Crisis communication on Social Media

Master's Thesis from the year 2023 in the subject Communications - Media Economics, Media Management, grade: 1.3, University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm (Fakultät Informationsmanagement), language: English, abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic's resulting economic consequences for airports, employees, service providers and airlines have been well researched in the meantime. What remains open, however, are clear communication strategies for dealing with future health crises and pandemics and to develop possible preventive measures. It is of particular interest what type of content and what messages should be used by airlines to maximize interactions, and the popularity and engagement of their publications. Since airlines have successfully managed to encourage passengers to fly with them again once travel restrictions were lifted, the following research question has emerged: How can international airlines use social media for effective crisis communication during global health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic? The aim of the thesis is to analyze international airlines' crisis communication on social media in the spring of 2020, specifically on the platform Instagram, with their target groups in terms of crisis response strategies, publication frequency, content and mes-sage types. The study provides further insights to the existing research on social media crisis communication bringing forth potential risks, but also opportunities and measures that will enable the airline sector to emerge stronger from critical situations in similar circumstances. The research results enable communication managers to better understand airlines crisis response strategies during public health crises. By providing practical implications that resulted from the content analysis, it will be useful in future decision-making in the area of strategic crisis communication on social media, and in upholding the company's reputation. In order to understand and evaluate the crisis communication of airlines during the COVID-19 pandemic, the first subchapter introduces the most important definitions, terms, theories and strategies of crisis communication research. The following two subchapters deal with social media and the platform Instagram, as well as an analysis of the relevance of social media in crisis communication, highlighting the opportunities and challenges of using social platforms as an instrument for crisis communication. Once the crisis communication and social media literature has been covered, the study takes a closer look at crisis communications in the airline industry and what can be learned from past events.