Crisis.

For crisis communication teams everywhere, social media has been lending its
helping hand in getting information out during situations across the board. Most of the time social media works as a partner with a crisis communication team, helping put the fires out and keeping everyone safe.

Sometimes, it backfires. Social media is just that, social. Anyone who has an option or hears a rumor can post their thoughts for everyone to hear- even if it is wrong.

Rumors of deaths and breakups, shootings and hook-ups have all started via social media, Twitter in particular. As long as you can say what you're thinking in 140 characters or less, the possibilities on Twitter are endless.

Texas Women’s University had a threat made by a student last week, prompting the University to go on an immediate lock down. Students who signed up for the “pioneer alert” received a text or email stating not to go on campus.


It took TWU over 30 minutes to update their website at all, and when they did it was a simple statement “the campus is on lockdown please stay indoors and do not come to campus if you are not there yet,” or something along those lines. After an hour, @twunews had yet to report anything. After I mentioned them and the lack of response (and a few students retweeting it) they finally updated a tweet saying the same generic statement as the website.

Although to this point the communication had been vague, It was consistent. The consistency stopped there however; the local news stations started to report different stories, some were that the suspect was somewhere on campus with a gun, others tweeted that the suspect had fled campus. No one knew the real story because TWU or @twunews had yet to release any more information.

An hour after the lockdown began, TWU finally posted a press release on their website stating some basic facts of the case, and calling the all clear on campus. TWUnews then tweeted that if you were in your car you needed to leave campus;at the same time local news stations were tweeting the all clear and for students to return to classes as normal.

The miscommunication between twitter users can cause more confusion in a crisis situation instead of getting information out to the public.

Although the TWU case is the most recent, cases involving twitter miscommunication, and social media in general go back as far as the Internet. Miscommunication in general has been around since the beginning of time, and with social media it is becoming easier to get confused.

Are companies and universities taking miscommunication due to social media into account when they add it into a communication plan? Or are they assuming that social media is only a tool that can help, not harm?