Abstract
This chapter discusses crisis communication management in the Portuguese public security police digital landscape, mainly focused on social media. This is an exploratory investigation it is intended to understand how crisis communication management methodologies in the digital environment can be applied in police intervention, so its legitimacy is reinforced. The study is divided into two parts, the literature review, and the empirical research. The data was gathered together through an interview survey, with the participation of four public security police officers and four investigators. The interviews were transcribed, and their content was analyzed. In an emergency situation, most of the actions are communication activities, so its management in the digital landscape—above all social media—is critical for the police success, as an institution under strong scrutiny and whose actions depend on the citizen cooperation. Communication is essential for building reputation and should be used in threats to legitimacy, and as a tool for reaching out to the community.
TopCrisis Management
Growing public activism, technological advances, and neglect of organizational planning contribute to the increased value and need for crisis management, forcing organizations to be prepared to deal with and to manage them effectively (Coombs, 2007; Coombs, 2010; Claeys & Coombs, 2020). It is essential that crises are understood naturally and that institutions create mechanisms to deal with them, “either in reducing the likelihood of them happening or in the need to deal with an occurrence” (Jorge, 2010, p.47). It is in this context that Crisis Management begins, as a structured procedure, configuring itself as a recent and constantly changing science, in line with the development of communication technologies (Andrade, 2008).
As a process, crisis management must begin before the crisis occurs. Prevention and monitoring are the best ways to manage crises (Caetano, et. al, 2006; Coombs, 2010), it is necessary “to take special care with monitoring situations and information about critical or potentially critical events, with training and construction of a strong and healthy corporate and institutional culture” (Caetano, et. al, 2006, p.19).
In this liquid modernity, we have seen a break with tradition and the valorization of the new replacing the old (Bauman, 2001). In the same sense, Ilharco (2005) considers that we are in the presence of a renewal of context, of worlds, stating that:
Key Terms in this Chapter
Public Relations: The set of information activities, systematically coordinated, related to the exchange of information between an individual, organization (public or private), or a non-governmental organization and its public.
Twitter: Social media and a microblogging server, which allows users to send and receive personal updates from other contacts (in texts of up to 280 characters, known as “tweets”), through the service's website, by SMS and by specific software management.
Viral Marketing: Marketing strategy that aims to explore the connections between people to spread and go viral. It is considered a technique with lower costs than traditional actions, since the media used is the target audience itself.
Social media: The collective of online communication channels dedicated to inputs, interactions, content sharing and community-based collaboration.
Facebook: Social media and virtual social network launched on February 4, 2004, operated, and privately owned by Facebook Inc. In 2012 it reached the mark of 1 billion active users, making it the largest virtual social network in the world.
Dialogue Policing: Proposal for emphasis on oral and informal communication with the aim of preventing confrontations and violence connected to events like demonstrations or football matches.
New Media: Broad term referring to the sum of new technologies and communication methods to differentiate from traditional communication channels such as TV, broadcasting, press, etc.