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Jurnal Komunikasi
Malaysian Journal of Communication
Jilid 34(1) 2018: 270-283

Company Facebook and Crisis Signal: The Case of Malaysian Airline Companies

NOR’IZAH AHMAD
SHARMINI ABDULLAH
Universiti Malaysia Perlis

NARIMAH ISMAIL
Universiti Putra Malaysia

ABSTRACT
The rapid advancement of social media play a significant role in publicizing the corporate image and
reputation of organizations. The type of information shared and method used by business
corporations to disseminate information via social media have profound influence on the public’s
perception towards particular organizations. A study on Facebook of airlines using content analysis
done by Grancay (2014) revealed that Airline Facebook pages contained only limited information
and are not substitutes for airline websites. Furthermore, only 84 percent of airlines with Facebook
provide the link to the websites. As such the questions posed are; what is the content of Facebook
of Malaysian airlines? What kind of posts and nature of interactions occurs in Malaysian airlines
Facebook? This article is based on a study conducted to examine the content and interactions of
posts from Facebook of five selected Malaysian airlines – Malaysia Airlines, Air Asia, Firefly, Malindo
Air and MASWing. Content analysis was used to identify the content of the postings and interactions
provided by airlines on their official Facebook pages over a period of one month in October 2016,
and determine possible issues that may contribute to the crisis in the companies. The findings
showed the trend of airline companies Facebook posting was positive in nature and contain
information about promotion, travel tips, entertainment and safety information. It was found that
airline companies did not to give any response or feedback to their customers’ negative comments
which may contribute to the crisis in the companies and thus considered a crisis signal.

Keywords: Airline companies, content analysis, crisis signal, social media, company Facebook.

INTRODUCTION
In this age where technology enables multiple means of communication between people
and organisations, information shared can travel swiftly to any place in the world.
Sometimes information shared may result in negative remarks that may end up damaging
the image and reputation of the organisation that consequently causes a crisis. This
situation is further enhanced through the use of social media such as Facebook, Twitter,
YouTube and other types of social media which are fast evolving with new ones emerging
even as we listed them. This paper is based on the analysis of Facebook content of selected
airline companies in Malaysia. The discussion will touch briefly on the following issues -
social media, social media and organisational crisis, Facebook as a source of information for
customers, examples from Facebook interactions that exemplify crisis, airlines Facebook
content as well as identification of potential crisis from Facebook postings and comments.
This is followed by research questions, methodology, findings and discussions.

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Company Facebook and Crisis Signal: The Case of Malaysian Airline Companies
Nor’izah Ahmad, Sharmini Abdullah & Narimah Ismail

Social Media
Social media refers to the variety of online communication tools which can be categorized
as social networks, blogs, microblogs, wikis, podcast, forums, content communities,
aggregators, and social bookmarking (Coombs, 2012). Social networking on the other hand
refers to the use of internet-based social media programs to make connections with friends,
family, classmates, customers and clients. Social networking is used for social purposes,
business purposes or both. Examples of social networking include Facebook, LinkedIn,
Classmates.com and Yelp. Facebook is a popular free social networking website that allows
registered users to create profiles, upload photos and video, send messages and keep in
touch with friends, family and colleagues. Therefore, the majority of organisations not only
use Facebook to disseminate their organisation’s activities to the public and clients but also
to enable their clients to interact directly with them.
Social media are characterized by openness since it allows people to post content,
provide feedback and facilitate two-way communication as in face to face communication.
Besides that, social media enables people to form online communities or groups of people
that share the same interest. However, the advancement of social media has also drastically
increased the momentum of public relations’ crisis. News can now spread rapidly and “go
viral” via multiple social media channels. Slow or inappropriate responses during a fast-
moving crisis can cause severe reputational damage to a brand. Loss of reputation almost
inevitably leads to financial loses which may result in a crisis.
As such on-going social media monitoring for mentions or comments about the
organization and its brands have become a vital component of public relations and
reputation management. With a social media monitoring service, organizations can monitor
multiple social media channels simultaneously and analyse large volumes of data quickly
through a single interface. Comprehensive monitoring can provide real insights into
consumer sentiment. It can also identify a developing PR crisis before it explodes. And it can
keep close watch over a crisis in an organization.
This particular nature of communication contributes to two different effects on
issues, risks, reputation and crisis. Social media has created new channels of communication
that allow the public and other stakeholders to vent their emotions or fury at an
organization or brand. Such an issue can very quickly escalate to become a crisis. Even if a
crisis does not begin in the social media space, it is likely that people will talk about in the
social media. Rumors about a crisis can circulate quickly via social networks and these can
increase the damage caused by the original crisis as in the case of the Cadbury Halal crisis
which occurred in 2014.

