PRESS RELEASES AND SOCIAL MEDIA IN CORPORATE CRISIS COMMUNICATION: : A COMPARATIVE CASE STUDY OF NORDEA AND SAMSUNG

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Örebro University School of Humanities,

Education and Social Sciences May, 26th 2017

PRESS RELEASES AND SOCIAL MEDIA

IN CORPORATE CRISIS COMMUNICATION:

A COMPARATIVE CASE STUDY OF NORDEA AND SAMSUNG

MA Thesis Journalism Connected Supervisor: Professor David Machin

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ABSTRACT

This research looks at how corporates manage crisis communication using press releases and social media channels. It aims to find out how the case corporations Nordea and Samsung executed their crisis communication during the years 2016 and 2017.

The dissertation draws upon literature on organizational crisis and reputation. It also reviews how companies could possibly react to a crisis, how press releases are usually formatted, and finishes with utilization of social media during the crises.

In 2016, Samsung became the center of a crisis by the exploding “Note7” phones and Nordea was being mentioned in the “Panama Papers” for tax evasion. The data of the crisis cases has been collected using online ethnography and analyzed with the support of interviews with four crisis specialists. The interviewees were asked semi-structure questions in order to analyze the data from a professional perspective. The dissertation did not only cover the content used, but also studied which channels where used and the timing of the statements.

The findings revealed that Samsung took the “Note7” case seriously and had a bigger quantity of crisis messaging than Nordea on the “Panama Papers” case. Based on the messages, Samsung’s crisis communication length was five months and Nordea’s four. Samsung’s crisis communication showed major gaps in their timeframe and Nordea’s was more coherent. Nordea used long press releases with complex language compared to Samsung’s advertisement and international style. Samsung used a lot of infographics in social media compared to Nordea’s factual messages.

The dissertation is relevant in regard to previous studies on this subject, which have shown utilization of press releases and social media during a corporation crisis. Therefore, the dissertation contributes with new empirical understanding.

Keywords: Corporate Crisis Communication, Social Media, Press Releases, Nordea, Samsung,

Organizational Crisis, Organizational Reputation, Tax Evasion, Exploding Phones, Panama Papers, Note7

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1. INTRODUCTION

This dissertation studies corporate crisis communication and how it is executed on social media and with press releases. The study evaluates how Nordea executed crisis communication in 2016 and 2017 with the so-called “Panama Papers” case and how Samsung executed the “explosive Galaxy Note7” case. Although both of the crises happened in 2016, the crisis communication continued into 2017. The dissertation will not only cover the content used, but also studies the channels and the timing of the messages. The purpose is to analyze what weaknesses and strengths are shown.

Benoit (1997: 182) argued, that a well-planned crisis communication strategy may decrease reaction time and may inhibit errors in an organization’s initial response to a crisis. Thus, it is important to be ready for crisis situations and know how and when to act when it occurs. Curtin (2005: 133) binds the importance of press releases to Benoit’s (1997) strategies. Therefore, the corporations’ crisis press releases are also studied, since they have a foundational part in the crisis communication process. Combining press releases and social media, enables obtaining a wider perspective of crisis communication.

Arguably, social media is a progressive platform for current communication and as the technology develops, it will become an even bigger part of spreading relevant information. This seems to interest a lot of academics and communication professionals, since the frequency and quality of social media research continues to increase (Khang et al., 2012: 279).

Similarly to Benoit (1997) and Curtin (2005), Lipschultz (2016: 73) agrees with strategy planning and the importance of well-timed messaging. Therefore, it is crucial to study modern crisis situations, from which it is possible to learn more about what could go wrong and what actually might save a company’s reputation.

As there can hardly be a research without research questions (Ghauri and Gronhaug, 2005: 41), the following question was formed having in mind that the aim is to have an understanding of how the corporations responded to the crises and by that, learn how crisis communication can be improved.

RQ: How Nordea and Samsung executed their crisis communication with press releases and in social media in 2016 and 2017?

The qualitative research took place over a period of eight months. The literature review gave the necessary information for the research and a foundation to build the analysis on. Online ethnography and interviewing method, which both will be explained in the methodology chapter,

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were chosen in order to collect, to present and to evaluate the cases at a deeper level. The online ethnography is applied with a creative mindset.

In order to find an accurate answer to the main research question, the following sub research questions are asked:

SRQ1: What kind of social media tactics did Nordea use in the “Panama Papers” crisis communication?

SRQ2: How did Nordea manage “Panama Papers” crisis communication with the press releases?

SRQ3: What kind of social media tactics did Samsung use in the “Galaxy Note7” crisis communication?

SRQ4: How did Samsung manage “Galaxy Note7” crisis communication with the press releases?

In order to analyze the data from a professional point of view, four crisis communication specialists were interviewed at the end of March 2017. The data, specifically the crisis messages, were shown to the interviewees and analyzed with their help.

The dissertation is structured as follows: Chapter 2, the Literature Review, identifies shortfalls in the existing literature, which led to a number of Research Questions. Chapter 3 is the Methodology chapter, and it describes how the study will answers to the Research Questions. Chapter 4 introduces the Samsung and Nordea crises. The fifth chapter analyses the results and the sixth chapter concludes the results.

The results create a possibility to observe how consumers might see the situation since the data investigated, is completely public. Building upon this, other corporations can benefit by learning from errors the case corporations made. Thus, the dissertation creates a reference for corporations, enabling a better preparation for crisis situations.

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2. LITERATURE REVIEW

This literature review gives an understanding of the evolution of scholarly research on corporate crisis communication. The aim is to display how the knowledge evolved about certain subjects that touch upon the elements of the study and to define the gaps in the literature. Therefore, the literature review starts by paragraph 2.1, defining organizational crisis and reputation. Paragraphs 2.2 and 2.3 look at studies that focus on public relations in crisis communication and how companies could response to a crisis situation. After that in paragraph 2.4, literature of press releases in a crisis situation is covered. The last paragraph, 2.5 and sub-paragraph 2.5.1, focus on the use of social media in corporate crisis communication.

2.1. Organizational crisis and reputation

Hermann (1963: 64) defines an organizational crisis with three characteristics: threat to high-priority values of the organization, restricted amount of time to response and unanticipated or unexpected by the organization. Expanding upon this, Coombs and Holladay (1996: 279) studied the strategies on how to respond to crises and how the strategies are matched with a crisis type in order to investigate the association with the image of an organization. Reputation damage can be followed by a financial damage and a threat to the organization’s survival (1996: 280). In a similar vein, Benoit’s (1997: 177) theory of image restoration outlines strategies that can be used as options to build crisis messages in order to restore a corporation’s image during a crisis.

