2022

Badham, Mark; Lievonen, Matias; Luoma-Aho, Vilma

Although there is evidence of crises spreading quickly across multiple social media and other online media channels, crisis communication scholarship has not yet adequately explored this phenomenon. Building on corporate communication theory related to online arenas, we introduce the Crisis Arena Crossover framework to examine the process in which a crisis emerging in one online arena can cross over to other arenas synchronously or asynchronously. We apply this framework to the Apple 2018 #ChargeGate case to show the factors that contribute to crisis arena crossovers. Amid today's fast-changing and less-controlled digital communication landscape, this framework offers insights into factors that influence crisis arena crossovers and which corporate communication practitioners should be mindful of.