Company Facebook Content

Facebook is one the social media that are frequently used by companies to share
information about their companies. Parsons (2011) in the content analysis of official
Facebook pages of companies found that the type of posting varies. Some postings are
product related and may either provide product information or ask users to talk about their
experience with the product or vote on how they use the product or select their favourite
aspects of the products. Fashion companies tended to have postings that paraded
celebrities using their products at prestigious events such as movie premieres and award
shows. Besides that, polls and poll questions were used for marketing research. Most
companies posted videos of commercials offers such as coupons. However, Parson did not
analyse the Facebook content for possible signs of crisis.

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Another study by Jauhariatul and Jamilah (2011) about the use of Facebook by
environmental NGO’s (ENGO’s) found that they restricted the response from the public on
their wall posts and the public also rarely share information with the organization. They
also found that some Facebook were limited to members only, and Facebook users just
“Like” the status of the organization without commenting on the post. Other related
findings show that the public act aggressively and were biased when responding or giving
feedback to the organizations, and as such most Facebook of ENGO’s does not allow
discussions with the public. This nature of response on the Facebook posts indicates
something negative which may contribute to issues and crisis. As such the Facebook status
and responses may be a signal of emerging crisis and organizations should be careful in
order not to overlook important issues.
However, McCorkindale (2010) analysed Facebook pages of 55 Fortune 500
companies which are available for public view, to determine how many fans a corporation
had, what corporate information was included on the site, the use of photos and videos, the
use of discussion boards, the level of engagement, whether the site generated feedback,
and whether there was a discussion of community relations or social responsibility.
Regarding the post on the wall, the items coded included: the overall number of wall posts;
whether the post could be identified as an employee; and the date range of the posts.
Based on the findings regarding the nature of wall posts, McCorkindale found that the most
recent 40 postings on the wall were coded as being positive, neutral, or negative in tone.
The findings also showed that the number of negative tones was minimal such that
McCorkindale questioned about how the corporations may have sanitize or remove
negative wall posts, since some older post were positive while more recent posts were
negative in tone. This kind of action by the corporations showed that such actions may not
be a good practice to take since it may result in overlooking the issues that can contribute to
crisis.
As such corporations need to focus on media monitoring in order to be alert about
potential issues. According to Syme (2014) media monitoring may include, looking for signs,
warnings and patterns that may include one or more of the following: frequency and
intensity of conversations; sentiment or tone of posts and pattern; key fans or critics, and
frequency of their posts, and what their key message is; incorrect information,
misquotations, and slander; a pattern of comments that uncovers an organizational blind
spot or a “ball that has been dropped”; legitimate requests for information in a crisis;
negative incidents that could bubble up into a crisis. Thus amongst the social media that can
be monitored is Facebook.
Cases of Facebook disaster that can damage the reputation of organization was
reviewed by Teh (2014). Among the prominent Facebook blunders that went viral was that
of the Paradigm Mall (see Figure 1) which failed to respond swiftly and appropriately to
customer complaints.

