Date of Award
2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Master of Arts in Digital Journalism (MADJ)
First Supervisor/Advisor
Peter Misiani Mwencha
Second Supervisor/Advisor
Anne Gachiri
Department
Graduate School of Media and Communications
Abstract
An organisational crisis event on Twitter goes viral within a short period of time. Within that time, sentiments – either negative or positive – are produced through the tweets published as a result of conversations driven by Twitter users. Coverage done by legacy media further amplify the magnitude of organizational crisis events. These sentiments produces by Twitter users become instrumental in shaping the public perception of organisations. This study sought to determine how Twitter users frame crisis events and the subsequent influence on brand reputation of organisations under crisis. The Framing theory and Situational Crisis Communications theory offered insights into how audiences perceive and define organizational crises on Twitter and how this influences corporate image. A mixed method approach was utilised to investigate this. Quantitative content analysis of tweets published during crisis events involving two organisations was conducted to analyse the crisis types and sentiments elicited. Key Informant Interviews with communications practitioners well versed with crisis communication on Twitter gave insights into the impact of conversations led by Twitter users about organizational crisis events on brand reputation. Findings reveal that Twitter users categorised the two organizational crisis events as preventable, which ascribes strong attribution of crisis responsibility to the organisation and poses severe reputational threat. Furthermore, results show that a crisis event covered by legacy media has more impact on brand reputation than one that remains on the Twitter platform only as legacy media gives it a wider coverage and brings the conversations to stakeholders beyond the online space. Additionally, the two organisations that experienced a crisis event on Twitter had low brand reputation scores as a result of the high number of negative sentiments found in the tweets published by Twitter users.
Recommended Citation
Gachari, W. (2024). Understanding the effects of twitter crisis events on brand reputation: the case of Strathmore University and KFC Kenya. (Unpublished master's dissertation). Aga Khan University, East Africa.