From News to Crisis: Key Factors in Event Escalation

Why do some events become crises while others do not?

The phenomenon where certain events escalate into crises while others with potentially more severe effects fail to garner the same collective attention or emotional response is increasingly unsurprising to my eyes. Over time, we hone the skill of estimating whether an event will remain a passing news item, evolve into a significant topic, or intensify into a crisis. Experience suggests that the event’s context inherently influences the outcome.

The criteria at play include newsworthiness, which has always governed the media world and determines agenda setting (that is, the selection among various competing topics, of those subjects that will be the focus of journalistic coverage), and those that differentiate a crisis from any other relevant event.

We can summarise the criteria for news synthesis as follows:

• Relevance, which is when the news covers a topic of interest or has a significant effect on people’s lives;
• Novelty, which is when the news includes an element of surprise or deviation from the ordinary;
• Human interest, which is when the news concerns real people and connects with the audience through relatable challenges, experiences, or emotions;
• Proximity, which is when the news is close to the target audience, either in terms of geographical location, interests, or sector;
• Importance, which is when the news involves events or people of great significance or influence;
• Conflict, which is when the news includes a high contrast of views between parties;
• Timeliness, which is when the news is current and of immediate interest to the public.

Regarding the aspects that define a crisis for an organisation, we note that it challenges the organisation in terms of intensity or danger, requiring urgent strategic action. Additionally, a crisis occurs when the company is viewed unfavourably, leading to a sudden negative change in its reputation, such as strong questioning of its actions or values.

The digital dots

According to Coombs, a crisis in the digital environment is the: “Perception of an unpredictable event that threatens important stakeholder expectations and can seriously influence an organization’s performance and generate negative outcomes.” This does not necessarily mean that it is truly unpredictable. After all, the unpredictability of a crisis, beyond black swans, is subjective and, in the case of organizations, depends on factors such as the threshold of preparedness, the sophistication of the risk landscape identified, and the ability to be alert and act early when an issue arises.

Moreover, reputational crises do not necessarily require that something physically happens. They can arise from sentiments towards an organization’s behavior or that of one of its prominent figures, or even from invented facts, such as fake news. Social network comments and posts can manifest these sentiments. Therefore, we need to perceive a threat to someone’s important expectations, which are so significant that they could potentially cause tangible harm.

To understand the dynamics of how an event, real or not, evolves from a “topic” to a “crisis” in the digital environment, it is necessary to deeply understand the context and changes that the web, and particularly social media, have brought about for organizations. Digital environments are complex systems, meaning they are interconnected and dynamic. The relationships among different elements, as in all complex systems, are not exactly predictable because they escape a linear causality. Within them, small changes, such as a single new post on a social network or a variation in an algorithm, can have significant impacts on the entire system.

Additionally, emerging and self-organising phenomena permeate digital environments. Emerging properties in the digital environment may include the formation of viral trends, where certain contents spread rapidly across the network thanks to user interactions, thereby generating a kind of order in the flow of information and online attention. They thus set the agenda in a virtual space with many more entry points and interpretations that contribute to shaping dominant narrative frames, compared to what was governed by mass media before the success of social networks.

Online, the potential “proposers” of topics for debate are essentially “all of us”, that is, users, citizens, media, influencers, brands, institutions, politicians, and so on. We interact in a direct manner, aggregating ourselves into communities with similar interests that arise spontaneously and generate forms of online activism. In just a few seconds, we can review a product, express discontent, announce a boycott, or criticize something that goes against our values. And although the weight of each of these agents in the system is not equal, the dynamics of interaction and the ease of initiating a conversation have accustomed us to humanize and perceive companies and brands as close and similar.

This significantly alters the expectations we place on them, as well as how we judge and react to their behaviors and omissions.

The idea that crisis communication should address managing expectations is not new; its main role is to govern perceptions of the crisis itself. To do so, it must necessarily relate to stakeholders’ expectations, aligning with them.

What becomes more challenging in the digital environment is that, in addition to stakeholders, communities and audiences also play influential roles, and sometimes even trigger crises. They, in a manner similar to stakeholders, harbour expectations towards companies and organizations, but they do not have specific interests in them. They are not suppliers, buyers, shareholders, individuals directly impacted by events, and so on.

However, they still participate in the conversation, engaging in a dynamic of mutual influence with stakeholders and the media, to defend and express values they believe in, fueling the debate around the situation and transforming it into a judgment, often with a binary outcome of approval or rejection towards the entity under scrutiny.

Thus, just as if they were individuals, companies and brands are judged with the same ethical and moral responsibilities, but with more powerful resources and therefore greater culpability in case of harm or omissions. Even in these cases, what truly makes a difference is the organizations’ response capability. If crisis response communication is timely, transparent, and capable of ensuring, even during intervention, personalized treatment and individual attention to users, it will be easier for a perception not to escalate into a destructive crisis. As Hemus writes: “Crises don’t destroy businesses. It is the organization’s response to the crises which does that.”

When can we expect an event to become a crisis in digital environments? As effectively described by Chieffi, there are three circumstances that, when they converge, make it more likely for an issue to transform into a crisis. The first scenario occurs when an event undermines the organization’s core values or the trust pact with its stakeholders, particularly when it affects the company’s core business and mission (for instance, a pharmaceutical company producing a drug that negatively affects consumers’ health instead of improving it). The second occurs when the context is favorable and the situation touches upon values considered non-negotiable at that particular moment, such as gender violence after the Me Too movement. This condition implies the existence of a broad section of the population ready to mobilise in defence of those values or rights as well as to attack and express dissent against perceived foreignness or obstacles. The third factor arises when people hold the organization accountable for the event, accusing it of causing harm through its actions or unjustifiable inaction.

To these factors, I would add two more. On the one hand, perceived trust in the possibility that mobilisation will have an effect, and on the other, ease of understanding the issue. The more comprehensible the topic, the clearer the initial interpretations will form, capable of fuelling relatively simple narratives and therefore easily disseminated.

Just as crisis management consultants must always expect the unexpected and train cognitive redundancy – the ability to see the situation from multiple perspectives in real-time and anticipating effects – as citizens, we must realize that we are agents, not spectators, within a dynamic and therefore changeable system. In the digital world, we have the power to shape what people perceive as a crisis and what they quickly forget.

References:

• Chieffi D., Crisi reputazionali ai tempi dell’Infosfera. Il modello di risposta: teoria, tecniche, strategie, strumenti e il ruolo dell’IA, Franco Angeli, Milano, 2024.
• Coombs W.T., Ongoing Crisis Communication: Planning, Managing, and Responding, Sage Publications, London, 2021.
• Hemus J., Crisis Proof. How to prepare for the worst day of your business life, RethinkPress, 2020.