The Duality of Transparency in Strategic Communication : Reputation Management during a Crisis in the Social Media Industry

Abstract: This master thesis investigates the potential downsides of transparency in crisis communication. Reputation and transparency studies focus primarily on external perspectives and academia lacks observations from internal perspectives. Crises like data breaches cause exponentially more damage each year and threaten intangible assets like reputation.  The authors conducted a quantitative survey research in which social media users were presented with background information about a fictional social media company, information about their relations with the company, and a short newspaper article investigating a data breach before being presented with the vignette, a press release. Participants were asked to rate the reputation of the company in several steps. In total 457 responses were collected.  The findings support the positive correlation between transparent crisis responses and reputation recovery. No evidence of negative consequences on internal reputation due to transparency was found. Crisis responses, even if not entirely transparent, can still positively affect reputation if perceived as appropriate. The research contributes insights into the impact of transparency on reputation and highlights its value as a key element in crisis communication and reputation management strategies, particularly for organizations in the social media industry facing data breaches.