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Company Facebook and Crisis Signal: The Case of Malaysian Airline Companies
Nor’izah Ahmad, Sharmini Abdullah & Narimah Ismail

Figure 1: Paradigm Mall

Source: Teh, T. (2014)

This case clearly demonstrates that the person handling the social media for the
organization must possess basic customer service knowledge. Handling customer
complaints lightly and making offensive remarks to the customer will end in disaster. Then,
there is the case of Lazada Malaysia being criticized by their customers for poor and slow
services. They could have improved their services. They could've just admitted their faults
and issued a public apology. They could have responded to the complaints on their
Facebook page. But they made things complicated for themselves by posting phantom
comments or basically fake positive comments which in this situation make the situation
worse (Teh, 2014).
Champoux, Durgee and McGlynn (2012) studied Nestle’s 2010 crisis by analyzing the
Facebook content and interactions the crisis brought about by Greenpeace, a non-
governmental environmental organization, mobilized critics in on online protest.
Greenpeace released a report alleging that Nestle’s palm oil supplier, Indonesian company
Sinar Mas, was illegally deforesting the rainforests of Indonesia. According to Greenpeace’s
report titled ‘‘Caught red handed: how Nestle´s use of palm oil is having a devastating
impact on rainforest, the climate and orangutans’’. Nestle failed to effectively manage its

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Facebook page and entered into a full-blown social media meltdown in a matter of minutes.
There are other examples of companies, in addition to Nestle that have handled such
Facebook postings very poorly.
Champoux et al. (2012) observed that as social media continues to play an important
role in businesses; more companies will experience public relations crises on Facebook and
will continue to play an important role in the way that companies communicate and it is
important that companies must be on their best to monitor Facebook content and avoid
possible crisis. According to Coombs (2014) timing of communication by organizations is
very important and the concept of stealing thunder in crisis communication is very relevant
when presenting information. When an organization is the first to report about the crisis,
they are less likely to suffer damage as compared to when the crisis is reported by other
sources first. Thus, taking advantage of social media like Facebook permits the organizations
to response fast to any queries or negative comments posted by customers. The action may
result in the organization being able to avoid possible crisis.

Airlines Companies Facebook

Airline companies worldwide used Facebook to provide information and connect with
customers. Data from Airline Facebook pages showed that the top 10 Airline Facebook fans
ranges from almost 13 million to four million. The top three airline companies and the
number of fans are as follows: Qatar Airways, 12,992,194; KLM Royal Dutch, 12,126,307,
and LATAM Airlines, 10,414,740. This is closely followed by AirAsia at fourth position with
10,404,866 fans. These numbers were cited from this page -
https://www.socialbakers.com/statistics/facebook/pages/total/brands/airlines/page-1-4/.
With this number of fans following them on Facebook, there is bound to be posts,
comments, and other interactions that may initiate crisis to airline companies. A search of
the web for airline companies facing crisis resulted in frequent mention of issues faced by
United Airlines including those occurring in early 2017 such as the one titled “United Airlines
passenger is dragged from an overbooked flight” New York Times, April 10, which shared
the disturbing scene captured on cell phone videos by Airlines passengers which later went
viral causing it to be “beyond the typical nightmares of travellers on an overbooked flight”.
According to the report “an unidentified man who refused to be bumped from a
plane screamed as a security officer wrestled him out of his seat and dragged him down the
aisle by his arms. His glasses slid down his face, and his shirt rose above his midriff as
uniformed officers followed”. At least two passengers documented the physical
confrontation and “the man’s anguished protests, and their videos spread rapidly online on
Monday as people criticized the airline’s tactics. A security officer involved in the episode
has been placed on leave, the authorities said, and the federal Transportation Department is
investigating whether the airline complied with the rules regarding overbooking”
(https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/business/united-flight-passenger-dragged.html). A
video of this incident was shared and can be watched here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dASATLLvGRM.
Besides that, there were Facebook postings and interactions regarding the incident
on United Airlines Facebook as shown below:

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Company Facebook and Crisis Signal: The Case of Malaysian Airline Companies
Nor’izah Ahmad, Sharmini Abdullah & Narimah Ismail

