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Socially-connected Oil & Gas corporations and challenges ahead

20 Sunday Sep 2015

Posted by Dimitris Agrafiotis in Cases, Media

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oil & gas, social media

Oseberg A

In my opinion, Warren Buffet has said everything about communications in 23 words: «It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently. »

This is so true that I could hardly find just one argument against it. Some years ago, before the social media era, there could be ways to turn the tables and protect the reputation of an organization focusing on traditional media and specific stakeholders. Those days are irretrievably behind us. Nowadays the social media is a big ocean and every once in a while a couple of tsunamis hit the « coast» of organizations. On the subject of organizations’ exposure to social media with unpleasant experience for them, the first example that came to my mind the BP’s oil spill.

Given the numerous mentions of scholars and communications experts on BP’s PR disaster, it would not be wise to elaborate further on this but we could go bit further and explore some aspects of the Integrated Oil & Gas industry’s exposure to social media. The idea was to explore the social media presence of the top 30 Integrated Oil & Gas corporations globally. The selection of these corporations was based on the 2014 Top 250 Global Energy Company Rankings by Platts, which is considered as one of the most significant Price Reporting Agencies for oil market in the world.

The methodology I followed was the simplest it could be. I just visited the websites of these corporations. The findings of the research show that 84% of the Oil & Gas corporations have presence in at least one social network. Only 5 out of the 30 companies (16%) have no social media presence at all. It’s worth mentioning that the corporations from China (2) and Russia (4), with the exception of Gazprom which has an international expansion, have limited or none exposure to social networks.

On the other hand there are 4 corporations with more than 5 accounts in social networks. The social media champion of the industry is the Royal Dutch Shell with 7 accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram and Flickr). BP, more experienced than ever in handling difficult situations in social media, has presence in 6 social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, LinkedIn, Google+ and Flickr). Every corporation has 3 accounts on average in social media.

Oil_Gas_industry_Social_networks_1

The most popular social networks among the Oil & gas corporations are, as expected, Facebook (63%), Twitter (70%), LinkedIn (66%), Youtube (63%) and the others follow far behind.

Three out of the 30 corporations have some limited presence on social media without reference on their main website.

The Integrated Oil & Gas industry has suffered major disasters in the past with several casualties and heavy environmental effects such as the Piper Alpha disaster in the North Sea, which killed 167 people in July 1988, the Alexander L. Kielland disaster in the Norwegian continental Shelf, operated by Phillips Petroleum, killing 123 people, the Seacrest Drillship disaster in the South China Sea killing 91 crew men.

The Oil & Gas corporations which are socially connected probably will know what to do if a crisis occurs. After all these years of accumulated experience we expect from these corporations to handle a crisis in social networks in a textbook manner. It remains to be seen to what extent their crisis management plan in communications and social networks is feasible or not.

More charts about the presence of Oil & Gas industry in social networks are available here.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and they do not reflect in any way those of his various affiliations.

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Crisis communications under “rain and fire” – Part II (or Why crisis communications in natural disasters should interest us…)

13 Sunday Sep 2015

Posted by Dimitris Agrafiotis in Cases, Crisis, Media

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Tags

crisis communications, crisis management, emergency communication, emergency management, emergency planning, Katrina, lessons learned, Peloponnese

hurricane-katrina

Following the post «Crisis communications under “rain and fire” (Part I) » I was asked by several people why a communications or PR professional should be interested in crisis management of natural disasters such as the Hurricane Katrina and the fires in Greece in 2006. My response was that the main characteristics of the two cases apply to crises that might affect a company.  Let’s see these characteristics:

  • There were casualties
  • There was a strong reaction of public opinion
  • There was lack of preparedness
  • There was a lack of coordination at both operational and communication level

I remind you that the Bhopal disaster, the gas leak incident in India, considered the world’s worst industrial disaster, had a death toll of thousands of people and it was not the result of a natural phenomenon.

After this small introduction let’s see some lessons learned from the «Crisis» and «Post-Crisis» phases of the crisis management in Hurricane Katrina and the fires in Greece.

«Crisis» phase

The crisis management in both cases showed the internal malfunction of administration in both countries. Internal conflicts and personal agendas prevailed at the expense of public interest. If the crisis management team is unable to have smooth internal communication, it is almost impossible to lead to coordinated actions, both at operational and communications level. The failure to achieve internal cooperation reflects negatively on the external environment.

Conclusion: The crisis management team must be functional with good cooperation and communication among the members of the team.

During the research of the two cases I realized the importance of the leadership, the credibility of political discourse and the openness towards the public. The leadership of the American president during the crisis had the following phases: absence, optimism, lack of coordination and finally shift of responsibility. The reassurance by President Bush during the first hours of Hurricane Katrina proved a huge communication mistake that followed the American government for some time. On the other hand, the presence of the Greek Prime Minister with evident sorrow in the area of the fires expressed the public sentiment reducing extreme reactions. However, the allegations of Greek Ministers that the fires were part of an organized plan to destabilize the country was a PR stunt which crashed along the way setting credibility issues got the Greek government. As we saw in a relevant quantitative research, part of the Greek public opinion believed these allegations even thought they were never justified. Passing responsibility (blame game) is a common practice but it can be extremely negative for the credibility of the crisis management team.

Conclusion: Credibility with respect to communications and the main messages of the crisis management team is crucial.

“Post- crisis” phase

In the post-crisis phase, the efforts to defuse tension are followed by a learning process. The evaluation of all the actions during the crisis is crucial in order to become better. The improvement of the crisis management process requires the evaluation of correct and incorrect actions of the organization. The lessons of this kind are part of the organizational function of the organization and they are a compass for the future. In the weeks and months following Hurricane Katrina, a series of institutions investigated the reasons of the failure of the US administration to handle the crisis issuing reports that became publicly available. In Greece, there have been no official inquiries to identify errors during the crisis.

Conclusion:  Every crisis should always be a lesson learned.

This post is only a very small part of my thesis “Crisis communication by Public Administration and government organizations” which goes back in time.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and they do not reflect in any way those of his various affiliations.

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New book: “The Euro Crisis in the Media: Journalistic Coverage of Economic Crisis and European Institutions”

12 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by Dimitris Agrafiotis in Books, Media

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book, euro crisis, media, Reuters

Reuters_book

We  found out a book to wait for. The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism will publish in September a book called The Euro Crisis in the Media: Journalistic Coverage of Economic Crisis and European Institutions edited by Robert G. Picard.

Summary of the book:

The Euro Crisis produced the most significant challenge to European integration in 60 years―testing the structures and powers of the European Union and the Eurozone and threatening the common currency. This book explores how the financial and political crisis was portrayed in the European press and the implications of that coverage on public understanding of the developments, their causes, responsibilities for addressing the crisis, the roles and effectiveness of European institutions, and the implications for European integration and identity. It addresses factors that shaped news and analysis, the roles of European leaders, and the extent to which national and pan-European debates over the crisis occurred. In doing so, it provides a clear and readable explanation of what the portrayals tell us about Europe and European integration in the early twenty-first century.

The book will be available in September: http://www.amazon.com/Euro-Crisis-Media-Journalistic-Institutions/dp/1784530603/ 

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