ABSTRACT
Social media and crisis communication (SMCC), a key research subject addressed in the field of public relations, has attracted wide attention from global scholarship in the past years. To gauge the status of SMCC research in a worldwide context, this study conducts a content analysis of 135 articles published in 15 journals, indexed by Social Science Index Citation in the recent four years (2016–2020). This chapter analyzes authorship and affiliation, theoretical, and methodological trends of SMCC research, and presents how contextual factors such as political, cultural, and media characteristics have influenced the crisis communication practice on social media. The findings indicate that the field of SMCC research needs further diversification concerning study contexts and social media tools.
