In:The Language of Crisis: Metaphors, frames and discourses
Edited by Mimi Huang and Lise-Lotte Holmgreen
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 87] 2020
► pp. 87–107
Chapter 3Responding to organisational misbehaviour
The influence of public frames in social media
Published online: 16 July 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.87.03hol
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.87.03hol
Abstract
Over the past decades, the seriousness with which organisational crises have developed has, in part, been contingent on
public access to social media platforms. Analysing two Danish organisational crises, the chapter explores whether the conceptual
repertoires that underlie public evaluation of organisational behaviour are embedded in shared social and cultural practices that
allow them to be expressed and shared easily and intuitively. The findings suggest that by drawing on well-established experiential
domains in social and cultural life, users in public social media may instantiate frames that inspire other users to follow suit. This
may create dominant interpretations across platforms and lay the foundation of crisis development.
Keywords: social media, public evaluation, conceptual grounding, crisis, framing, metaphor, case study
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Framing and the relevance of metaphor to public social media action
- 2.1Metaphor as framing
- 3.Case studies and data retrieval
- 3.1Data and their retrieval
- 4.Framing the steakhouse
- 4.1Two frames to discredit the steakhouse
- 5.Framing the bank
- 5.1One frame to discredit the bank
- 6.Conclusion
Notes References
References (54)
Berlingske Tidende. 2014. “Nu
boykotter 100.000 danskere bøf-gigant–
kommentarer”, 22 September, available
at: [URL]
Chilton, Paul A. 1996. Security Metaphors – Cold War Discourse
from Containment to Common House. NY: Peter Lang.
Coombs, W. Timothy. 2015. Ongoing Crisis Communication:
Planning, Managing, and Responding, 4th Ed. Thousand Oaks/London: Sage
Entman, Robert M. 1993. “Framing: Toward a Clarification of
a Fractured Paradigm.” Journal of
Communication 41: 6–25.
Evans, Vyvyan and Melanie Green. 2006. Cognitive
Linguistics – An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Facebook on Nordjyske
Stiftstidende. 2014. 19 September, available
at: [URL]
Facebook on TV2
Nyhederne. 2014. 20 September, available
at: [URL]
Fairclough, Norman. 2003. Analysing
Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London/New York: Routledge.
Fairhurst, Gail. 2010. The
Power of Framing: Creating the Language of Leadership. New York: Jossey-Bass.
Fillmore, Charles. 1975. “An
Alternative to Checklist Theories of Meaning.” Proceedings of the First Annual Meeting of The
Berkeley Linguistics
Society, 123–31. Amsterdam: North Holland.
. 1982. “Frame
Semantics.” In Linguistics in the Morning
Calm, edited by Linguistic Society of
Korea, 111–37. Seoul: Hanshin Publishing.
Gladwell, Malcolm. 2014. David
& Goliat– Kunsten at kæmpe mod giganter [Translated from English: David and Goliath – Underdogs, misfits, and the art of battling
giants]. Copenhagen: Lindhardt og Ringhof.
Hallahan, Kirk. 1999. “Seven
Models of Framing: Implications for Public Relations.” Journal of Public Relations
Research 11 (3): 205–242.
Heath, Robert L. 2010. “Crisis Communication: Defining the
Beast and De-marginalizing Key Publics.” In The Handbook of Crisis
Communication, edited by W. Timothy Coombs, and Sherry J. Holloday, 1–13. Chichester: Blackwell Publishing, Chichester.
Hellsten, Iina, James Dawson, and Loet Leydesdorff. 2010. “Implicit
Media Frames: Automated Analysis of Public Debate on Artificial Sweeteners.” Public Understanding
of Science 19: 590–608.
Holmgreen, Lise-Lotte. 2012. “Framing
a Bank: Reputation Management During Financial Crises.” In Metaphor and
Mills: Figurative Language in Business and Economics, edited by Michael White and Honesto Herrera-Soler, 243–64. Berlin/Boston: Mouton De Gruyter.
. 2015. “Why
Am I to Blame When the Law Is on My Side?”: A Study of Crises, Public Opinion and Frames.” On the
Horizon 23 (4): 363–73.
Holmgreen, Lise-Lotte, and Torben Vestergaard. 2009. “Evaluation
and Audience Acceptance in Biotech News Texts.” Journal of
Pragmatics, 41: 586–601.
Johnson, Mark. 1987. The
Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination and
Reason. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Johnen, Marius, Marc Jungblut, and Marc Ziegele. 2018. “The
Digital Outcry: What Incites Participation Behavior in an Online Firestorm.” New Media &
Society 20 (9): 3140–3160.
Johnson, Mark, and George Lakoff. 2002. “Why
Cognitive Linguistics Requires Embodied Realism.” Cognitive
Linguistics 13 (3): 245–63.
