Along with their benefits, social media platforms can present reputational challenges for organizations, including a channel to breed visible, online reputational threats known as paracrises. In 2018, an emotional television episode of This Is Us sparked social media chatter surrounding the popular slow cooker Crock-Pot. Distraught viewers angrily inundated social media with unfounded fears, proclaimed the appliances were unsafe, and vowed to discard them, circulating inaccurate information and creating a hybrid angry customer and misinformation paracrisis for the brand. Crock-Pot quickly transformed the threat into a public relations success and brand-building opportunity by using emotionally-driven messages, modified crisis response strategies, and strategic alliances. This study illustrates the limitations of current paracrisis response strategies for responding to misinformation and emotional audiences and demonstrates that adapting classic crisis responses (i.e., situational crisis communication theory) can be a more effective approach. The findings offer recommendations for how managers can adapt classic crisis responses and integrate communication style elements, including human voice and humor, to manage angry customers and misinformation paracrises effectively.

除了它们的好处之外，社交媒体平台还可以为组织带来声誉挑战，包括滋生可见的在线声誉威胁的渠道，称为准危机。2018 年，《This Is Us》的情感电视剧集引发了围绕流行的慢炖锅 Crock-Pot 的社交媒体讨论。心烦意乱的观众愤怒地用毫无根据的恐惧淹没了社交媒体，宣称这些电器不安全，并发誓要丢弃它们，传播不准确的信息，并为该品牌制造了一个混合愤怒的客户和错误信息的假想敌。Crock-Pot 通过使用情感驱动的信息、修改后的危机应对策略和战略联盟，迅速将威胁转化为公关成功和品牌建设机会。这项研究说明了当前应对错误信息和情绪化受众的超危机应对策略的局限性，并表明适应经典危机应对（即情境危机沟通理论）可能是一种更有效的方法。