2 research outputs found
"A Great Day for Oiled Pelicans:” BP, Twitter, and the Deep Water Horizon Crisis Response
On April 20, 2010, British Petroleum (BP) experienced one of the most tragic
industrial accidents in history when 11 employees were killed and dozens more injured as the
result of an explosion that tore through an offshore drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. In the
months that followed, BP grappled with the clean-up efforts as millions of gallons of oil
spewed into the Gulf of Mexico on the eve of the region’s peak tourism season. BP also
faced immense reputational damage and needed effective crisis communication to restore
this damage with its stakeholders. This study uses content analysis to assess the
organization’s communication efforts on the social media platform, Twitter, within the
framework of the Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) model.To more fully understand the role of social media during a major environmental
disaster, a total of 1,142 tweets were coded from April 29, 2010, to September 10, 2010, from
the account @Oil_Spill_2010 (The name of the account later changed to @Restore_TheGulf
and came under the control of the U.S. government.). Within the 1,142 tweets coded during
the selected period, there were 1,596 crisis response message strategies found. Consistent
with the SCCT, the deal cluster of strategies was most evident in the organization’s Twitter
messages, comprising 47.87% (ingratiation, n = 433, 27.13% and concern, n = 331, 20.74%)
of all coded strategies.
With the proliferation of social media in our society, effective and efficient
organizational responses during crises are certain to become more and more dependent on
social networking platforms. This study takes an important first step in testing the SCCT
model within the framework of social media sites