Paracrises, as publicly visible crisis risks, may or may not evolve into full-blown crises that pose severe reputational and/or operational damages. To preclude paracrises’ possible escalation into crises, organizations must evaluate paracrises' evolution statuses and make appropriate public responses. This research explores a paracrisis’ temporal evolution on social media and traditional news media and the roles of social media influencers (SMIs) who impacted the evolution. A multi-method, single-case study of the #DeleteUber paracrisis was conducted to analyze tweets and traditional news media coverage. It is found that despite intense attention from social media and traditional news media, #DeleteUber did not escalate into a full-blown crisis. In addition to social media accounts owned by traditional news media, individuals with limited follower sizes and digital-born media also gained influence by providing objective information and subjective interpretations with different stances. Compared to follower sizes, SMIs’ network structures may be more effective in explaining and predicting their content virality. As one of the few studies examining paracrisis evolution processes, this research is of practical implications to crisis managers addressing crisis risks emerging from and/or spreading on social media.

作为公开可见的危机风险，准危机可能会也可能不会演变成对声誉和/或运营造成严重损害的全面危机。为防止准危机升级为危机，组织必须评估准危机的演变状态并做出适当的公众反应。本研究探讨了社交媒体和传统新闻媒体上的平行危机的时间演变，以及影响演变的社交媒体影响者 (SMI) 的作用。对#DeleteUber 平行危机进行了多方法、单一案例研究，以分析推文和传统新闻媒体报道。研究发现，尽管社交媒体和传统新闻媒体给予了强烈关注，但#DeleteUber 并未升级为全面爆发的危机。除了传统新闻媒体拥有的社交媒体账户，追随者规模有限的个人和数字媒体也通过提供客观信息和不同立场的主观解释而获得影响力。与粉丝规模相比，SMI 的网络结构在解释和预测其内容病毒式传播方面可能更有效。作为为数不多的研究平行危机演变过程的研究之一，这项研究对危机管理者应对从社交媒体中出现和/或传播的危机风险具有实际意义。