Social media in crisis managment: A comparative case study

Crises are back breaking and destructive events which can arise suddenly and which, if not managed properly, can disturb the existing order of organizations and even risk their lives. Crises show their in fluence more violently and spread morerapidly in social media environments in which, due to the development of communication all technologies, all users are able to express their feelings and thoughts freely, and any contents hared can be viewed by millions of people. This situation necessitates a crisis management suitable to the fast and interactive nature of social media. A crisis management process conducted properly can ameliorate a negative image resulted from a crisis and it can even transform it positively. In this direction, the crisis management to be conducted in social media environments, where users can freely express their comments, attitudes and preferences regarding organizations and their products, can only be possible by ensuring an effective flow of accurate and transparent in formation within social media within the scope of crisis management strategies. Active existence of organizations inside social media, their forming a crisis management plan for social media and following of contents which users create regarding them can enable them top revent a possible crisis in social media and, where such a crisis is unavoidable, become ready for it. Crisis management and crisis communication activities within social media is very important in terms of accessing users, changing their perceptions and eliminating the negative image created by a crisis. And this indicates to the necessity of performance of a social media specific crisis management activity by organizations.This study sought an answer to the questions how to conduct crisis management activities within social media and how can successful results could be achieved in crisis management for social media. In this direction, concepts of crisis and crisis management are addressed in the first part. The concept of social media, its emergence and its current status and how crisis management should be conducted in social media are explained in these condpart. Finally, the third part analyzes in detail two crises experienced in social media and results arising in the case of proper and improper application of crisis management are revealed by a comparison of those two crises. Keywords: Crisis management, crisis social networks, social media, crisis management in social media.