ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a census of all Twitter content by means of an automated social media listening platform. It focuses on the literature of crisis communication. Situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) is a useful framework to help understand the interplay between organizations and the public in the context of a crisis. SCCT proposes that an organization’s crisis response strategies need to align with the levels of perceived responsibility and threat faced by the organization. SCCT is an audience-oriented theory that provides an explanation about how people perceive crisis cases and how they react to an organization based on the organization’s crisis response. Attribution theory helps explain audience reactions to different types of situations through two key concepts: responsibility and controllability. Organizational responsibility is perceived as greatest when the cause of the crisis is stable, external control is low, and personal control is high.