Figure 2: Snapshot of Facebook Comments

Another article regarding the same United Airlines incident is “How United Airlines
went viral on social media [PR Crisis]”. Reports in this article stated that “This is considered
as the worst PR disasters ever recorded for an airline, the news for United Airlines first
broke on Monday night. Bloodied passenger David Dao, a 69 year old American-Vietnamese
medical doctor, was shown on videos being assaulted and dragged by aviation security
officers from his seat” (http://coolerinsights.com/2017/04/united-airlines-viral-social-
media-pr-crisis/).
Other articles that relate to United Airlines is “United Airlines Crisis: PR Takeaways &
Social Media Insights” on April 11. Karen Freberg analysed the event and wrote about the
damaged reputation of United Airlines in her blog “the way in which United responded with
their CEO” and the leaked email to United employees did further damage to the brand with
the audiences. How you respond and act is extremely important when faced with a crisis
situation, like we are seeing here with the reputation damage being viewed for the world to
see on social media. She stressed that “you may have a great reputation one day, but it only
takes one action (or several in the case of United) to damage all of the work you have done”
(http://karenfreberg.com/blog/united-airlines-crisis-pr-takeaways-social-media-
insights/#prettyPhoto). Another article was about how a mother was denied access to the
bathroom by United Airlines employee can be read here:
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/momhumiliated-united-airlines-denied-bathroom-
ccess215237924.html

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However, there were huge reports of customers being bumped from flights and a
few cases involved Air Canada. Harris (2017) reported about the case of a woman bumped
from Air Canada and missed her Galapagos trip of a lifetime costing $10,000. However, Air
Canada confirmed the flight was oversold and says its staff made every effort to find Russell
another flight so she wouldn't miss her cruise. Spokesperson for the airlines said "Our
agents worked hard looking for options, this is a very regrettable situation and we are sorry
we were unable to do more to help this customer get to her cruise”
(http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/air-canada-bumping-overbooked-flight-galapagos-
1.4077645).
Another case involving Air Canada was reported in CBC News by Rankin (2017) “that
a number of Air Canada customers have had their tickets cancelled without warning — the
latest is a Vancouver woman who only learned her ticket had been refunded when she
checked her credit card statement. Nina Chung, 35, says she received no notice from Air
Canada and even more confusing, her booking on the airline's website still states the ticket
is confirmed. But airline representatives have told Chung the site is wrong — she doesn't
have a ticket.” And a day after the report was published “Air Canada reinstated Nina
Chung's ticket. In an email, the airline's director of customer relations, Michael Tremblay,
wrote ‘the appropriate people are trying to determine what happened so we can prevent it
from happening again.’ The airline industry regulator, the Canadian Transportation Agency,
says it's aware of other cancellations and is ‘following the matter closely.’ “
(http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/check-your-tickets-air-canada-cancels-
bookings-without-warning-1.4147410). And the news was shared 12212 times in the social
media indicating the potential of social media such as Facebook to bring about a crisis.
Other airlines are also not spared from having their crisis highlighted by the social
media such as the British Airways and they are the latest to do so, after its IT systems failed
during a bank holiday weekend in May 2017, leaving 75,000 passengers stranded in
Heathrow and Gatwick airports in the UK. This incident occurred more than a month after
United Airlines suffered a social media meltdown when a video of a passenger being
dragged from an overbooked flight in the US went viral.
(https://www.ft.com/content/45459474-46dd-11e7-8d27-59b4dd6296b8?mhq5j=e2).
Another incident involved the American Airlines. American Airlines says it has
suspended an employee after video emerged of a heated exchange with a passenger who
came to the defense of a crying woman holding a baby. The Facebook video posted showing
the female passenger visibly upset as she asks an employee to return her stroller. Video
posted to social media showed a sobbing woman clutching a young child at the front of an
American Airlines plane in San Francisco. Another female passenger is heard in the video
explaining that the woman was upset because an airline employee had 'grabbed' her
stroller. (http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/american-airlines-stroller-confrontation-
1.4081314)
A study of Facebook of airlines using content analysis was done by Grancay (2014).
The findings revealed that Airline FB pages contained only limited information and are not
substitutes for airline websites. As a matter of fact, most airline Facebook pages include a
link to the airline’s website. However, only 84 % of websites of airlines operating a
Facebook page provide a link to it. Almost all airlines regularly update their F pages by
adding various types of posts – the most common being news and interesting facts about
the airline, seat sales, photographs of aircraft in company livery, updated information about