Building upon this, Dean (2004: 204) argued that when a company with a good reputation responds inappropriately, it appears to suffer more loss comparing to a company with a bad reputation. Also, the regard for a company with good reputation responding appropriately has a smaller change comparing to a company with a bad reputation (ibid). In similar vein as Herman (1963), Ulmer et al. (2015: 7) also focus on threat, response time and surprise. Likewise, Fearn-Banks (2017: 2) follows the same view by defining crisis communication, a part of crisis management, which is the dialog between the organization and its public(s) prior to, during, and after negative occurrence, including communication that can possibly also bring a more positive reputation than the company had before the crisis (ibid). All the authors (Herman, 1963; Ulmer et al., 2015; Fearn-Banks, 2017) are experts in analyzing and predicting corporate crisis situations.

As a result, it is clear that a reputation is such a big part of a company that arguably all of these subjects should be taken into consideration when formatting press releases and social media messages.

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The following paragraph introduces definitions about Public Relations and how it blends into corporate crisis communication as well as how it affects to corporation reputation.

2.2. Public Relations in Crisis Communication

After we have obtained a small impression of what an organizational crisis can be, and how it can influence the reputation, it is easier for us to understand the role of Public Relations in communication.

Harlow (1976: 36) stated that Public Relations (PR) is a perceivable management function and it contributes to establish and preserve mutual lines of communication such as, understanding an acceptance and cooperation between an organization and its public. PR includes managing problems and issues and it helps executives to stay informed, as well as prepares them, to respond to public opinions (ibid). Another definition of PR is by Grunig (1989: 29):

“a practice is dominated by the presupposition the purpose of public relations is to manipulate the behavior of publics for the assumed, if not actual, benefit of the manipulated publics as well as the organization”.

This suggests that PR can be seen as maneuvering public opinion. In contrast to this, Kitchen (1999: 7) suggested that marketing communication, part of public relations, seem to be a vigorous and continuing requirement to business. From other perspective, Cutlip et al. (2000: 6) suggested that public relations is the management function, establishing and maintaining relationship that is mutually beneficial for organization and the publics on whom its success or failure depends on. Adding to this idea, Smith and Place (2013: 179) explained that public relations stand out to gain power through the expertise of the individual practitioner and the use of social media, which yields tangible evidence for the organization to assess the value of the public relations function.

Comprehending the role of PR in crisis communication creates a possibility to broaden the spectrum of strategies on how corporations can respond to a crisis.

2.3. How could companies react to a crisis?

This section surveys views about different ways to react to a corporate crisis. Benoit (1997: 179) introduces five bigger strategies to restore an image: Denial, evasion of responsibility, reducing offensiveness, corrective action and mortification. The author (1997: 182) argued that the nature of a crisis and the relevant audience(s) must be identified before acting. Identifying the suspicions and knowing the perceived severity of the alleged offense is crucial (ibid). The

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message needs to be tailored according to the wanted audience (1997: 183). If there is more than one audience (which is common), the audiences need to be prioritized, e.g. consumers and stockholders (ibid). In different messages lies a risk of misunderstanding and with different audiences there can be a need for different kind of messages and how the messages are formatted (ibid).

Furthering this point, Mathiesen (2004: 37) introduced seven different isolation techniques to “pulverize” the public opinion on how people see crisis events, especially when it comes to disasters where lives are lost. The author described isolation techniques using the oil extraction example in 1980 in the North Sea, in order to bring out how to silence the relationship to how people see the disaster (ibid). The author points out the following options:

“Through the individualization of the event, the normalization of it in other contexts, the splintering of it, the placement of it in a protected future, the isolation of it in the present, the relegation of it to the past, and the elevation of it to the History with a capital H, the contexts within which an event takes place is pulverized.” (Mathiesen 2004: 44).

What is being emphasized, is the different possibilities to handle the crisis situation companies may face.

Similarly, Morley (2009: 4) defined corporate brand management as promoting and protecting the reputation of the corporation. The author stated that branding involves a connection (2009: 7). The following paragraph explains how the connection can be made with press releases.

2.4. Press releases in crisis communication

This paragraph gives a view on how press releases can be used in crisis communication. Lagadec (1993: 204) brought out the importance of developing a specific team who take care of the crisis management and specially the crisis communication. If the crisis involved human lives, the families should be informed before any other media (1993: 209). Waiting for all necessary information before speaking is important to avoid any falls messages, but time may cause that other actors fill any information vacuum (1993: 211). Media will cover the silence with any selling rumors (ibid). The author (1993: 212) address three messages that should underlie the initial communications effort:

1. Awareness of the problem and the company takes the responsibility for all its’ aspects, such as technological, organizational, human and social ones.

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2. How everything is being done to obtain supplementary information and to handle the situation as well as which emergency plans are being adjusted and how it is going to work.

3. Further information will be offered as soon as it is available. (Lagadec, 1993: 212).

Similarly, Curtin (2005: 133) stated that the most important part in statements in crisis situations is the timing. He indicated that saying something, instead of saying nothing, is a sign of showing awareness of a company that something is happening (ibid). It is important to prepare in advance to variants of crisis situations with ready thought press releases that also need to be cleared by the legal department in advance (2005: 135). The press releases have to be strong and honest at the beginning of a crisis (ibid). Adding to this point, Lipschultz (2016: 76) brought to attention, that press releases should be used to utilize virtual collaboration through social media. Differing from the history, when PR specialists relied on simple press releases or news releases, every release should be designed for online consumption by news media and the general public (2016: 77). By combining press release guidelines and modern communication as found on social media, we can perceive a more versatile way to communicate during a crisis.

2.5. Social Media

This section surveys views on how social media has changed communication and how it is used in crisis communication.

Curtis (2010: 92) argued that social media is related to perceiving credibility, strategic message targeting, client relationship and an ability to reach the public. Luckie (2012: 14) made a further, related point. Currently, online audiences want to read the news quickly and instantly understand the point of a story (ibid). News often spreads on blogs and through social media, long before reported by mainstream media (2012: 23). Social networks also allow to share and comment online content without waiting for a traditional news organization to report it (2012: 170). Thus, companies should also be active members of a social network, both to be aware of what people are discussing and to interact with their audiences. He refines, Twitter is used to make concise statements with a limit of 140 characters and therefore the messages must be brief (2012: 171) and also Facebook is used to interact with the customers (2012: 180).

Miller (2013: 89) defined ‘earned exposure’ as relaying to positive experiences of customers on social media sites for reviews and ratings. Miller (2013: 92) also emphasized that customers want to be part in an informal dialogue, instead of subjected sales pitch.

