At the recent Community Engagement Program (CEP) Seminar in Singapore (see Channel NewsAsia’s ‘Bloggers, moderators can help ease public fears in crises’), Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng made the point that in times of crisis such as a terrorist attack, website moderators and bloggers have a role to play in helping to communicate a message of calm and normalcy, as well as to ease public concerns. He also made an important point about how these, together with collaborative efforts by the broadcast media and grassroots-based community engagement initiatives, must be a part of a unified online-offline campaign (what I call the communication matrix).
Indeed, there's no other time like the onslaught of a national crisis that requires a harmonized, authoritative and complementary stream of narratives with a message of order and control. Communication scholar Perl (1996) says that during a crisis, it’s especially vital to make a speedy rhetorical response in the first 60 to 120 minutes. Referred as the ‘golden hour’ in crisis management, the damage to image and reputation decreases with early and effective efforts at public communication.
But this is clearly predicated upon consistent messaging because of the need to coherently frame the situation. Framing, according to communication scholar Oscar Gandy, guides the processing of information so that a preferred reading of the facts comes to dominate public understanding (Jamieson & Waldman, 2003, pp. xiii-xiv). Given the challenges of citizen journalism and user generated content (UGC) today, governmental and organizational crisis communication needs a strategy that presents a consistent and coordinated messaging which builds the desired narrative concerning how the crisis is being managed.
Coming back to what Minister Wong said about the role of bloggers and website moderators during crises, realize that these are important relationships that must be forged not in the cauldron of an emergency but during periods of normalcy. Think about the blogger relation techniques discussed in the previous post, and consider how you can identify those influential bloggers that are in conversation spheres that are of interest to you and your organization. Developing a close relationship with them, even if you may not see much fruit in peacetime because it is a social capital stock whose dividends that's reaped when the crunch comes.
While we’re at this topic, here are some issues for you to think about:
- What does your conversation ecosystem look like?
- Where are your main spheres of conversations (are they mainly offline, or online, and where are they occurring)?
- What kind of resources are you devoting to understand these nodes of conversations and how you can build closer bridges?
- Given your inherent limitations, what are the ‘priority’ conversation spheres that must be tackled or engaged immediately.
- Similarly, what can be pushed back in terms of priority?
- Do you have a list of strategic issues that you want your communities to know about?
Think about it! I am too…
References
Perl, David. “Critical Success Factors for Effective Crisis Management.” Bernstein Crisis Management. 1996. Retrieved June 21, 2008, from http://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/nl/crisismgr050815.html
Jamieson, Kathleen H., and Waldman, Paul. “Introduction.” The Press Effect: Politicians, Journalists, and the Stories that Shape the Political World, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. xiii-xiv.