Creative Commons

This dissertation was written as a part of the MSc in e-Business and Digital Marketing at the International Hellenic University. Digital media have been added to organizations' communication strategies and are used as a two-way communication channel in real time between them and their stakeholders. Unfortunately, digital media help the rapid spread of a crisis, as it can "go viral"; a crisis can be shared in seconds to millions digital media users. This study aims to examine if organizations can integrate into their communication strategy a crisis response strategy for their digital media accounts. Crises responses strategies have been determined by the Situational Crisis Communication Theory (Coombs). The research is done through a case study on a large Greek company that operates in electronics and entertainment retail industry. That selection was based on finding a company that has already embedded digital media in its communication strategy and has a strong presence in social media. Hence, the research would examine if the company had also implemented a digital crisis communication strategy and ad-dressed crises with SCCT's response strategies in social media. The analysis indicated that there was not a digital crisis communication strategy implemented and therefore, SCCT's response strategies were not used when a crisis occurred. On that basis, it was recommended for each type of crisis the best-suited crisis response strategy from the SCCT that the company should follow to communicate with its stakeholders and address a crisis.