ABSTRACT
In the network landscape, information and communication technologies (ICTs) and social media have tended to become increasingly important tools in the strategic communicator’s toolbox (see, e.g., Eyrich, Padman, & Sweetser, 2009; Verhoeven, Tench, Zerfass, Moreno, & Vercˇicˇ, 2012; Waters, Tindall, & Timothy, 2010). Due to the possibilities presented by communication technology, new work methods for and approaches to crisis communication have emerged (see, e.g., Eriksson, 2009; 2012; González-Herrero, & Smith, 2008, 2010; Hallahan, 2009; Hughes, & Palen, 2012). Via social media, many organizations today communicate with their surroundings in a more undirected and situation-oriented way through which the perception of a crisis is developed in interaction with the user. These working methods tend to be in line with the “new” late modern and/or postmodern crisis management perspectives, which argue that modern crisis managers have to improve their ability to improvise (see, e.g., Czarniawska, 2009; Gilpin, & Murphy, 2006, 2008, 2010; Weick, & Sutcliffe, 2007). Watchwords like control and steering in crisis communication have tended to become passé, or are at least changing in the networked world (see, e.g., Liu, Palen, Sutton, Hughes, & Vieweg, 2009; Palen, Vieweg, Liu, & Hughes, 2009; Wigley & Fontenot, 2010). The question is how crisis communicators’ attitudes toward previously developed crisis management plans and strategies change in such a context. What happens to the strategy logic—with its roots in the military sphere—that has so long characterized the field of crisis management when the communicator is forced to improvise to an ever-increasing degree?
