Critical Success Factors for Government Crisis Communication over Social Media in Emergency Management

This chapter presents a systematic literature review of how governments can effectively communicate over social media during emergency management and the respective critical success factors. The study aims to fill the gap in the literature regarding a synthesis of the lessons learned for government crisis communication in diverse types and stages of emergencies in different countries, using various social media tools by different actors. To this end, the study identifies and analyzes 34 journal articles in the Web of Science Core Collection database using PRISMA conventions and synthesizes the factors that affect successful communication over social media in emergency management into four groups: contextual factors (emergency type, emergency stage, type of social media tool), individual characteristics of the stakeholders, government social media capacity, and government social media communication style. The findings suggest that governments should proactively build a social media strategy, presence, and communication hub framework before emergencies. They should also tailor unique emergency communication strategies based on the context, according to distinct types and stages of emergencies, types of social media tools, and the actors’ characteristics. Overall, the chapter develops a policy and research framework concerning government crisis communication over social media in emergency management.