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Company Facebook and Crisis Signal: The Case of Malaysian Airline Companies
Nor’izah Ahmad, Sharmini Abdullah & Narimah Ismail

operations, new destinations, and quizzes. For other information such as list of destinations,
check-in rules, and baggage policy, the user typically has to visit airlines’ websites.
Findings of Grancay (2014) study showed that three quarters of airlines allow users
to add content to their Facebook pages and the majority of them provide replies to users’
queries and complaints. Effectively, these airlines use Facebook as an additional customer
service platform. Approximately one third of airlines use Facebook as a sales channel.
However, Grancay (2014) did not analyse the Facebook content for the nature of the
customers’ response with regards to the possibility of determining crisis signals.
A study by Avram (2014) compare Facebook content of Romanian and Western
Europe airlines analyses the content on the Facebook pages of Tarom, Blue Air, Wizz Air,
Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, KLM International and Air Europa over a one week period (10th
February – 18th February 2014). He focused on number of fans, posts, number of likes, the
dynamics of comments, and response rate of airlines Facebook. However, there was no
mention of the nature responses made by followers.
Another study by Zhang et al. (2016) analysed posts, comments, and replies by
Facebook users and company representative of seven airlines during crisis. The airlines are
Malaysia Airlines for the MH 370 and MH 17 crisis; United Airlines regarding the case of
turbulence amid probe; Finnair, the case of a strike; and Norwegian Airlines, Qatar Airways,
Singapore Airlines, and Cathay Pacific. They determine interactions on Facebook of airlines
which consists of answering questions, apologies to the complaints, and answering
greetings.
The findings of the study showed that Malaysia Airlines had bad performance in their
Facebook as evidenced by only one reply from the verified account owner of Malaysia
Airlines towards the customers’ query from March 7, 2014 to April 26, 2014, during that
period sees Malaysia Airlines Flight MH 370 disappeared. However, in 2015, the situation
improved by hundreds of replies and apologies by Malaysia Airlines towards its customers.
Zhang et al. (2016) also conducted sentiment analysis of Facebook interactions and found
that the sentiments were positive, negative and neutral. Based on their findings Zhang et al.
(2016) concluded that organisations in crisis experience more negative sentiments from the
stakeholders, and thus it is appropriate to use the Situational Crisis Communication Theory
(SCCT) as a guide to develop strategies to deal with the crisis.
Another study regarding Malaysia Airlines Facebook examines the effect of the
framing used by Malaysia Airlines to share the status of MH370 in its crisis communication
efforts on Facebook. It is known that Facebook is one of the prominent social media
platforms used by organizations in time of crisis, since its ability to facilitate immediacy and
interactivity, thus the messages that are spread within the dynamic setting of Facebook
however could also create contradicting outcome for the organization (Dayang Aizza Maisha
et al., 2017). They found that there is a “causal inferences about audience response towards
emotional framing, as well as their attitude and behavior towards the organization;
particularly in the case of high crisis involvement. Thus, Dayang Aizza et al. (2017) suggests
that it is important for the organizations to understand the implication of focusing on
communicating the appropriate amount of empathy and emotions in their crisis response
message (CRM), especially in the social media channels such as Facebook.
With regard to negative comments in the social media Britton (2016) emphasised
that there is no point for companies to hide from the media especially when customers and
social media users may use Facebook, Twitters or other platforms to post comments or
complaints. As such, organisations or companies are advised not to delete negative

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comments as it may seem “seedy”, and it is important for companies to answer complaints
rather than ignore it. Other measures that companies need to take is to have a ‘comment
policy’ and post it for all to see. This comment policy will help customers to know the
acceptable comment format and content. According to Britton (2016) the policy may include
guide to acceptable or unacceptable comments. This policy will give the company the right
to delete a comment or block a user.

