lastly, providing recommendations on the use of strategies and media is most effective in a case of vietnam.
2. Literature review
2.1. Effects of crisis response strategy
Crisis communication strategies include the content of messages an organization says and does after a crisis (Coombs & Holladay, 1996). Crisis managers must acknowledge that what and how to communicate with stakeholders because crisis response strategies have either improve the reputation or make the situation worse.
Apology, sympathy, and compensation are some of the crisis response strategies in scct. Researchers have studied, yet, disagreement exists pertinent to their effectiveness. Apology is utilized when an organization recognizes, accepts responsibility, and asks forgiveness for the crisis (Benoit & Drew, 1997), and promises to avoid the same wrongful act. Scholars have demonstrated that the apology was the best crisis response to protect the reputation of the organization from a crisis (Benoit & Drew, 1997). According to that, corrective action is as effective and appropriate as apology strategy. Both apology and corrective action are strategies with highest responsibility acceptance (Weiner, 1995). The higher acceptance of responsibility is, the higher the organizational reputation and more positive reactions are. Besides that, the expression of sympathy strategy is more of an adjusting information strategy, it makes a high level of accommodation (Sturges, 1994). Therefore, sympathy can be viewed as the organization’s attentiveness to crisis-affected stakeholders and sympathy response is considered more personal and warmer. Basing on these studies, an following assume is proposed:
H₁: Apology, compensation lead to a (a) higher reputation, (b) lower crisis responsibility, (c) lower anger’s participants than sympathy.
2.2. Effects of medium
In the past, organizations merely used media for informational or persuasive purposes. Nowadays, medium is used to communicate with stakeholders in a dialogic model of interaction to cooperate. Social media is very suitable to communicate with stakeholders because large volumes of information can be transmitted and gathered in real time for a relatively low cost. However, traditional newspaper or online newspaper is still in central of concern because the public appreciates them more credible and trustworthy than social media.
Utz et al., (2013) showed that crisis communication via facebook has high score on reputation, less negative word of mouth compared to traditional news. Due to the inherent conversational and transparent nature of social media tools, organizations that use social media can provide real-time information to stakeholders and can thereby reduce the stress of unknown. By this way, the organization can meet the needs of stakeholders timely, and it will reduce the possibility of the stakeholder join to the conversation to say badly toward the organization.
Based on these assumptions, this study will elaborate on finding the differences effect of media on crisis communication outcomes with the following hypotheses:
H₂: Crisis communication via facebook leads to (a) less crisis responsibility, (b) higher reputation, (c) less anger than crisis communication via an online newspaper.
2.3. Interactions between medium and crisis strategy
Crisis communication field exists two viewpoints. One part pays attention to crisis response strategy, ignore the communication channel. Another part focus on media is a crucial factor to cope with crisis times. Shultz and Wehmeier (2010) shown that if the role of communication strategies are neglected temporarily, the difference in the influence of the media channels will increases. The organization uses media to respond quickly to a crisis situation, try to attract the attention of stakeholders. Therefore, the respond of stakeholders depends on what the media channel organization select, and then the messages.
Schultz et al. (2001) argued that the effect of crisis strategies is stronger when they combine to social media rather than traditional news. However, in a few cases, the crisis strategies have more effective when they mix to traditional news. In addition, Coombs and Holladay (2009) did not find any significant interaction effect between media type and response condition on four variables: organizational reputation, anger, account acceptance. On the other hand, Schultz et al. (2011) found a marginally significant interaction between medium and reaction that the effect of crisis strategy was strongest in the’ twitter only’ condition.
We, hence, can formulate an open research question:
Rq1: What are the combined effects of crisis response strategies and media on perceptions of (a) responsibility, (b) reputation, (c) participant’s emotions?
