ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews major concepts, models, and theories to understand how to handle crises in social media and how social media affect crisis development and management. It discusses how social media influence stakeholder knowledge about crisis, as well as these stakeholders' understanding of crisis and their actions upon it. People use social media to seek updated information on critical situations, and to get emotional support. Social media conversations challenge organizational responses to critical issues because these conversations are not confined on specific network but can move from arena to arena and can even spread to offline arenas. Given that social media conversations can affect crisis awareness and interpretation among stakeholders, social media management has been recognized as an important element of crisis management, especially in supporting education of employees about social media. Limited knowledge exists about communicating with stakeholders in a more dialogical manner during crises, and even less research exists on dialogic communication via social media during crises.