RESEARCH PROBLEM
Content analyses of social media messages are considered an ideal non-reactive way to
observe publics’ responses to crises. Social networks, discussion boards, weblogs, micro-
blogs and other platforms forums are also able to track spontaneous crisis responses from
both the publics‘ and the organizations’ perspectives. Negative Interactions between
organizations and customers on Facebook such as falsifying information, denying
information, making fun of customer’s comments, late responses without clear answers
may contribute to a crisis. Thus, analysing the content of Facebook postings and interactions
may provide an indication of potential issues that may develop into a crisis. Monitoring
content of social media, specifically Facebook will provide hints on potential crisis signal.
Based on the above situation the research questions are:

1. How frequent companies post information on their Facebook wall?

2. What type of information is posted on Facebook?
3. What is the nature of postings and interactions on company Facebook?

METHODOLOGY
This paper utilizes content analysis to identify postings of content and interactions provided
by airlines on their official Facebook pages. The primary goal of the content analysis was to
investigate the potential crisis from the airlines Facebook postings and comments. Our
research focuses on airline pages on Facebook. Founded in 2004, Facebook is an online
platform for registered users which enables them to connect with other registered users.
“Facebook pages” are profiles of companies and more or less have the same
capabilities as personal profiles of users. Users cannot become friends with companies, but
they can “like” their pages and that way become their “fans”. Companies can add posts,
photos and videos to their profiles and are also able to have a live video stream to “fans”
and interact with them in real time.
Content analysis is the method frequently used by researchers to study the content
of document such as newspapers, reports, social networking sites (SNS) and similar media. A
study by Mohd Azul and Nor Azita (2003) used content analysis to determine the content of
information about Islam in the webpage of Institut Kefahaman Islam Malaysia and Angkatan
Belia Islam Malaysia. Other researchers such as Grancay (2014), Shen and Bissell (2013) and
McCrokindale (2010) similarly used content analysis to determine the information that
companies share on their Facebook wall, as well as the interactions from their fans,
members or publics.
This study focuses on Facebook, because it is currently by far the most popular social
network in Malaysia with more than 10 million active users (Statista, 2017). The analysis
focussed on Facebook pages of five Malaysian airline companies – Malaysia Airlines, Air
Asia, Firefly, Malindo Air and MASWing.

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Nor’izah Ahmad, Sharmini Abdullah & Narimah Ismail

The number of fans of these airlines obtained from their respective Facebook are as follow:
i. AirAsia: 10,436,944
ii. Malaysia Airlines: 2,091,893
iii. Firefly: 496,414
iv. Malindo Air: 363,817
v. MASwings: 49,553

Data collection for this study took place in October 2016 zooming on a month long
posts by airlines. Analysis was focused on four types of content on airline Facebook pages:
frequency of posts, number of posts by airlines, information posted and nature of posting.
Frequency of postings refer to the actual number of posting for the month long period of
October 2016, while information posted refer to the types of the information shared such as
flight updates, promotion, travel tips, contest, entertainments. Meanwhile the nature of the
postings was categorised into positive and negative orientation.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

All of the airlines included in this study have their official pages on Facebook. Table 1 shows
the frequency and numbers of posting by airlines on their Facebook wall recorded between
October 1 and 31, 2016.