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Content can be distributed across potentially large-scale audiences via social media (Page et al., 2014: 5). Edelman (2013, in Lipschultz, 2016: 85) narrates that in social media the emphasis is away from traditional press releases and media relations tactics and towards to the engagement content that is timely and contextual. The right content, at the right time and with the right social media platforms, will allow to meet ROI (return on investment) business objectives, that can be measured (ibid). Social media engagement calls for target focus and clear content strategy (ibid).

Adding to this idea, Zhang et al. (2014: 245) research on tweets and posts on Twitter and Weibo with IPA (interaction process analysis) and brand anthropomorphism, showed that first and second person pronouns were used more in Twitter than in Weibo messages.

From a different perspective, Drulă’s (2015: 139) research of multimedia storytelling found that as different platforms have different kind of usability principles, it is required to consider which structure, visual aspect and layout of information is used. Building upon Miller (2013), Zhang et al. (2014) and Drulă (2015) the following conclusion can be drawn: Every message given to the public needs to be formatted according to the platform usability principles.

Adding to this, Lipschultz (2016: 7) stated that the communication within social media sites, such as Twitter, may cause crowdsourcing, in which audiences quickly form a narrative story based on small pieces of information. Thus, companies should be able to respond quickly in social media to an arising change, negative or positive.

2.5.1. Social Media during Crisis Communication

Social media launch a shift in resources towards communicating directly with customers through the use of online content (Lipschultz, 2016: 72). Valued content should be created to increase awareness, inform consumers, strengthen brand loyalty, build trust and manage reputation (ibid).

“In the 24/7, real-time world of social media, users need the ability to quickly make good decisions. Media literacy is the skill of deconstructing messages and understanding context.” (Lipschultz, 2016: 215).

What is being emphasized, is that social media does not sleep, and therefore a crisis situation should be reacted to as quickly as possible.

Expanding upon Morley’s (2009) branding connection, Rabinovitch (2017: 12) emphasizes that defining a target group and how to best reach them is the key in the beginning of crisis communication. Companies will be measured in: speed, transparency and reliability (ibid). The messages in a crisis situation needs to be customized depending on stakeholders, such as

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customers, investors, employees and influencers (ibid). Earned, owned and paid media play a role in amplifying the messages (ibid). Following this line of thought, Fearn-Banks (2017: 1) highlights that the aim of crisis communication hasn’t changed over time for the best-framed messages, delivered with the right method, to the targeted audiences.

2.6. Conclusion

This literature review is a selective and compressed account of literature on topics that are related and essential for the topics of this study. The findings show that the focus should be put on the crisis messages’ language, structure, visual aspect, and layout of information as well as the timing of the messages.

From the subjects above we are also able to conclude, that the aim of social media messages and press releases in crisis communication are also influenced by how communication was executed tens of years ago.

As Khang et al. (2012: 279) stated, the frequency and quality of social media research continues to increase. However, a relative small amount of comparative case studies of corporate crisis communication seem to exist. Specially, comparative studies where someone would have studied both press releases and social media in corporate crisis communication have rarely been done. In order to get the most actual and relevant result possible, it is crucial to investigate external corporate crisis communication with the use of real-life cases.

Based on everything we learned from the literature review, we can move on to the methodology chapter and concentrate on how the actual study was done. The research methodology showcases procedures and a system of rules together with an explanation on how the results of the research are found (Ghauri & Gronhaug, 2005: 41).

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3. METHODOLOGY

This chapter describes the methodology and the chosen methods. The chapter starts by restating the Research Questions in paragraph 3.1. After that in paragraph 3.2, the description of the research procedure is divided into two sub paragraphs 3.2.1 and 3.2.2 explaining the distinct methods of the dissertation on which this study drew: online ethnography and interviewing method. Followed by sub paragraphs 3.2.3, 3.2.4 and 3.2.5 clarifying the interviewing process. The methodology chapter ends with a conclusion at paragraph 3.3.

3.1. Restating the research questions

“Panama Papers, Nordea” and “Galaxy Note7, Samsung” crises happened in 2016 and spread worldwide, causing a big sensation and are therefore arguably big enough to be used as representative case samples in corporate crisis communication. The qualitative study was chosen since it allows for deeper analysis and is specially oriented towards analyzing concrete cases (Flick, 2014: 22). Therewith, chapter 1 has introduced the following questions, which are asked in order to obtain relevant information for the dissertation.

3.2. Description of research procedure

The dissertation examines how the corporations executed their external crisis communications during and after the crisis. In this context, “external communication” refers to messages that are shared with the public, such as press releases and social media messages.

First, the relevant literature of crisis communication was collected in order to find information gaps in the literature. Based on the sample cases “Nordea Panama Papers” and “Samsung Note7”,

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the press releases, tweets and posts were gathered from the companies’ website and social media channels using screenshot technique.

Four communication specialists were contacted in November 2016 and asked for interviews at a later stage.

Based on findings (Lagadec, 1993; Curtin, 2005; Drulă, 2005; Luckie, 2012; Miller, 2013; Zhang et al., 2014; Page et al., 2014; Ulmer et al., 2015; Rabinovitch, 2017) in the literature review, the analysis focuses on the crisis messages’ language, structure, visual aspect, and layout of information as well as the timing of the messages. All the relevant crisis messages for this dissertation were organized into a timetable. The timetables (Attachment 1 & 2) and the explanation of it are shown in the analysis, chapter 5. The full crisis data including press releases, as well as social media posts and tweets are readable and can be found in the appendices at the end of this dissertation.

This kind of method resembles online ethnography (Postill & Pink, 2012) and by combining it with interviewing method (Hennink et al., 2011), we are able to create the opportunity for a deeper analysis (Eskola & Suoranta, 1998: 15-16). The interviews were held in March 2017. The theory of methods and how they were applied for this dissertation are explained in the following sub paragraphs.

3.2.1. Online ethnography

For the online ethnographer, the rapid growth of social media platforms, create new sites for ethnographic fieldwork (Postill & Pink, 2012: 4-5). Such as, adopting new types of ethnographic practices and invites critical perspectives on the theoretical frames that dominate Internet studies (ibid). Thus, this creates an opportunity for re-thinking Internet research methodology and therefore, offers a possibility for a semi-structured study.

Cameron and Panovic (2014, in Gravells, 2017: 37) interpreted the ethnography as an approach that can be combined with other analyses. For example, Jacobs’ (2000a, in Gravells, 2017: 37-38) study is based on written media texts of press releases, as a display how a purpose of the messages forms them.

