THE IMPACT OF BLOGGING ON CRISIS COMMUNICATION MANAGEMENT IN PUBLIC RELATIONS

Introduction
The invention of the internet has had a huge impact on contemporary society. Today the internet has become a fundamental part of the fabric of life for many.
As Moran (2008) predicts, use of internet would bring a fundamental change to the way professionals used to run their business in any particular field. Public relations measurement expert, Katie Delahaye Paine (2009) argues that companies that do not take social media seriously will soon go out of business.
Blogging, micro blogging, video sharing services and various other types of social networks are bringing people with similar interests together to form virtual communities. Among social media networks, blogging has an important place. In this paper, I will discuss how blogging is affecting the practice of public relations. Within this broad topic, I will focus on blogging and crisis communication.  Questions guiding this discussion include: How are organizations using blogs during crises and what impact have blogs had on crisis communication practice? I will explore these questions using industry sources, scholarly articles and references to examples.

Blogging at a glance
Social Media is the democratization of content and understanding of the role people play in the process of not only reading and disseminating information, but also in sharing and creating content (Argenti, 2009). Research conducted among 17,000 active internet users in 29 countries established that mass media hardly took consumer recommendations into consideration (Universal McCann report, September 2008)[1]. As the report states, official and advertisement-based mass-media products are not able to earn the trust of public any more. That is why people started trusting their peers more than traditional mass-media which ultimately led to the creation of powerful social media networks (When did we start trusting strangers, 2008). Most of the social interaction, where the final image of the matter in concern is created for the public, occurs in blogs.
More than 133,000,000 blogs have been indexed by Technorati since 2002. The average number of blogs being created in a day is 900,000 and 77 percent of all internet users read blogs (Technorati, 2008). The most popular blogs now have more readers than most national newspapers (Warren, 2009).
The definition given to a blog in Create a blog page of Blogger.com is interesting to mention and this simple definition gives a real image of blogging in practice:
“A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world. Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them, in all shapes and sizes, and there are no real rules.” (Blogger. What’s a blog? Retrieved from Blogger web site: http://www.blogger.com/tour_start.g)

The impact of blogging on Public Relations
The impact of blogging on organizations is plain to see. Most organizations are already using blogging as an important tool of communication (McCorkindale, 2009). The use of Twitter by the US Presidential candidates during election campaign showed how blogging had become important in public relations (Pavlik, 2008). The current president of the US, Barak Obama, is still tweeting (http://twitter.com/BARACKOBAMA). Among all the communication and media professions, the field most affected by blogging is public relations (Pfanner, 2006).
Traditional mass-media had been the gateway through which PR practitioners once gave their messages to audiences before the more widespread internet access. Prior to the advent of the worldwide web people had little choice in terms of information sources. Those who were not happy with organizations could hardly make any effective connection with organizations due to the lack of access. After the emergence of social media, particularly, blogs, people found new ways to reach the organizations[2]. The most important aspect of the impact blogs have on public relations is blogging made the public more powerful than ever before and organizations started taking opinions of bloggers into consideration.
People are freely discussing matters in blogs related to products, services organizations offer. In powerful blogs which have hundreds of thousands of followers, negative views can have significant consequences even causing crises.
Researchers continue to show that new technologies are dramatically changing the tools public relations practitioners use for communication (Wright & Hinson, 2009). The survey found 73 percent of organization employees believed that the emergence of blogs and social media had changed the way their organizations communicate (Wright & Hinson, 2009).
Public relations departments must resort to the same communication channel the publis uses to prevent emerging crises, to rebuild the image of the organization, or to tackle existing crises. In this way, blogs are very helpful. Another reason blogging is effective and attractive is that it is personal in nature. Customers usually prefer the personality and private closeness that blogs can offer. That is why in corporate blogs contributors are usually high ranking officials or former senior employees who communicate with customers personally through blog entries[3]. The availability of leaving comments is one of the most important features of blogging which helps public relations practitioners identify and analyze the mood of the audience. Blogs provide organizations another route for sharing their positions in a somewhat controlled fashion and many major corporations including Cisco, Dell, Ford, HP, Kodak, Nokia have already taken the advantage of blogging (Kent, 2008).

