I förtroendekrisens skottlinje : En experimentell studie om krismeddelanden från influencers och organisationer och deras effekt på mottagarnas upplevda förtroende

Sammanfattning: "The best way to manage a crisis is to prevent one" (Coombs, 2019, p.19). A statement that in its simplicity is extremely powerful. However, today's digitalized society has contributed to the rapid dissemination of information and scrutiny of content that has complicated the management of crises. Because of the cancel culture that exists today on social media, it is therefore particularly important for actors with large followings to have the right conditions for managing crises. The actors who have the greatest impact on the public through social media, and who are therefore portrayed as almost omnipotent in terms of trust, are influencers (Hudders, 2020). This has put them in a very risky position in terms of being subject to crises. Despite this, there are currently no crisis strategies adapted for influencers, but the research that exists is based on an organizational perspective. From this, an interest was born to investigate whether the organization-centered crisis communication strategies are applicable to influencers, or whether there is a need to design a new model adapted for them. The aim of the study is therefore to examine the effect on trust depending on whether the sender of a crisis message is an organization or an influencer. The study is guided by the following question: - What, if any, effect does a crisis message have on recipients' trust linked to the concept's dimensions a) benevolence, b) integrity, c) competence/ability, d) reliability and e) openness/transparency, depending on whether the sender is an organization or an influencer? Based on PR research on organization-centered crisis communication theories, relationship building between influencers and their followers, and organizations and their stakeholders, and finally research on trust, an experiment has been conducted to answer the study's purpose and questions. The experiment consists of two experimental groups that took part in two equivalent crises followed by identical crisis messages. The sender of these crisis messages, and in other words the experiment's stimuli, consists of a fictitious influencer and a fictitious organization. This is in order to measure the recipients' perceived trust in the different groups after they have received the crisis message. The result of the study showed that the actor behind a crisis message has no effect on the recipients' perceived trust based on the five trust dimensions measured by the study. The conclusion of the study thus states that within the framework of trust influence, there is no indication that there is a need to develop crisis management strategies adapted for influencers. Instead, they seem to be able to use the strategies and theories that are basically developed for organizational crisis management.