Hine (2000, in Garcia et al. 2009: 62) defined the ruling for online ethnography research and the integration of visual data as followed. Visual and textual components should be included to the data in order to analyze web sites (ibid). She used photos, backgrounds, the types of layout or arrangement of objects and text on the page, and other aspects of the visual appearance on the sites and how they conveyed an emotional message about a case (ibid).

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Similarly, this dissertation looks into messages collected from websites and social media channels by paying attention to the text, the layout and the graphics used in the crisis messages.

Building upon this, Van Hout’s and Macgilchrist’s (2010, in Gravells, 2017: 38-39) study showed an intertextuality intricate writing process of the news. The study also showed the use of diverse ethnographic methods including interviews, observation and text analysis to build up a clear perspective on how news stories are created (ibid). The data collection technique in online ethnography is grounded in interactive virtual communities (Nørskov& Rask, 2011: 2).

Varis (2014: 5-6) reminds that one of the risks of the method is to take the online data from the Internet out of its context. Therefore, in this dissertation the crisis cases have been presented in chapter 4 so that the reader would understand the full story. The strengths of the method are, that the online material is easily collectable, printable and screenshotable (2014:12).

For this dissertation, Internet was the only option as a source, because no other source offers the data of press releases and social media messages. Therefore, the method is an excellent option based on that the data was, for example, collected from Facebook channels, which can be seen as virtual communities.

Social media is often studied based on audience engagement and how they perceive the online data (Nørskov& Rask, 2011; Schmies, 2016) and therefore this dissertation also pays attention to the amount of the followers and the likes of the corporations’ social channels.

In this dissertation the social media channels from where the data was collected, were chosen based on “the most likes and followers” by March 13th_2017._{Since there would have been no} point, for example, to choose a Twitter account that has hundreds of likes while accounts exist with tens of thousands followers.

Every single press release related to the crisis was gathered from the companies’ websites. The websites and the timelines on social media channels had to be browsed through starting from the date the crisis happened and forward, in order to find the relevant messages. Even though the timeframe in Nordea’s case was 4 months and in Samsung’s case 5 months, the timelines were browsed even more extensive, just to make sure that the companies didn’t post anything before the crisis. In Nordea’s case this required 5 months worth of timeline browsing and in Samsung’s case 6 months. All together, 25 press releases and social messages were found related to Samsung’s crisis communication, when the count for Nordea’s was 9. All the needed material was screenshotted. Only the social media posts, tweets and press releases relevant to the crises where gathered since the dissertation studies how the corporations executed their crisis communication and not the general communication during the crisis. Therefore, all the other messages published

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by the corporations during the crisis timeframe have been left out. In other words, the main focus stays only on the crisis messages.

The study limits the social media channels to Twitter and Facebook messages, ignoring the rest of social media channels such as LinkedIn, Youtube, blogs, Snapchat, Instagram etc. Gathering the data from all the channels would require a wider study and because the information on corporate press releases and social media messages are easily available, the study focuses on those. Traditional media has also been ignored in order to keep the data manageable, because an even bigger data would arise and would require more time and resources. Also, without inside information it is challenging to find out for example, if certain magazines or programs have been given the exclusive right for a wider interview. Thus, the study focuses on the information that is public and accessible to everyone. Hereby, we can also reflect on how an ordinary consumer would see the situation.

Building upon the online ethnography method, interviews were engaged in order to evaluate a professional point of view on how the corporations executed their crisis communication.

3.2.2. Interviewing method

The interviewing method (Hennink et al., 2011: 6) was chosen to help analyze the gathered data from the cases. To be more specific, in-depth interviewing was used as one-to-one method to discuss the crisis cases with four crisis communication specialists.

The interviewer and the interviewees discussed specific topics in-depth with a semi-structured interview guide as Hennink et al. (2011: 112) suggested. Though, focus group could have been quicker and inexpensive, it may have led to moderating bias, individuals dominating dialogs and other misrepresentations (Belk, 2017: 37).

The strengths of in-depth interviews are to gain information on people’s personal experiences and to get contextual information (Hennink et al., 2011: 131). However, when it comes to limitations, the researcher needs to do a lot of transcriptions, use motivational probes, be able to listen and react to interviewees, flexibility is needed to change topic in an interview guide following interviewee’s story (ibid).

3.2.3. The Interviews

The content of the crisis communication messages from Facebook, Twitter and press releases were sent to the interviewees one week before the interviews. The interviews were distributed at the end of March 2017.

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Just to make sure that the interviewees had a comprehension of the cases, the material of the crises were shown again during the interviews. In order to evaluate the timing of the crisis communication messages, the timetables were also shown and discussed with the interviewees.

The choice to interview four Finnish crises communication professionals was based on their reachability and the mutual language with the interviewer. The interviewees were also chosen as other communication specialists recommended them as the best and the most professional crisis communicators in Finland.

The interviews were recorded and later transcribed. The original interview language is Finnish, because it was the most natural language since the mother tongue of the interviewer and the interviewees is Finnish. The limitations came across clearly when starting to write the transcriptions. The interviews took 1-1,5 hours each and the process of transcription took several days. Also issues rise when translating the transcriptions from Finnish into English since Finnish is a very rich language and there are no English terms for some of the words.

3.2.4. The Interview questions

Hennink et al. (2011: 109) explains that establishing a rapport between the interviewer and the interviewee is the key aspect to reinforce the purpose of gaining a detailed insight into the research issues. Thus, opening questions such as name, experience in years and the vacancy description was asked as a part of building the rapport. The essential questions for the research topic were designed to gather the core information needed to answer the research questions (2011: 113).

The first 8 questions are meant to get an idea of what happens when a crisis arises and how the crisis communication specialists deal with the situation (Appendix 1.).

The Interviewee Company Profession Experience in years in the field

Katleena Kortesuo

Katleena Kortesuo Oy / Ei oo totta

Entrepreneur, fiction writer, Crisis communication trainer

~4,5 years from crisis communication + several years in communications

Wille Wilenius Bulevardin Viestintä

Entrepreneur,

Communication Consultant

~20 years

Pasi Kivioja Luotsi Oy Communication

Entrepreneur & specialist

Over 20 years

Marko Petäjäjärvi PR24 Media & Communication Entrepreneur

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This research cannot be answered by one sentence and therefore, one must understand how different parts of communication interact and how different channels behave and work. It is important to know how the interviewees interpret the world of social media and of press releases in order to interpret their responses. Answers from first questions (1-8.) help to analyze the answers from the questions 9-17, and therefore help to answer the research questions. The questions (1-4.) are asked to get an idea of the crisis communication process in general in order to build the more specific points. The questions (5-8.) are asked to identify the role of social media and of press releases in crises communication before asking about the cases and should be seen as a way to provide a tactic to assess the case studies.

