”Vi är minst lika upprörda och ledsna som ni” En kvalitativ fallstudie av Arlas kriskommunikation på Facebook

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this study is to examine how organizations are trying to rebuild their trust and reputation when they are communicating directly with their customers on social media in a crisis, and to examine how well the organization’s choice of crisis communication fits the crisis type. The aim is also to study how organizations are using the interactive functions on social media in their crisis communication to create dialogue. This paper studies the phenomenon of crisis communication on social media by conducting a qualitative case study of the dairy producer Arla’s crisis communication on Facebook during the crisis that broke out after it was revealed that cows were being treated poorly. With a social constructivist perspective on crisis communication, a qualitative text analysis has been conducted. The analysis is based on image repair theory, situational crisis communication theory and previous research about crisis communication on social media. The analysis showed that Arla used several image repair strategies that were unsuitable for the type of preventable crisis that they were experiencing, such as shifting the blame, not taking responsibility or apologizing. Furthermore, the analysis showed that Arla did not utilize Facebook’s possibilities for creating relationship building dialogue fully. This paper is discussing possible explanations for Arla’s choice of crisis communication where the perceived severity of the threat and the co-operative organizational structure of Arla could be possible reasons that affected the choice of strategies. Lastly the paper is discussing the difficulties to both communicate in a fast pace and in a relationship building way on social media as a continued challenge for today’s organizations.