Social media crisis management: Aligning corporate response strategies with stakeholders’ emotions online

The article focuses on how the analysis of stakeholders’ emotions online can help companies facing a social media crisis determine the response strategy that will best minimize the reputational threat. The article indeed questions the relevance of classical crisis management theory to an online environment. Results show that social media have increased the unpredictability of corporate crises. Consequently, on social media, crises cannot be addressed with the methods that have prevailed so far. Rather, incorporating emotion-based analysis in six case studies showed how crisis analysis, and the subsequent response strategy, could be fine-tuned. The article builds on recent literature to develop a new analytical framework for response strategies and a model for crisis resolution—the social media crisis management matrix.