Exploring the influence of stakeholder personality on crisis response evaluations and outcomes

Influence of Strategic Crisis Communication on Public Perceptions during Public Health Crises: Insights from YouTube Chinese Media

Crisis communication plays a crucial role in preserving the national reputation during significant national crises. From the perspective of Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), this research paper analyzed over 1,790,816 YouTube comments from Chinese-speaking audiences, using sentiment analysis alongside the Difference-in-Differences (DiD) model, in order to investigate the influence of strategic crisis communication on public perceptions during public health crises. The study findings indicate that during this public health crisis, YouTube Chinese media, whose audience mainly consists of overseas Chinese-speaking users, primarily incorporated the enhancing strategies, succeeded by the diminish strategies, with limited application of deny strategies, while the use of rebuild strategies was virtually absent in this context. In addition, the research analysis confirms that Chinese media effectively increased the public's positive perceptions of crisis events through crisis communication. Particularly, enhancing strategies proved most effective in improving public perceptions, followed by diminish strategies. In contrast, deny strategies failed to influence public perceptions of the crisis, and rebuild strategies demonstrated a negative impact on public perception. Thus, the research findings of this paper extend essential insights for effectively managing potential public health crises in the future.

Crisis management as practice in small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises during the first period of COVID‐19

This article draws attention to the social context and working methods in crisis management. Based on 1000 interviews with business leaders in Swedish small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), we analyze crisis management in practice and ask: What social contexts do business leaders use in crisis management, and what working methods do they rely on? Most companies in this study do not have any form of crisis group; rather, they deal with issues reactively as they occur. Few of the companies work continuously with a crisis plan and only slightly more than half of those that have crisis plans report that it has been helpful in dealing with the COVID‐19 situation. The study concludes that Swedish SMEs seem reliant upon a process that has an emerging nature whereby decisions are largely based on gut feeling. However, the companies in our sample that experienced a significant revenue decline due to the COVID‐19 situation report that they employ a more centralized and deductive approach with reports and documents as a basis for their work. The study contributes to a developed understanding of how crisis management works in practice.