The following questions ask for an answer on how the corporations performed with communication during the crisis.

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Appendix 1. The interview questions.

The questions 9 and 13 are asked to identify specific information about the corporations’ press releases and with the answers we are able to withdraw a solution to the second and to the fourth subresearch questions as well as partly to the actual research question. The questions 10 and 14 are asked to identify specific information about the corporations’ social media and with the answers we are able to withdraw a solution to the first and to the third subresearch questions as well as partly to the actual research question. However, the content is not the only component of crisis communication. Based on several sources (Lagadec, 1993; Curtin, 2005; Drulă, 2005; Luckie, 2012;Miller, 2013; Zhang et al., 2014; Page et al., 2014; Ulmer et al., 2015; Rabinovitch, 2017) also timing has to be taken into account and therefore the questions 11 and 15 are asked to analyze the timetables. The questions 12 and 16 are asked to find information and support the

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answers from the questions 9-11 and 13-15. The same questions are also asked to help analyzing the answers and enabling to answer the research questions logically.

3.2.5. The Pilot

The procedure of piloting serves to check that nothing relevant has been left out and that the suitable questions have been asked in order to respond to the Research Questions (Messenger & Mosdell, 2006: 106). A pilot interview was done several days before the actual interviews by asking the questions to a communication specialist from an international advertisement company. Because the piloting of an interview shows if some of the questions are not understood in the way that was planned or questions that are inaccurate (Hansen & Machin, 2013: 26). The pilot showed minor errors in the questions and the structure of the interview. During the pilot, the questions were formatted making it able to proceed to the actual interviews.

3.3. Conclusion

In order to answer the research questions, the data such as press releases, posts and tweets were collected as well as presented by following the variations of online ethnography. When using Internet as a source, specifically Social Media, online ethnography works as the most suitable method for this kind of dissertation. Interviews were conducted in order to analyze the data of the cases in depth and also from a professional point of view.

In the sources used for this dissertation, there hasn’t been shown the use of a timetable in this form, which makes the dissertation stand apart from other studies.

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4. THE CASE CORPORATIONS: NORDEA AND SAMSUNG

This section offers factual information about the crisis cases. Nordea’s tax evasion case is explained in paragraph 4.1 and Samsung’s exploding phones case in paragraph 4.2.

4.1. Case Panama Papers, Nordea

Nordea serves over 10 million private customers and more than half a million corporate customers in the areas: Personal Banking, Commercial & Business Banking, Wholesale Banking and Wealth Management (Nordea, 2017a).

On April 3rd 2016 Swedish bank Nordea was named in the Panama Papers, a massive cross-border journalism collaboration that analyzed millions of records held by an international law firm based in Panama (ICIJ, 2016a). Nordea was listed as creating offshore companies through the legal firm, Mossack Fonseca (ibid). The global investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) revealed secret files that included 11,5 million records, dating back nearly 40 years, making it the largest leak on offshore history (ICIJ, 2016b). The files revealed how clients of Mossack Fonseca were able to avoid taxes, launder money and dodge sanctions (ibid). Nordea was fined with tens of millions Swedish crowns for breaching money laundry rules (Reuters, 2017a).

4.2. Case Galaxy Note7, Samsung

Samsung Group is a South Korean multinational corporation (Samsung, 2017a). Samsung Electronics manufactures high-tech electronics such as, mobile phones, TVs and Home Theaters, Tablets, and everything electronic you can imagine to be used in your kitchen (ibid).

Samsung launched Galaxy Note7 phone on August 19th 2016 (ibid). Shortly after the release date, reports began to surface about Note7s catching on fire and even exploding (Siriusblackug, 2016; BBC, 2016; CNET, 2016; Reuters, 2017b). After recalling millions of phones, even more reports followed of fire catching devices (Techcrunch, 2016; BBC, 2016). The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), informed that the Galaxy Note7 has been recalled (CPSC, 2016; Androidcentral, 2016). On October 14th_{2016, the U.S. Department of Transportation} (DOT), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) announced that all Samsung Note7 smartphone devices were banned from air transportation as an emergency order, in the United States (Federal Aviation Administration, 2016).

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5. ANALYSIS

This chapter deals with the results of the research. The full data including press releases, social media posts, tweets and the interview transcriptions are readable and can be found in the appendices at the end of this dissertation.

Paragraph 5.1 presents the findings of how Nordea responded to the Panama Papers -crisis and answers the first and the second sub research questions. Paragraph 5.2 presents the findings of how Samsung responded to the Note7 -crisis and answers to the third and the fourth sub research questions. Finally, paragraph 5.3 answers the research questions.

5.1. Nordea spinning the Panama Papers crisis

When the Panama Papers were revealed, Nordea faced a media attack and was the center of a scandal when it was blamed for tax evasion and money laundering on April 3rd_{2016. Nordea’s} reaction time to the crisis was as followed (Table 1, attachment 2.). All the messages that appear in the table deal with the Nordea’s Panama Papers crisis, but are not identical in content.

Table 1. Nordea’s crisis reaction time

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The findings in the literature review indicate that the management of a corporate crisis is about communication between an organization and its public(s) and therefore, the timings of the responses have been presented in form of a timetable. This makes the data more clear to read, understand and analyze it time wise.

Nordea’s Swedish Facebook channel posted a message about the crisis on April 3rd 2016, which was the same day of the event and the scandal also was made public by the ISIJ. However, arguably Nordea knew that the ISIJ investigation was ongoing. The scandal was becoming public and Nordea even had their internal investigation ongoing. Nonetheless, Nordea did not publish any information of the crisis until ISIJ had made it public.

Nordea responded to the news one day later after the Panama Papers became public with a press release as well as posting information about the crisis on their Finnish Facebook channel. Three days later then the Panama Papers became public, on April 6th, Nordea stated their comment on the recent media reporting in form of a press meeting. The press meeting was summarized into a press release. On April 7th, Nordea tweeted that they were going to start a press meeting the same day at 11.00 o’clock CET. No written statements exist of that meeting. Ending the era of crisis messages, Nordea published a four page long report about the crisis as their last press release on the case on July 20th 2016.

SRQ1: What kind of social media tactics did Nordea use in the “Panama Papers” crisis communication?

Nordea posted about the media reports on Facebook Sweden (Nordea Sverige) in Swedish, using a link and a screenshot of Word with the “official” statement on the same day that the crisis occurred (Facebook, 2017b). However for some reason, Facebook removed Nordea's Swedish post from April 3rd 2016 and Nordea reacted on the Swedish Facebook with a new post March 5th. See the screenshot on the following page.

