Company Facebook and Crisis Signal: The Case of Malaysian Airline Companies

Nor'izah Ahmad, Narimah Ismail, Sharmini Abdullah

Abstract


The rapid advancement of social media play a significant role in publicizing the corporate image and reputation of organizations. The type of information shared and method used by business corporations to disseminate information via social media have profound influence on the public’s perception towards particular organizations. A study on Facebook of airlines using content analysis done by Grancay (2014) revealed that Airline Facebook pages contained only limited information and are not substitutes for airline websites. Furthermore, only 84 percent of airlines with Facebook provide the link to the websites. As such the questions posed are; what is the content of Facebook of Malaysian airlines? What kind of posts and nature of interactions occurs in Malaysian airlines Facebook? This article is based on a study conducted to examine the content and interactions of posts from Facebook of five selected Malaysian airlines – Malaysia Airlines, Air Asia, Firefly, Malindo Air and MASWing. Content analysis was used to identify the content of the postings and interactions provided by airlines on their official Facebook pages over a period of one month in October 2016, and determine possible issues that may contribute to the crisis in the companies. The findings showed the trend of airline companies Facebook posting was positive in nature and contain information about promotion, travel tips, entertainment and safety information. It was found that airline companies did not to give any response or feedback to their customers’ negative comments which may contribute to the crisis in the companies and thus considered a crisis signal.

Keywords: Airline companies, content analysis, crisis signal, social media, company Facebook


Full Text:

PDF

References


Avram, B. (2014). A comparative Facebook content analysis between Romanian and Western European Airline carriers. Expert Journal of Marketing, 2(1), 28-38.

Britton, C. (2016). Should you delete negative social media comments in your crisis response. Retrieved from https://www.rockdovesolutions.com/blog/should-you-deletenegative-social-media-comments-in-your-crisisresponse?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

Champoux, V., Durgee, J., & McGlynn, L. (2012). Corporate Facebook pages: When “fans” attack. Journal of Business Strategy, 33(2), 22-30

Cohn, R. (2014). How social media is elevating airline crisis communication. Retrieved from

https://www.socialfresh.com/how-social-media-is-elevating-airline-crisiscommunication/

Coombs, W. T. (2012). Ongoing crisis communication: Planning, managing and responding. (3rd ed.). London: SAGE

Coombs, W. T. (2014). State of crisis communication: Evidence and the bleeding edge. Retrieved from http://www.instituteforpr.org/state-crisis-communication-evidencebleeding-edge/

Dayang Aizza Maisha Abang Ahmad, Noratilah Mohamad Ashari, & Mus Chairi Samani. (2017). Effects of rational and emotional framing on highly involved audience in severe crisis situation: An experimental study on MH370. Jurnal Komunikasi, Malaysian Journal of Communication, 33(2), 89-104

Grancay, M. (2014) Airline Facebook pages – A content analysis. Eur. Transp. Res. Rev., 6, 213-223

Harris, S. (2017, April 21). Appalling: Woman bumped from Air Canada flight misses $10,000 Galapagos cruise. CBC News. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/aircanada-bumping-overbooked-flight-galapagos-1.4077645

Jauhariatul Ahmad, & Jamilah Ahmad. (2011). Penggunaan Facebook oleh Badan Bukan Kerjaan Alam Sekitar (ENGO) dalam menyampaikan mesej Alam Sekitar. Jurnal Komunikasi, Malaysian Journal of Communication, 27(2), 161-182

Mantymaki, M., Ravishankar, M. N. (2016). Social media: The good, the bad, and the ugly. 15th IFIP Wa 6.11 Proceedings, Swansea, UK, Sept 13-15, 2016.

McCrokindle, T. (2010). Can you see the writings on my wall? A content analysis of the Fortune 50’s Facebook social networking site. Public Relations Journal, 4(3), 3-11.

Mohd Azul Mohamad Salleh, & Nor Azita Ghani. (2003). Pola pemamparan kandungan maklumat Islam menerusi Internet: Kajian kes terhadap Institut Kefahaman Islam Malaysia (IKIM) dan Angkatan Belia Islam Malaysia (ABIM). Jurnal Komunikasi, Malaysian Journal of Communication, 19, 23-37.

Parsons, A. L. (2011). Social media from a corporate perspectives: Content analysis of official Facebook pages. Allied Academies International Conference. Academy of Marketing Proceedings, 2 (pp. 11-15).

Rankin, E. (2017, June 6). Check your tickets: Air Canada cancels bookings without warning. CBC News. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/checkyour-tickets-air-canada-cancels-bookings-without-warning-1.4147410

Shen, B., & Bissell, K. (2013). Social media, social me: A content analysis of beauty companies use of Facebook in marketing and branding. Journal of Promotion Management, 19(5). doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10496491.2013.829160

Statista. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-socialnetworks-ranked-by-number-of-users/

Syme, C. (2014). Monitoring social media to prevent a crisis. Retrieved from

http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/monitoring-social-media-prevent-crisis

Teh, T. (2014). Worst social media disasters in Malaysia 2012-2013. Retrieved from

http://www.colourlessopinions.com/2014/06/worst-social-media-disastersmalaysia.html

Zhang, B. Kotkov, D., Veijalainan, J., & Semenov, A. (2016). Online stakeholder interactions of some airlines in light of situational crisis communication theory. In Dwivedi, Y. K., Mäntymäki, M., Ravishankar, M. N., ... Simintiras, A. C. (Eds.), Social Media: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. 15th Conference on e-Business, e-Services and e-Society (I3E), Sep 2016, Swansea, United Kingdom. Springer International Publishing, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, LNCS-9844, pp.183-192.


Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


e-ISSN: 2289-1528