Presentation at International Conference on Communication & Media Studies 2020 Conference. Toronto, Canada. 2020.
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Abstract
Social media is considered one of the most popular communication platforms in Vietnam. Recently, organizations in Vietnam have seen a rise of social media usage during crises when stakeholders seek and share news about a corporate crisis on social media, and organizations start to respond on this same channel. This study examines the use of social media for crisis communication in Vietnamese organizations. Little research has dedicated to exploring this topic, on the use of social media in crisis communication in a Vietnamese setting. To address this gap, this research employs the diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory, and Hofstede’s power distance to identify the many influences on social media adoption for crisis communication within organizations.
It was found that Vietnamese public relations practitioners think highly of social media’s perceived relative advantage and observability, and regard its complexity and trialability as the disadvantages. The findings also indicated that Vietnamese organizations might use social media to communicate with their stakeholders during crises, but they do not want to deliver a sincere crisis response.
The findings of this study shed light on an upcoming public relations trend, using social media in crisis communication. Since technologies have been changing rapidly, it is necessary for organizations to fully grasp how to evaluate new technologies, such as social media, to keep pace with immediate trends and stakeholders’ needs.