3. Method
3.1. Design
The experiment was a 3(crisis strategies: apology, compensation, sympathy) x 2 (medium: Facebook, online newspaper) between-subjects design. Six fictitious scenarios manipulated crisis response strategy, media. Each participant was exposed to one crisis strategy. The scenarios used a fictitious university to exclude the crisis history factor which can influence the results of research (Coombs, 2004). The crisis event described the accident which occurred with a student of the university. After reading about the crisis, the respondents will receive the crisis strategies offered by the university for controlling the crisis event.
3.2. Participants
Among 198 respondents, male accounted for 47% (n = 93) while female was 53% (n = 105). The age of the participants was divided into six groups. More specifically, the percentages of six age groups were as follows: 7.6% participants were less than 20 (n = 15); the highest percentage was the age group from 20 - 29 (28.8%, n = 57); the age group from 30 - 39 was 15.7 % (n = 31); the age group from 40 to 49 made up 9.1% (n = 18); 18.7% was the percentage of 50 - 59 age group (n = 37), lastly, over 60 year olds accounted for 18.7% (n = 37). On the other hand, the demographic questions also explored the living condition of respondents. The majority of the respondents were in northern vietnam and central vietnam with 36.4% and 39.4% respectively. 24.2% participants came from southern vietnam.
3.3. Measures
A four-item seven-point likert scale ranging from one (strongly disagree) to seven (strongly agree) based on work of Coombs (1998) that was adapted from Griffin, Babin, & Darden (1992) measures crisis responsibility. This scale consists of four items (e.g., “circumstances, not the university, are responsible for this problem”).
A four-item seven-point likert scale was used to measure perceptions of reputation developing by Coombs and Holladay (1996), which was adapted from Mc.Croskey (1966). Participants must indicate the level of stimulus character believability, trustworthiness, honesty on these items such as “under most circumstances, i would be likely to believe what this university says.”
The level of anger toward the organization was measured by three items of Coombs and Holladay (2005, 2007). For example, “I feel annoyed toward the university for what happened”. Answers were measured by seven-point liker scales ranging from “strongly disagree = 1” to “strongly agree = 7”.
4. Results
4.1. Scale reliabilities
A Cronbach’s Alpha was conducted to test the reliability of the measures. The scale of crisis responsibility, reputation, and anger had acceptable reliability scores in this study with .701, .791, .747 respectively.
4.2. Research question and hypothesis testing
A one-way analysis of variance (anova) was conducted to check the differences in means of three crisis response strategies (apology, compensation, sympathy). The results showed that no significant differences occur in reputation (f(2,195) = .256, p = .774 > .05). Therefore, hypothesis 1a is rejected.
By contrast, there was a statistically significant effect of the crisis response strategy on responsibility (f(2,195) = 6.608, p = .002 < .05), on anger (f(2,195) = 3.932, p = .021< .05). For the perceptions of the participant to crisis responsibility, the scheffe post-hoc test yielded that apology strategy (m = 2.87) led to less participants crisis responsibility than sympathy strategy (m = 3.82), and compensation (m = 3.55). Hypothesis 1b, hence, is partially supported. In turn on the anger of participants, there was only a significant difference between apology and sympathy. Apology (m = 4.11) produce less anger than sympathy (m = 4.87). Hypothesis 1c is partially accepted.
By employing the analysis of independent samples t-test, the main effect of media on responsibility was significant (t = -2.33, df = 196, p < .05). Participants in online newspaper condition (m = 3.67, sd = 1.578) had a higher score on the responsibility of organization toward crisis than in facebook condition (m = 3.15, sd = 1.579), supporting hypothesis 2a. Anger’s participant was much more expressed in online news condition (m = 4.97, sd = 1.437) than in facebook condition (m = 3.85, sd = 1.765). The difference between two conditions was highly significant (t = -4.901, df = 196, p<.001). Hypothesis 2c, thus, is supported. For reputation, the result showed that the main effect of media was significant (t = 5.004, df =196, p < .001). Facebook (m = 4.29) leads to a higher reputation than online news (m = 3.17). This outcome was similar to the expectation that crisis communication via facebook leads to a higher reputation than via an online newspaper. Therefore, hypothesis 2b is accepted.
