The crisis communication of the General Directorate of Forests on Twitter in the process of 2021 Turkey forest fires

The concept of crisis emerges not when a negative event occurs, but when people start talking negatively about that event. As soon as people start talking, crisis communication comes into play. In a place where people talk about the agenda, crises also begin to talk, and in such an environment, social media can be both a source and a solution to the crisis. Today, social media is an indicator of digital presence for individuals or institutions. The fires that took place in Turkey between July 28 and August 12, 2021 were accepted as the largest forest fires in the history of the Republic. In line with current developments, in order to analyze the reflections of a crisis in the field on social media and the crisis strategies applied; The main subject of this study is to examine the crisis communication strategies used by the General Directorate of Forestry, which is fighting 299 forest fires, in the content shared on Twitter. Twitter shares belonging to the institution were subjected to content analysis method using the coding scale prepared within the framework of W. T. Coombs' Situational Crisis Communication Theory, and the obtained data were processed with frequency analysis technique. As a result of the findings, it has been determined that the institution implements the technical possibilities and requirements of Twitter effectively, but mostly shares content with one-way communication method, is preferably insufficient to fulfill the requirements of effective two-way communication, however, in order to reduce the destructive effect of the crisis on the corporate reputation. It was determined that among the crisis intervention strategies he followed, he focused on the support strategy. With the strategies it implemented, the institution aimed to turn the social pressure brought by the crisis into community support through empathy by appealing to the empathy of its stakeholders. It is thought that the contribution of the study to the academic literature will increase if the crisis intervention strategies used in the study are developed and applied on other case studies.