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WHAT IS A CRISIS?
Think of the early case of Johnson & Johnson’s cyanide-laced Tylenols. Think of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Think of Enron’s scandal. These are a few more notable examples of a crisis.
Many scholars have attempted to define “crisis.” Bergman (1994) described it as a turning point that is made up by two elements, emergency and its following issues. An emergency is the unexpected incidents that disrupt a business’s normal process and need attention and prompt reactions. A following issue is unresolved problems that may become a dispute. If that dispute is still unattended, it can elevate to a crisis. At that point, the business reputation is already affected. On the other hand, Coombs (2012) emphasized that the stakeholders’ perception is what make up a crisis, not the actual incident. For Coombs, a crisis is the perception of unexpected incidents that can seriously threaten stakeholders’ expectancies, and impact upon an organization’s reputation and performance, and generate negative future outcomes. Despite the different foci, the definitions meet at how a crisis would affect your business, and how management needs to assess and respond quickly and accurately to prevent the crisis escalation.

HOW DOES SOCIAL MEDIA FIT IN CRISIS COMMUNICATION?

According to Coombs (2009), social media can host any type of crisis, including rumors about the company, complaints about the products, and challenges on the company’s behaviors. The main difference between a traditional crisis and a social media crisis is that the latter has the ability to transpire actively and effectively within a short amount of time. One example of a social media crisis is Kryptonite’s bike lock case, when a biker posted an online video abou...

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...RISIS MONITORING AND INTEGRATING SOCIAL MEDIA
Crisis managers always prepare and have a crisis communication plan, outlining what to monitor, how to respond, and who are responsible, readily available. With the discussed importance of social media in times of crisis, it is wise to engage a social media strategy into the crisis communication plan.
A crisis is usually separated into three stages, which are precrisis, crisis response, and postcrisis evaluation. Although this three-stage model has not been associated with any theorists, it is accepted and applied in many crisis communication studies (Coombs, 2012). As the most effective crisis planning happens when an organization readily prepares for most crisis signs and prevents them from escalating, among the three stages, the precrisis stage, which focuses on preparation and prevention, is the most important one.