Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Despite the enormous value social media yield governments in communicating with citizens, there is scant research on the extent to which local governments are actually using social media for crisis communication efforts.  As local governments continue to face diminishing budgets stretched time, and human, and fiscal resources even for the management of daily operations, it is imperative to reveal how social media can maximize efficiency in crisis management.  In addition, given the extraordinary growth in social media use over the past few years, it is also important to evaluate if and how governments are using this technology to communicate with publics during crisis and incorporating it into their crisis communication plans.

Using survey data collected from more than 300 local government officials from municipalities across the United States, this study examined social media use in a relatively unexplored context, local governments. It specifically addressed the adoption and use of social media tools for crisis communication and social media’s part in managing a crisis.  Results indicate the extent of social media use, but not the number of tools used, is positively associated with local city officials’ assessments of their ability to control a crisis situation as well as their overall evaluations of the strength of their responses.