Abstract:

Social media crises, especially those provoked by rumors, seem to have taken a new turn; their impact can be short or long term depending on whether it’s a crisis or an incidence. Between those two terms, the word 'Buzz' emerges and is widely used with the rise of social media and their immersion in our daily lives. The taxonomy of buzz varies largely, and nowadays some marketers knew how to use it in a positive way to increase the presence of a brand by creating a buzz around it. This 'Buzz', previously avoided can now benefit companies allowing them a better public awareness and an effective communication tool. Despite the existing tools of crisis management, we cannot overlook the socio-cultural issues including the usage patterns of social media that differs from one country to another. Therefore, in this research, we are trying to compare between the different crisis management strategies during a social media crises adopted by French companies installed in Egypt and their adopted strategies in their headquarters in France. How will the communication strategies differ in each context? This analysis shall be conducted in the form of multiple case studies on three industry sectors; FMCG, telecommunications and pharmaceuticals industries; in order to get holistic and accurate results. To do so, the methodology will be a mixed in the form of methods; integrating qualitative and quantitative data collection tools, with the use of the netnography method to describe the interchangeability between the users on social networking sites and the companies by highlighting their demographic and physiographic attributes. Furthermore, this study aims at proposing an innovative social crisis management model customized to those two cultures of reference.