Nordea Finland (Facebook, 2017a) posted their comments twice in Finnish the following day of releasing the Panama Papers, also using a screenshot and a link to their webpage (Nordea Facebook Suomi, 14.03.17). On June 4th, a tweet was also shared on Nordea’s Twitter account about how Nordea does not accept tax evasion, using a screenshot of a longer text made in Word (Twitter, 2017a).

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Facebook. (2017a)

According to Kortesuo, Nordea used factual message tactic in social media by sharing official information via channels with screenshots and that is was the reason that the company has managed to share more information beyond the limitations of some of the channels, for example Twitter 140 characters.

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Twitter. (2017a)

Facebook. (2017a)

Kortesuo also points out that Nordea made a “legendary mistake” by using a screenshot from a Word document in which we are able to see the red underlining used for grammatical checking in the Word document.

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Building upon this, she points out that Nordea’s Swedish Facebook site has used person pronouns in their messages, which is tactically better than the factual language and straight statements on the Finnish Facebook channel. Nordea Sweden has clearly used more language that is typical for Social Media, using person pronouns, such as "du" (in English “you”) and "vår" (in English “ours”). Nordea Sweden even encourages to comment to posts, which can be interpreted as an interaction tactic. While Nordea Finland posted a lot of direct statements to Facebook, for example "Nordea commented" and a screenshot.

The other interviewees also criticized Nordea’s use of social media channels. All of the interviewees find that the Swedish and Finnish Facebook channels are not in line with each other and thus look like different organizations.

Wilenius conceives that, maybe social media is not Nordea’s main communication strategy tool during the crisis. Wilenius and Kortesuo also stated that the company’s way of using social media is old-fashioned communication, which is not suitable for these kinds of online channels.

Both Wilenius and Petäjäjärvi wonder why Nordea hadn’t figured out to format the messages in such a manner, that it would simulate a person’s point of view as they have done in press releases. "It would be good if they mentioned the CEO's comment", and not just shared the facts.

Twitter. (2017a)

However, the interviewees gave a positive feedback that Nordea used live streaming from a crisis press meeting and shared that to @Nordea (twitter) before the meeting started. In practice it

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was not successful since the photo made of the press meeting has only an empty room and a camera. Kivioja and Kortesuo said that it now seems that no one came.

SRQ2: How did Nordea manage “Panama Papers” crisis communication with the press releases?

A day after the ICIJ’s Panama Paper publication, Nordea published their first press release about the comments regarding media statements of tax evasion (Nordea, 2017b). Two days later, on April 6th 2016, Nordea published a press release in which they told that a press meeting is going to be held, in order to comment on the reporting about the business in Luxembourg and Russia (ibid).

Nordea. (2017b)

The interviewees Kivioja (appendix 5.) and Kortesuo (appendix 2.) had a mutual view about Nordea’s communication and how the company didn’t give clear statements on what their strategy was and how they pursued it. Kivioja (appendix 5.) refines that Nordea uses so-called double standards in their statements. The press releases give a contradictory impression on how Nordea

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declared the values when in fact they didn’t follow them (ibid). For example, Nordea states in their first press release “we do not encourage or facilitate tax schemes of our customers that are regarded as tax evasion”. However, at the same press release they stated that they have had this kind of company policy since 2009, while they were also apologizing the fact that they did not have this kind of policy earlier (attachment 5.). This will activate the mind into thinking that they have done something wrong before the year 2009. “The prohibition activates the opposite of thinking” for example “Do not think of a yellow elephant and everyone starts thinking about it.” (appendix 2.).

Nordea published their last press release about the management comment on July 20th 2016, in detail, on the report regarding the investigation of Nordea Private Banking (ibid). Wilenius (appendix 3.) states that July is the most typical summer holiday month in the Nordic region and that therefore it was clever to send the press release then. Since all the major investors are on a holiday at that time and therefore not necessarily will read the press release, which would have remind people of the crisis (ibid). In other words, the corporation made it without making a noise and they avoided even getting attention on it. Based on the literature review and the interview answers, certain information has to be shared because being silent would raise even more questions. What, where and when information is shared are the key questions.

5.2. Samsung spinning the Note7 crisis

The Galaxy Note7 was launched in the middle of August 2016 and soon after, the phones started to catch fire and even explode. Samsung responded to the crisis for the first time with a press release on September 2nd. Three days later, on September 5th, Facebook site “Samsung Mobile USA” and Twitter account “@SamsungMobileUS” reacted to the crisis. A significant gap is found in the timeline before “Samsung Mobile” Facebook and Twitter accounts released their first responses to the crisis on October 13th 2016. Not to mention that the “Samsung Mobile” Facebook account has over 17,000,000 likes more than the “Samsung Mobile USA”, and still “Samsung Mobile” reacted to the crisis over a month later than “Samsung Mobile USA”.

Samsung’s reaction time to the crisis was as followed (attachment 1.), found on the next page. All the messages that appear in the table deal with the Note7 crisis, but are not identical in content.

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Table 2. Samsung’s crisis reaction time

Attachment 1. Samsung Note7 crisis communication timeline (Jokinen, 2017).

In general, major gaps can be found in the timetable and in that first point of critique can be found. Samsung did not use their media channels following a unified line.

According to interviewee Kivioja (appendix 5.), posting in October seems ridiculously late since the crisis started already in August.

“The first press release was published on the second of September and some of the social media channels responded to the situation three days later! There is a three days gap, which is an eternity in today’s digital world. Not to talk about the gap that is over a month” (ibid).

Similarly, the other interviewees criticized Samsung for not following a unified timeline among the crisis channels. Petäjäjärvi commented:

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“In this field it is unforgivable to react so slowly. It feels like they have put their head into a bush and kept silent. It shows that the company has a “skeleton” in the closet.” (appendix 4.)

Wilenius’ opinion is, that the timeframe is quite big and that by “putting all the shit” at the beginning of the crisis, Samsung could have shortened the timeframe. What is being said here is, that if the company would have been more transparent, honest and admitted the failure already at the beginning, they would not have faced so many surprises. Wilenius adds that, the more time it takes to answer, the risk rises that the situation “escalates”.

SRQ3: What kind of social media tactics did Samsung use in the “Note7” crisis communication?

Interviewee Kivioja perceived the social media messages simple and easy to understand. Adding to this point, interviewee Kortesuo, pointed out that Samsung uses a lot of individualized messages using person pronouns, such as “your”, “we”, “you” and “us” as well as proper used pictures and infographics that work well on social media.

