Author(s): Jamie M. Chen, Prasanna Humagain, Limin Zhang and Xudong Rao
Social media has emerged as a crucial platform for disseminating real-time urgent crisis news. This study addresses a novel issue in marketing communications on social media and applies the agenda-setting theory to evaluate the effectiveness of crisis management. By collecting over 181,000 tweets during the historic flooding-related closure of Yellowstone Park in June 2022, this research aims to investigate public perceptions of the disaster and fill the knowledge gap regarding crisis communication processes on social media through the lens of the agenda-setting theory. The sentiment and emotion analysis provides insights into public perceptions expressed in tweets during the entire crisis. Additionally, social network analysis showed the dissemination patterns of information, identifying influential Twitter handles based on their popularity, connectivity, and authority. These findings contribute to the existing literature on crisis management models in the context of social media and extend the scope of the agenda-setting theory from traditional mass media to social media platforms. This study also offers practical implications for marketing professionals on crisis communications in the digital era, especially through the utilization of social media.