Abstract: Thefollowing article aims to define the subject “crisis”. It also has the purpose to show some of the good practices and some mistakes in the communication strategy when managing crisis. The main thesis is that in the era of Internet and new social media, the crisis communication is out of control of any individual or organization and the crisis communication managers have to accept that nothing can stay hidden forever. The main hypothesis is that crisis communication should be open, fast, accurate, related to different platforms and has to contain the component of cyberspace. The article has three main parts – theoretical, analytical and practical. The theoretical part gives definition of the subject “crisis”. It also follows the three stages of its development. The analytical part presents the change which occurs in crisis communication as a direct result of technological progress. In the third part the effective crisis communication is outlined. The second goal of the study is focusing on the components which the crisis communication should include in order to meet the challenges of working in the new information environment of an immediate media-cycle in which the relevant information is available, and on the other side, the stakeholders get news from different platforms.
Keywords: crisis, Internet.
Rhetoric and Communications E-journal, Issue 5, September 2012, http://rhetoric.bg/, ISSN 1314-4464