Kortesuo adds, that the crisis strategies are based on if a company wants to strengthen or weaken its own responsibility. According to her, Samsung established a strong responsibility for their actions and did not blame others.

This can be for example seen in the kind of language used in which Samsung describes the situation “working hard behind the scenes”, “we will continue to investigate” and “we are committed to getting to the bottom of this issue and providing you with an alternative solution”. See also the next page.

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Facebook. (2017c)

Adding to this point, all the interviewees agreed that Samsung is using a very international and marketing tactic styled language in social media and press releases, which can be seen as a very direct way to, for example, a Nordic eye (appendix 2., 3., 4. & 5.). Samsung starts a large amount of posts and tweets by stating about the customer’s “safety”. Which can be seen more as marketing than actually caring about the safety.

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Twitter. (2017c)

SRQ4: How did Samsung manage “Note7” crisis communication with the press releases?

The first statement on September 2nd_{says, that Samsung takes every incident report very} seriously. The company stated by September 1st_{2016, that there has been 35 cases recorded} globally and that they have found a battery cell issue: “our customers’ safety is an absolute priority at Samsung, we have stopped sales of the Galaxy Note7.” With the same statement, Samsung informed that they will voluntary replace the current Note7 to them who already had it.

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Samsung. (2017b)

According to Kortesuo (appendix 2.), Samsung carries strong responsibility in their press releases. She notes that good language is used and the words are chosen wisely, such as "Battery cell issue" instead of for example saying “the phones exploded” (ibid). Samsung does not put emphasis on the past in their communication, which Kortesuo thinks is good (ibid). Kortesuo states that a company should always speak what they are going to do instead of what they did (ibid). Ergo, people should not be reminded of what happened.

In contrast to this, Wilenius and Kivioja (appendix 3. & 5.) pointed out that the press release “your safety matters the most” sounds that it’s taken straight from an advertisement. Kivioja (appendix 5.) refines that Samsung should have stated clearly what was happening instead of using marketing sentences and clever PR words, such as “issue” and “incident”. In none of the press releases it was stated that the batteries of the phones could explode, catch fire or even be life-threatening (ibid). This raises the question if the customers realized in the beginning how serious the crisis was.

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Samsung. (2017b)

Wilenius’ (appendix 3.) opinion is, that Samsung uses American style press releases and are therefore too marketing minded for a Nordic consumer. Based on some of the comments made in the interviews, we can ask the question: Does Samsung really care about customer safety as it states, or does it care more about PR wins?

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Samsung published two press releases on January 23rd_{2017. In the second press release,} Samsung stated the details of the press conference that was held that same day.

Samsung. (2017b)

According to Kortesuo (appendix 2.), the last press release gives the impression that the company took everything seriously. In Asian countries, the courtesy rules are different and to a

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Westerner's eye really convincing (ibid). With the second one, Samsung finally provided some answers after months of confusion about the Galaxy Note7 explosions. In the releases, Samsung stated that the explosions were caused by both design flaws and manufacturing errors. Arguably, with clear infographics the reader is much more likely to understand the situation. As also Lipschultz (2015) stated, even the press releases should be designed for online consumption, such as using infographics.

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5.3. RQ: How did Nordea and Samsung execute their crisis communication

with press releases and in social media in 2016 and 2017?

A deeper analysis can be formed by compound of the data from literature review, the online data from the cases and the gathered data from the interviews. By building upon the gathered detailed information from the sub research questions, we are able to build a solid answer to the main research question.

Based on the amount of the messages (attachment 1 & 2), we are able to see that Nordea’s crisis communication case is smaller in comparison to Samsung’s. Nordea published all together three press releases and six tweets on the social media channels that were investigated in this dissertation. Samsung published all together six press releases and 19 posts and tweets on the social media channels that were investigated in the dissertation. The timeframe of the crisis in which Samsung reacted actively with communication, is approximately five months while Nordea’s was four. Based on the analysis we can present the main findings in the form of a table.

Table 3. Main findings of Nordea’s and Samsung’s crises

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5.3.1. Crisis execution of Press releases by Nordea

Interviewee Kortesuo (appendix 2.) gave, out of all the interviewees, the hardest criticisms on Nordea’s communication. She pointed out the complexity of the language that is used in the press releases and that the risk for journalists understanding it incorrectly is high. She also mentioned that it is how the content of the message will change like in the “broken phone” game (ibid). She states that Nordea with their press releases gave too much information about what happened, while the company should have told what they were going to do in the future (ibid). As also stated in the literature review, according to Mathiesen (2004), this could be seen as an elevation of the crisis to the history.

Building upon this, interviewee Kivioja (appendix 5.) stated that Nordea’s biggest failure was that they didn’t use their own content. Instead, they just replied what the media had published (ibid). For example by starting a press release with “Media in the Nordic region has portrayed…” (Nordea, 2017b). However, Kivioja does make one positive comment by stating that Nordea managed to speak of the crisis in the same terms that has been used by the mass media, instead of trying to sound nicer.

Adding to this, Interviewee Wilenius (appendix 3.) experienced it as positive that Nordea’s Group CEO Casper von Koskull made a statement at the first press release, which is a suitable style for the Nordic communication culture.

“This way, they didn’t hide behind a corporation. Instead, the company sacrificed a human with power within the company to confront the media” (ibid).

Placing a status figure in front of the media is currently common and according to Wilenius, usually the one taking the bullets will also be fired when the crisis is over, since the attention is drawn to a person and not the company itself.

Wilenius would have found it interesting to know if an exclusive-interview has been given and if Nordea would have tried to manage the situation with that. In contrast to this, Petäjäjärvi described Nordea's crisis communication with a Finnish saying “juosten kustu”, which directly translated into English says “peed while running” which means in other words that the company responded with negligent content.

To conclude, Kortesuo and Kivioja pointed out that Nordea's last press release seemed very long considering that it was 4 pages long. The first impression was, that it seems very suspicious and one might wonder what they are trying to explain. But after reading the text, Wilenius and Kivioja found that the text is well grounded and does not leave anything to the imagination.

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5.3.2. Crisis execution of Press releases by Samsung

In Samsung’s case, Kortesuo points out that the company did not say much about the past but was looking into the future, which was good. From the literature review, According to Mathiesen (2004) this would be seen as “placement of it in a protected future” strategy.

