Silence strategy in crisis communication: The case of Baydöner

The purpose of this study, which is carried out within the scope of crisis communication, is to contribute to situational crisis communication strategies and literature by investigating the communication behavior of an institution during the rise of a crisis on Twitter. As a case study, tweets about Baydöner's advertisement film "The Troubleless Table Cloth" were analyzed, which was published on April 8, 2022 and became trend topic on Twitter. The sample of the research consists of 8,928 tweets taken with Baydöner hashtag between 7.04.2022/19:50:14 - 9.04.2022/11:12:08 with the MAXQDA 2020 analysis program. In order to analyze the tweets and make inferences, the tweets were coded with the content analysis technique. Rational analyzes of positive, negative, and neutral tweets were made. The presence of positive expressions and emojis in the shared tweets showed that the silence strategy implemented by the institution is an important strategy for getting rid of the crisis quickly, depending on the type of crisis and the medium in which it took place. It has been determined that the silence strategy implemented by the institution both prevented the crisis from growing and caused limited negative sharing. The silence strategy has been little studied in the literature. Further studies on the subject are recommended.