Blogging and Crisis Communication
Surveys show social media can be useful for identifying warning signs that a crisis is developing.  Public relations practitioners should observe blogs relevant to their industry.  This can be done using regular searches in internet looking for the name of organization or services they offer which are discussed in blogs[4].  The analysis of findings may show that a crisis is coming. Information gathered in this way gives the organization opportunity to have enough time to prevent the crisis, or to respond to it as soon as possible. Crises are a problem that require organizations to take immediate actions. Ignoring the facts may be a deadly for the company. For example, Kryptonite, maker of top-selling bicycle locks, suffered at the hands of a blogger. A video clip that one of Kryptonite’s lockes was easily opened by a ball point pen was posted by a blogger. In response, the company had to launch a massive lock exchange program (CNN, 2004). Kryptonite was probably the first victim of a crisis created by a blog.
Crisis situations related to organizations may be put into two categories in terms of blog participation  in either their creation or solution:
1. Situations in which the crisis is created by a blog. Crisis management campaigns organized by affected parties against such incidents using blogs will be solution for this type of crisis.
2.Crises emerged due to natural disasters such as hurricane, earthquake etc. In this case, blogs rush to help as an effective tool of communication and serve as a source of information.
Blogging that has been used to create a crisis should be applied tackle the same crisis. For example, Dell learned how blogosphere can be a cause of crisis when it recalled 4.1m laptop batteries after a video was widespread in blogs that showed one of its computers bursting into flames (Michelle Kessler & Jayne O’Donnell, 2006). As a solution to counter blog attacks and to rebuild a damaged image of the company, Dell also started blogging (Silverman, 2006).
Similarly, Walmartwatch.com, a blog of the Walmart store is an effort of the retailer company to correct its own previous mistakes which happened when the company was under the attack of bloggers for its unethical activities promoting an anonymous blog, Wal-Marting Across America (Gogoi, 2006).
The KFC video of rats in a New York City location is another example which shows how blogs are powerful even leading organizations into crisis (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su0U37w2tws). Traditional media usually follow the cases after they become scandalous event in social media networks. The same thing happened to Dominos Pizza when a video about unhygienic condition in cooking facilities became popular in youtube after it was linked from a blogosphere (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhBmWxQpedI)[5].
Blogs must be taken seriously. Another important trend worthy to mention is that almost all these companies who suffered at the hand of blogs resorted to the same means to tackle the problem (Wright & Hinson, 2009)[6]. This also shows public relations practitioners now understand that blogs can be used as an effective tool to counter the attacks of unwanted bloggers. In order to rebuild the damaged image of the company, it is necessary to use the same channel which is blogosphere where in fact they lost the game[7].
Wright and Hinson (2009) report that more than two-thirds (69%) of the current Fortune 2000 companies are using social networking sites. Among them blogs have the biggest share.
Another types of crisis in which blogs can be used an effective way of communication are critical situations emerged due to natural disasters as mentioned in the second category of crises. In such emergency cases blogs proved to be the most effective way of communication.
For example, during Hurricane Katrina, when land lines, cell phones and traditional utilities had failed, blogs and micro-blogs were used as initial and the only means of communication and source of information through BlackBerry. In fact, Hurricane Katrina was the first major crisis where blogs were widely used as a communication channel (Macias, 2008).
Also, in violent demonstrations happened right after the election in Iran, Twitter worked as the main channel of information since foreign journalists were not allowed  to enter the country. The State Department of the US even asked Twitter to delay its scheduled maintenance to avoid disrupting communications between Iranian citizens and the rest of the world (Morozov, 2009).
HHS’s peanut blog is also another example for successful crisis management. Andrew Wilson, web manager at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), started blogging to raise public awareness and provide a mechanism for the public to differentiate between poisonous  and safe products. The program became successful earning the praise of the public in blogosphere (Tinker, Dumlao & McLaughlin, 2009).

Conclusion
The future will be constructed on the pillars of social media (Owyang, 2009). Public relations will stand for “People and Relationships”, as organizations realize that their success lies on the connections they make with people (Paine, 2009).
Studies carried out to analyze the significance of blogging in public relations proved that the impact blogging has on PR practice is huge. In a survey conducted by Donald K. Wright and Michelle D. Hinson (2009), organization employees agreed that blogs have changed the way organizations communicate. This number has increased from 61 percent to 73 percent this year.
Researchers have contended that corporate blogs are effective and even necessary in crisis management. Sweetser and Metzgar (2007) say blogs impact the perception of the level of crisis an organization experiences. As they analyze, respondents who read the organizational blogs felt the company did a good job at establishing and maintaining relationships. Anti-crisis measures and messages given through corporate blogs let the viewers perceive a low level of crisis for the company in crisis. The results of this exploratory study suggest that launching a blog in response to a crisis may indeed be an effective crisis management tool.
All these show that blogging has become an important PR tool to communicate with the public and tackle crisis situations. However, there are new questions arising from the daily experience of blogging and public relations relationship which need further research and exploration.
Who should run the blog? Employees or executives? Can employees express negative views about their companies in blogs? Is prohibition for employees to make critical comments ethical? Can censorship in comment moderation provide a real evaluation of customer response? Further research will help us to answer these questions.

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