Social Media as a Source of Crisis and as a Crisis Management Tool – Example to Learn From

Abstract

Today we witness the rapid development of social media, growing number of Internet users worldwide and increasing tendency for dialogue between organizations and their customers. Audience expectations are changing and they increasingly require transparency in communication, open policy, participation in reporting, sharing and dissemination of information, as well as multiple-source reviews. This requires a more serious analysis of modern anti-crisis rules and requirements imposed by social media. This article explores a communication example that illustrates the change in all these processes. The showcase concerns the well-known Domino’s Pizza brand, and is proof that today no organization is protected from reputational threats, regardless of its scale, and social media can become both a source of crisis and a tool to reduce the damage from that crisis.