Análisis factorial de la violencia

This thesis aim is to explore the use of social media in organisation’s crisis communication in the airline industry with Malaysia Airlines crisis as the cases study, with the aim of providing answers to the main research question in understanding how Malaysia Airline (MAS) used Facebook in their crisis communication strategy. In qualitative research, the research question is crucial to the successful fulfilment of the research aim as it provides guidance on the most suitable research design for the thesis, data collection and analysis (Bryman, 2015).

As stated in chapter 1, the main research question that is addressed in this thesis is to know How Malaysia Airline (MAS) used Facebook in their crisis communication strategy? This broad question is asked so as to provide a central exploration of the phenomenon or concept that is to be studied and then narrowed down to sub-questions to bring more focus to the research process (Creswell). The three sub-research questions for this thesis are:

SR1. What tactic did MAS employ in their mediated crisis response?

SR2. What practice did MAS maintain in their crisis communication on Facebook? SR3. How did the public react to MAS’s CRM?

The first sub-research question which asks to know the type of tactic that MAS employed in their mediated crisis response requires the adoption of a qualitative approach in order to answer this question adequately. This is because as I explained in chapter one (Section 1.3) of this thesis on the decisions I had to make by adopting a single case study, Malaysia Airlines, to research a socially-constructed phenomenon.

Researching a phenomenon like crisis communication comes with diverse realities and interpretations from the organisation and its different stakeholders (Matlis & Sonenshein, 2010) and therefore needs to be conducted and understood in a natural setting and not by engaging in experimental research. To achieve this, I needed to observe and take note of their crisis communication tactic on their website and Facebook page, describing and analysing my observations in a detailed but un-obstructive way.

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Although the focus of the research is on the stakeholders, there is the need to know the process and tactics that the organisation adopts in communicating and connecting with them as an act of communication process between an organisation and its stakeholders includes process and tactics (McQuail & Windahl, 2015: p 13). The purpose of this is to know how the organisation were able to connect with and reach their stakeholders before, during and after a crisis.

In order to answer the first sub-research question, I employed the observational methods in discovering the processes employed by MAS in communicating the crisis to the public through their official website and Facebook page when the crisis broke out as this helps to identify if they view the social media as an extension of their traditional crisis communication channel or as a different form of crisis communication channel. The method used here was adapted using the methods employed by Taylor and Perry (2005) in their analysis of the diffusion of traditional and new media tactics in crisis communication.

I captured how soon the news was reported on MAS’s official website and Facebook page to know if it was reported within the first 24 hours on these mediums and if the communication process was one or two dimensional communication process that allowed interaction between the organisation and the audience and/or between the audiences communicating with each other without the interference of the organisation. I also explored how interactive these crisis communication channels were, do they have any connecting links from one channel to the other? Was there any real-time updating of information on page? Were there any Multimedia effects employed in communicating to the public? This investigation will show the tactics that MAS employed in their mediated crisis response in managing their crisis.

The next stage is answering the second sub-research question by understanding the type of practice that MAS maintained in their crisis communication on Facebook? To provide answer to this question, I captured and explored the crisis response messages released by MAS using the content analysis method by identifying the strategies that were contained in their messages to the public. After the identification, I used the SCCT as a guideline to provide comparison. The third sub-research question moves from focusing on what the organisation is saying to the public to the exploration of how the audience are reacting to their crisis response messages. This investigation is very useful in that the data captured will be able to provide information on whether the strategies employed by the organisation were adequate, their sense making of a crisis and crisis responsibility attribution based on information available to them. The audience

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comments were captured to the first post that was made regarding the loss of contact with the plane on their official Facebook page to see how the stakeholders interpret the organisation’s crisis communication strategies.