Abstract

For democracy to prosper, dialogue in communication is essential in crisis resolution. Social media’s two-way communication has made it easier for the government and the people to interact during crises. However, only some governments understand the importance of dialogic communication. The paper focused on Nigeria’s 2021 Twitter ban and analyzed a Facebook post and subsets of engagements about the crisis. The paper employed the Coombs Three-Stage Model to break the crisis into three stages and analyzed the ‘Crisis Stage’ in the Dialogic Theory of Public Relations context. The five steps of the theory examined the impact of Facebook communication. The findings revealed inadequate dialogue to resolve the crisis, and the parties could not unite to resolve the problem. There was no demonstration of understanding of what the other party was going through, other risks were ignored, and there was no commitment to work together to resolve the crisis. 

The presentation slides can be found here: https://youtu.be/7onLZdxpp4I

(This paper was presented at the National Communication Association Conference (NCA) in November 2023 in Maryland, USA. The complete paper may be available upon request, at the author’s discretion).