Kent, Michael L., and Maureen Taylor. 2016. “From
Homo Economicus to Homo Dialogicus: Rethinking Social Media Use in CSR Communication.” Public
Relations Review 42: 60–67.
Kövecses, Zoltan. 2005. Metaphor
in Culture: Universality and Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
. 2009. “Metaphor,
Culture, and Discourse: The Pressure of Coherence.” In Metaphor and
Discourse, edited by Andreas Musollf, and Jörg Zinken, 11–24. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
. 2010. Metaphor:
A Practical Introduction. Second edition. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press.
. 2015. “Where
Metaphors Come From: Reconsidering Context in
Metaphor”. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lakoff, George. 1993. “The
Contemporary Theory of Metaphor.” In Metaphor and
Thought, edited by Andrew Ortony, 202–51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors
We Live By. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
. 1999. Philosophy
in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenges to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books.
Li, C., and J. Bernoff. 2008. Groundswell:
Winning in a World Transformed by Social
Technologies. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Li, Zongchao. 2016. “Psychological
Empowerment on Social Media: Who Are the Empowered Users?” Public Relations
Review 42: 49–59.
Liu, Brooke F. 2010. “Distinguishing How Elite Papers and
A-list Blogs Cover Crises: Insights for Managing Crises Online.” Public Relations
Review 36: 28–32.
Liu, Brooke F., Lucinda Austin, and Yan Jin. 2011. “How
Publics Respond to Crisis Communication Strategies: The Interplay of Information Form and
Source.” Public Relations
Review. 37: 345–353.
Musolff, Andreas, and Jörg Zinken (eds.). 2009. Metaphor
and Discourse. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Muntinga, D. D., M. Moorman, and E. G. Smit. 2011. “Introducing
COBRAs: Exploring Motivations for Brand-related Social Media Use.” International Journal of
Advertising 30 (1): 13–46.
Politiken. 2012. ”Vrede over
reklame: Hallo banktyper, tror I, vi har glemt, at I er
überskurkene?”, 25 November, available
at: [URL].
. 2014. ”Ekspert om Jensens
Bøfhus-sagen: Det er blevet nemmere at kaste lidt op på sociale
medier”, 22 September, available at: [URL]
Quinn, Naomie. 1991. “The
Cultural Basis of Metaphor.” In Beyond Metaphor: The Theory of Tropes in
Anthropology, edited by J. Fernandez, 56–93. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Ritchie, David. 2003. ““argument
is war”– Or Is It a Game of Chess? Multiple Meanings in the Analysis of Implicit
Metaphors.” Metaphor and
Symbol 18 (2): 125–146.
Romano, Manuela, and Maria Dolores Porto. 2016. Exploring
Discourse Strategies in Social and Cognitive
Interaction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Rost, Katja, Lea Stahel, and Bruno S. Frey. 2016. “Digital
Social Norm Enforcement: Online Firestorms in Social Media.” PLoS
ONE 11 (6): e0155923.
Saeby Avis. 2014. “Jensens
Fiskerestaurant tabte sagen i
Højesteret”, 19 September, available
at: [URL]
Shao, Guosong. 2009. “Understanding
the Appeal of User-generated Media: A Uses and Gratification Perspective.” Internet
Research 19 (1): 7–25.
Schultz, Friederike, Sonja Utz, and Anja Göritz. 2011. “Is
the Medium the Message? Perceptions of and Reactions to Crisis Communication via Twitter, Blogs and Traditional
Media.” Public Relations
Review 37: 20–27.
Schultz, Friederike, and Juliana Raupp. 2010. “The
Social Construction of Crises in Governmental and Corporate Communications: An Inter-organizational and Inter-systemic
Analysis.” Public Relations
Review 36: 112–19.
Twitter 2014. 20 September, available
at: Twitter.com, #boefhusgate.
Van der Meer, Toni G. L. A., and Piet Verhoeven. 2013. “Public
Framing of Organizational Crisis Situations: Social Media versus News Media.” Public Relations
Review 39: 229–231.
Van der Meer, Toni G. L. A., Piet Verhoeven, Hans Beentjes, and Rens Vliegenthart. 2014. “When
Frames Align: The Interplay between PR, News Media, and the Public in Times of Crisis.” Public
Relations Review 40: 751–61.
Van Dijk, Teun A. 2009. Society and Discourse: How Social Contexts
Influence Text and Talk. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Waymer, Damion, and Robert Heath. 2007. “Emergent
Agents: The Forgotten Publics in Crisis Communication and Issues Management Research.” Journal of
Applied Communication
Research 35: 88–108.
Wolfe, Richard, and Daniel S. Putler. 2002. “How
Tight Are the Ties That Bind Stakeholder Groups?” Organization
Science 13 (1): 64–80.
Ziem, Alexander. 2014. Frames
of Understanding in Text and
Discourse. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Cited by (1)
Cited by one other publication
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 8 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
