Examining the Influence of Proxy Communicators about Organizational Crises in Response to Digital News Reports

This chapter summarizes scholarly literature related to digital news production, explains how different reporting styles have previously been found to impact audience perceptions toward organizational responsibility, and uses Luoma-aho''s Theory of Emotional Stakeholders (TES) as a framework for developing the experimental materials. The rapid evolution of new media technology has generated calls from crisis communication scholars for inquiry and study of this emerging domain. Organizational crises vary in their scope, complexity, and causality. Situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) incorporates insight from attribution theory as the underlying rationale for linking specific types of crises to specific crisis communication strategies. Using experimental procedures, our findings show that user comments from organizations, faith-holders, and hate-holders contribute to audience evaluations of crisis responsibility, both causal and treatment. Results show that user comments from faith-holders reduced causal responsibility in the intentional cluster compared to the control condition; however, when organizations were facing preventable crises, user comments from faith-holders amplified perceived treatment responsibility. Crisis events can prompt information-seeking and sharing behaviors, understanding if and how to strategically respond is an important consideration for practitioners who are expected to skillfully engage in online relation building and reputation management.