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– a Case Study of United Airlines' Online Crisis Communication Vis-À

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– a Case Study of United Airlines' Online Crisis Communication Vis-À – a case study of United Airlines’ online crisis communication vis-à-vis modern, empowered consumers on social media Michelle Bowen Petersen & Helle Kristine Kragh Page 1 of 138 ABSTRACT The purpose of this thesis is to examine the development of United Airlines’ crisis communication on social media specifically in relation to the ‘Flight 3411’ incident that occurred in April of this year. The reason why we found this incident interesting to investigate was because we witnessed how consumers on social media platforms quickly began to ridicule the company, condemn the company’s behaviour or otherwise publicly discuss the incident. It seemed as though thousands were quickly rejecting everything to do with United Airlines on social media. When United Airlines addressed the issue a day later, a sort of social media uprising seemed to put a lot of pressure on the airline. This thesis deals with the communicative challenges during this crisis, which made United Airlines change its crisis communication strategies several times in attempts to appease the many negative voices. This leads us to our research question: How and why did the modern consumer, empowered by the capacities of social media, affect United Airlines’ crisis communication of the ‘Flight 3411’ incident over time? To answer this question, we collected data from social media Facebook and Twitter. These are the most popular, text-based social media platforms. Our empirical material included United Airlines’ five crises communication statements posted on the company’s social media between the dates of April 10 and May 1, 2017. In order to examine consumers’ influence on United Airlines, we elected to collect 300 consumer comments for each statement, resulting in a corpus of 1500 consumer comments for analysis. Finally, we also collected news articles from four different online news sources, selected on the basis of their popularity in the US, also gathered within the same timeframe as the statements. In doing so, we had a wide array of perspectives, primarily interesting for us being the organisational perspective vs. the consumer perspective. Using our applied methods of mixed-methods document analysis and qualitative rhetorical analysis, we analysed these perspectives to get insight into how consumers on social media perceived the crisis vs. how the company communicated their perception of the crisis – and how each perspective change over time, if they did. In relation to our quantitative document analysis, we used the news articles to determine the general Page 2 of 138 tone. Also, we used news in our contextual chapter, situating the crisis in its industry- and organisational history. We analysed United Airlines’ five statements – the potentially changing crisis communication – using rhetorical analysis to uncover how the company talked about the incident and its own role in the matter. The consumer perspective was analysed using document analysis, in which we looked at both general reception of United Airlines’ crisis communication efforts (positive, negative, sceptical) as well as directly analysed consumer responses in the form of comments on social media. We analysed the comments thematically, identifying 11 emergent themes. By coding the 1500 comments, we were able to consider how many consumers expressed certain themes in their comments. Relating the two results to each other, we followed how United Airlines seemingly reacted to consumers’ responses and seemingly tried to adjust strategies of crisis communication and rhetoric in an attempt to match consumers’ expectation. In terms of findings, the thesis concluded that even though United Airlines adjusted its crisis communication three times during the period, all efforts varied from wholly rejected to marginally successful, based on the consumer responses to each. We argue that the general failure of United Airlines to successfully curb the crisis may be due to the company’s initial response, which unintentionally resulted in a double crisis. We argue that this double crisis was a result of inter alia the timeliness (kairos) and appropriateness of content (phronesis) of the first statement where United Airlines might have communicated the wrong thing in what could have been the right time. As a result, the company had both the crisis of the incident as well as a crisis about their failed communication. We found that the statements each changed over time. The first one was merely apologising for the incident, but not specifically to the customer removed, or other passengers, whereas the second statement showed a full apology addressing the incident and all the people involved in it. The last three statements where combined as one, as the content of them were equally a part of a ‘bigger’ message. This revealed how United Airlines had changed to take preventable actions to avoid future incidents. Character count: 4723 Page 3 of 138 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... 2 CHAPTER 1: Introduction ........................................................................................................... 6 CHAPTER 2: Theoretical framework .......................................................................................... 9 2.1. Risk Society and Late Modernity ..................................................................................... 9 2.1.1. Are we living in a risk society? ................................................................................ 10 2.1.2. Critical Reflections .................................................................................................. 16 2.2. The Modern Media Landscape ...................................................................................... 17 2.2.1. A Changed Media Landscape.................................................................................. 17 2.3. The Modern Consumer ................................................................................................. 24 2.3.1 Self-Identity in the Late Modern Age ...................................................................... 25 2.4. Crises and Crisis Communication .................................................................................. 33 2.4.1. Defining a crisis ....................................................................................................... 34 2.4.2. The Situational Crisis Communication Theory ....................................................... 36 2.4.3. Critical reflections ................................................................................................... 44 CHAPTER 3: Context Chapter ................................................................................................... 45 3.1. Profile of United Airlines and the American Airline Industry........................................ 45 3.2. Profile of United Airlines ............................................................................................... 46 3.3. Crisis History of United Airlines ..................................................................................... 46 3.4. Review of Flight 3411 Incident ...................................................................................... 47 3.4.1. The apologies .......................................................................................................... 48 3.5. Comprehensive Timeline ............................................................................................... 50 CHAPTER 4: Methodological Reflections ................................................................................. 51 4.1. Philosophy of Science .................................................................................................... 51 4.1.1. Social Constructivism .............................................................................................. 51 4.2. Research Design ............................................................................................................ 53 4.2.1. Limitations .............................................................................................................. 57 4.3. Methods ........................................................................................................................ 58 4.3.1. Document Analysis ................................................................................................. 58 4.3.2. Limitations and Delimitations ................................................................................. 65 4.3.3. Rhetorical Analysis .................................................................................................. 66 5: Analysis ................................................................................................................................ 72 Page 4 of 138 5.1 PHASE 1 .......................................................................................................................... 76 5.1.1. Document Analysis ................................................................................................. 77 5.1.2. Rhetorical Analysis .................................................................................................. 86 5.1.3. Partial Conclusion ................................................................................................... 91 5.2 PHASE 2 .......................................................................................................................... 92 5.2.1. Document Analysis
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