In contrast to this, Wilenius said that scandals often need someone to blame and it should be someone with power within the company and therefore Samsung could be criticized for the fact that the CEO didn’t came out immediately. Adding to this, Kivioja felt that Samsung tried to protect the company’s image more than the actual consumers. Contradictory, as stated in the literature review, Morley (2009) explained that brand management is promoting and protecting the reputation of the corporation. Therewith, Grunig (1989) and Kitchen (1999) described PR to be a manipulative marketing tactic that is required for continuing business. Thus, Samsung’s execution can be seen as pure PR.

Kivioja also wondered if the Korean culture differs from the Western that the communication tactic changes completely and the mass media covers a crisis before the company (ibid). Petäjäjärvi concluded that all the channels should have been aligned during the crisis time wise. In addition, from the literature review, Lagadec (1993) stated that a time gap might cause that other actors fill blank information spots. Which in this situation may be seen as that the journalists had time to fill the blank spots.

5.3.3. Crisis execution in Social media by Nordea

Nordea’s Finnish Facebook site had on March 14th 2017 just 35,640 likes, while Nordea’s Swedish Facebook site had 130,818 likes. Nordea’s twitter account “@Nordea” had 7170 followers by March 14th 2017, which was the most out of all Nordea’s official twitter accounts. Wilenius describes the amount of likes and followers "ridiculously small amounts”. He defined that “7170 followers on a twitter account is nothing for a Nordea size company"(ibid). The other interviewees also pointed out on several occasions that Nordea’s social channels has so few likes and followers, that it leads to a challenge of reaching and engaging customers.

In order to reach public(s), a company needs to engage them and therefore the amount of followers is critical. Also argued in the literature review by Curtis (2010), the social media is about strategic message targeting and engagement. Therefore, if Nordea would have had more followers on social media, it could arguably have reached and engaged more people with their messages.

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Adding to this, Kivioja commented that Nordea apparently didn’t think of using paid advertisement for the Facebook posts, through which the posts would have reached a 10 to 100 times bigger audience.

To conclude, Kivioja pointed out that one of the biggest problems in crisis communication is that the message does not reach people. He also pointed out that the timeframe is quite good, but there are a lot of mistakes in the content, even though it is good that Nordea understood to share their own created content to Twitter and not just repeated the facts like in their Finnish Facebook channel. In similar vein, supported by Miller (2013) in the literature review, Kortesuo, points out that social media language should always be individual-oriented. Miller (2013), Zhang et al. (2014) and Drulă (2015) presented that every message in social media needs to be formatted according to the platform. Therefore, Nordea should have used more person pronouns and infographics in their social media messages as Samsung did, which would have made the communication style more suitable for social media.

5.3.4. Crisis execution in Social media by Samsung

According to Kortesuo, Samsung tweeted skillfully and managed to put a lot of information in the individual tweets. Another good thing is that they shared the video of the “battery cell issue” on Twitter. The use of the #galaxynote7 hashtag is simple and neutral. Kortesuo explained that in general, since the birth of a crisis, customers create many different hashtags. Therefore, the organization should choose a neutral hashtag to be used in communication. As Luckie (2012) stated in the literature review, Twitter messages should be concise and brief.

Adding to this, Kivioja praised the simplicity of the messages but gave critique on the advertising style and the timing of the messages. Expanding upon this, Petäjäjärvi noted that communication is everything for a corporation like Samsung and therefore the company should have reacted to the crisis quick as lightning. Petäjäjärvi adds that if that does not happen, it is a sign that the company has something to hide. As stated by Lagadec (1993) in the literature review, offering information as soon as possible is critical.

Following this line of thought, Wilenius also commented the timing of the messages and remarked the USA style communication used during the crisis. Hence, arguably Samsung’s PR and communication departments have played a big role in the crisis communication.

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6. CONCLUSION

This dissertation looked at how corporates manage crisis communication with press releases and social media channels. The study was built upon literature on organizational crisis and reputation. The literature review also introduced how companies could possibly react to a crisis, as well as giving a lot of theoretical information about crisis communication. Findings showed that the focus of crisis messages’ content should be put on language, structure, visual aspect, and layout of information as well as the timing of the messages. Factual outcomes are shown in the Nordea and Samsung cases.

The following questions were asked in order to obtain relevant information for the dissertation.

The case data was collected and presented by using online ethnography. The case data was analyzed with the help of the interviews, in order to understand and connect the theories to the factual cases. The analysis was finished by combining the following data: the literature review, the data that was gathered from the corporations’ press releases and social media channels and by utilizing the information from the interviews.

In general, when comparing the cases, the biggest differences in the corporations’ crisis communication were as followed. The findings revealed that Samsung had a bigger quantity of crisis messaging on the “Note7” case than Nordea on the “Panama Papers” case. Based on the timeframe of the crisis messages, Samsung’s crisis communication length was five months and Nordea’s four. Samsung’s crisis communication showed major gaps in their timeframe, when Nordea’s was more coherent. Even though Nordea and Samsung both got critiqued, Nordea still replied/responded to the crisis faster than Samsung. In general, Samsung executed their crisis communication with a very international touch, which can be seen as a marketing style, while Nordea published more factual messages.

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From a social media perspective, the cases’ content differed noticeable. The findings from the interviews revealed that Nordea’s social media content collected negative reviews and the low “follower” and “like” count could make one question if they even reached the wanted target. Nordea also maneuvered more text into its social media channels with screenshots of Word with formal crisis information. According to the interviewees, Samsung used more suitable content on social media such as infographics and videos, as well as choosing their hashtags wisely. In general Samsung got better positive reviews from its’ content in social media.

According to the interviewees about the press releases, Nordea’s statements were unclear due to complicated language and sentence structure. Therewith, were the press releases exaggeratingly long and contained mostly factual information about the company values and often stating their innocence. However, Nordea forwarded a status figure quite quickly in the statements whom faced the media and did not hide behind the corporation status, while it took weeks for Samsung. Seen as positive, Samsung was carrying a strong responsibility during the crisis. Even though the press releases of Samsung included marketing tactic, they were still formatted in short and understandable messages. Strategically, Samsung also included infographics in their press releases, which created a greater possibility for the consumers to understand the situation.

In order to get a more international perspective of the cases, a specialist with an international background could have been interviewed which can be taken into consideration for future studies. Perhaps a native English speaker could have given wider answers about the choice of words used in the crisis messages. From a statistical point of view, it would have been interesting to study how the channels and messages engaged and reached the wanted target. Therewith, from an economical point of view one could find it interesting to study the cases based on the reputation loss, customer loss and the effect on the stock market/prices.

PRESS RELEASES AND SOCIAL MEDIA IN CORPORATE CRISIS COMMUNICATION: : A COMPARATIVE CASE STUDY OF NORDEA AND SAMSUNG