For rq1a, the results of a 2(media) x 3(crisis response strategy) anova with responsibility as dependent variable identified a significant effect of the interaction between crisis response strategy and media (f(5, 192) = 2.947, p < .05). The post hoc analysis of scheffe showed that the apology in facebook condition (m = 2.91) led to the lower crisis responsibility than the sympathy in online newspaper condition (m = 4.27).
For rq1c, a repeated analysis of variance showed that the combination of crisis response and media was a significant difference (f(5, 192) = 8.961, p < .001) on anger. Employing the scheffe post-hoc test, participants in “apology + online newspaper condition” (m = 5.77) expresses more anger than in “sympathy + facebook” (m = 3.13) and in online “newspaper + sympathy” (m = 4.69). “facebook + compensation condition” (m = 3.92) has more positive effect on anger than “apology + online newspaper condition” (m = 5.77). “facebook + apology condition” (m = 4.29) has more positive effect on anger than “apology + online newspaper condition” (m = 5.77).
For rq 1b, pairwise comparisons found significant difference effect of crisis response and media on reputation (f(5, 192) = 7.239, p < .001). The scheffe post-hoc test showed that participants in “apology + newsapaper’ condition” (m = 2.56) produce less reputation than in “sympathy + facebook” (m = 4.57), in “facebook + apology” (m= 4.26), in “facebook + compensation” (m= 4.026). “sympathy + online newspaper condition” (m = 3.19) has more negative effect on reputation than “sympathy + facebook condition” (m = 4.57).
5. Conclusion
This study elicited several key findings of value to crisis communication field by examining experimentally the effects of crisis response and medium on crisis responsibility, reputation, and anger. This study found apology generated less anger and crisis responsibility than compensation and sympathy. This result corresponds to research on the effectiveness of crisis response strategy according to which apology is the best strategy for reducing the threat of crisis event and leads to more positive effects on stakeholders perceptions (Kim et al, 2009; Bradford & Garrett, 1995). However, no differential effect between compensation, and sympathy on these crisis outcomes. The results of the study also showed that facebook had a more positive effect on responsibility, reputation, and anger than online newspaper. To explain this results, S. Utz et al (2013) claimed that the function of social media make the stakeholders reduce the bad mood because they feel that the organization willing to be in dialog with them, to share the information to them. Another reason is the information in online newspapers is considered more credible than social media, people tend to talk mainly about the news they got via traditional media or online newspapers. Given the cross-effects of media and crisis response strategy on organizational credibility, and anger, it is worth noting that facebook combined with crisis response strategies generated more positive effect than online newspapers combined with crisis response strategies. It confirmed the role of media on how and what organization should cope with during crisis time. Finally, the results illustrated that if an organization use online newspaper to expose their messages, a sympathy strategy is a better choice than apology strategy in reducing the anger emotion of participants.
The strength of this study is a true experiment conducted face-to-face and not in a restricted laboratory setting. This contributes to the external validity of this experiment. However, using a fictitious scenario may also be seen as a limitation of this study. The participants were not familiar with the organization in crisis, thus, their judgments may not truly represent their responses in a real scenario. Another limitation is that the present study focused on only three crisis response strategies and two media. Future studies should attempt to broaden the spectrum of the crisis response conditions (e.g., denial, compensation) and compare them with different media (e.g., videos, youtube, blogs).
To conclude, this study provides some implications for the organization facing crises. Firstly, crisis managers should use apology to reduce the anger and crisis responsibility rather than sympathy and compensation. Secondly, the organization should not neglect media because media play the more important role than crisis response strategy on anger, crisis responsibility, and reputation. Lastly, taking into account the most expensive response financially for an organization like as apology (Fuchs-burnett, 2002; Patel & Reinsch, 2003; Tyler, 1997), crisis managers can use sympathy to replace apology strategy on their choices to avoid the increase of angers public.

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