A Dynamic Game Model of Crisis Communication on Social Media

When faced with the proliferation of negative information on social media, companies must decide whether to react in a positive way by responding in a timely manner, disclosing the facts,offering apology or compensation, etc.,or by reacting negatively with a denial, threat of legal actions, etc.The optimal choice of strategy for the company depends on the costs of the strategy incurred by the company and the propensity of netizens to publicly condemn and shame the company on social media. In this paper, we employ evolutionary game theory in order to propose a model of social media crisis communication. We conduct numeric simulations under different parameters in order to find evolutionary equilibria, which may serve as guidelines for companies deciding on the right social media strategy.