Navigating anger in Happy Valley: Analyzing Penn State's Facebook-based crisis responses to the Sandusky scandal

Melanie Formentin, Denise Sevick Bortree, Julia Daisy Fraustino

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

22 Scopus citations

Abstract

Social media are important channels of communication during a crisis. This study examined the use of Facebook as a crisis management tool for Pennsylvania State University during the first month of the Jerry Sandusky scandal. A content analysis of all 129 posts made by the university during that time period and 2060 comments to the posts suggested that audience reaction to crisis information varies based on crisis response strategy, sources cited, and topics shared. This study has implications for social media crisis management models.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)671-679
Number of pages9
JournalPublic Relations Review
Volume43
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 1 2017

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Communication
  • Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management
  • Marketing

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