Table 1: Frequency of posting by airlines on their Facebook wall

Airline Company Frequency of posts Number of posts
Malaysia Airlines Daily 61
Air Asia Daily 34
Firefly Daily 52
Malindo Air Alternate days 21
MASWings Seldom 11

It appears that Malaysia Airlines has the highest number of postings on Facebook
and the postings were consistently made on a daily basis. Meanwhile MASWings, a wholly
owned subsidiary of Malaysia Airlines that serves major destinations as well as rural areas in
Sabah and Sarawak and Indonesia appears to have the least number of posts on Facebook
wall.
All Facebook pages of the studied samples publish basic information concerning their
company on Facebook. This ranges from a short two sentence description of the company
with a detailed corporate background and links to airline websites. Table 2 depicts the
results of content analysis of airline Facebook pages in term of information posted and
interactions.

Table 2: Content of airline Facebook pages in term of information posted and interactions
Airlines company Type Reaction from fans Reaction
of information from airlines
Malaysia Airlines Promotion Positive Yes
Negative None
Contest Positive Yes
Flight retimed Positive Yes
Negative None
Air Asia Promotion Positive Yes
Negative Yes
Travel tips Negative None

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Flight retimed Negative None

Event Negative None
Condolence Positive Yes
Safety info Negative None
Entertainment Positive Yes
Congratulate Positive None
Contest Positive None
Firefly Promotion Positive None
Negative None
Contest Positive Yes
Local food promotion Negative None
Quote of the day
Entertainment Positive Yes

Negative None
Malindo Air Promotion Positive Yes
Negative None
Safety info Positive Yes
MASWings Promotion Positive Yes
Negative Yes
Anniversary Positive Yes
Negative None
CSR Positive Yes
Safety info Negative None

Most information posted by airline companies on their Facebook page demonstrated

similar patterns which mainly revolved on promotions and safety information. However,
majority of their “fans” would eventually respond to posting with queries and complaints.
Almost all complaints were about services including luggage handling, call centre and
customer service, time management, flight delayed, retimed or cancelled, refund and ticket
price. Examples of negative response from customers are as follows: “Is your customer
service is still functioning? I’ve made online purchase and the amount has been charged to
my card yet I haven’t received my itinerary. Called the call centre twice and spent almost an
hour waiting for the call to be picked up but no one answered”; “Flight delayed again for my
return flight to KL on raya eve. Original timing schedules at 7.10pm from JB to KL. And again
no sms notification on the delayed flight. Only to find out when checking in/dropping my
bags at the counter”; “I’ve written on the page 3 times and submitted 2 requests regarding a
refund I am owed for a flight change. No one is assisting at all and at this stage I feel as
though this company has stolen my money. Very dishonest and disappointing. Please refund
my money urgently”. Nevertheless, there are customers who give positive response such as
“Thank you for your great service”; “Your ground staff are very helpful”. Unfortunately, most
of the airline companies do not address or provide feedback to customers’ queries and
complaints which could lead to a crisis. Table 3 depicts the results of content analysis of
airline Facebook pages in terms of the nature of posting and interactions.

Table 3: Content of airline Facebook pages in terms of nature of postings and interactions.
Airlines company Nature Time taken to response
of posting
Malaysia Airlines Positive 1 hour to 4 days / no response
Air Asia Positive 1 hour to 6 days / no response
Firefly Positive 3 to 4 days / no response

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Company Facebook and Crisis Signal: The Case of Malaysian Airline Companies
Nor’izah Ahmad, Sharmini Abdullah & Narimah Ismail

Malindo Air Positive 2 to 7 days / no response

MASWings Positive 1 to 4 days / no response

The findings from the content analysis on airline Facebook pages in terms of nature
of posting indicated that the trend of airline companies posting was positive whereby
majority of the postings were on promotion, travel tips, entertainment and safety
information. Findings also indicated that in terms of interactions, the airline companies
took between one hour to seven days to respond to their customers’ queries and
complaints. Apart from that, airline companies did not to give any response or feedback to
their customers’ negative comments which is against the suggestions made by Britton
(2016) that company should answer rather than ignore customers’ negative comments.

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Based on the findings above, it can be concluded that airline companies in Malaysia need to
manage their Facebook better by answering queries and comments from customers to
avoid possible crisis resulting from negative comments that can be identified as crisis
signals. The person who manages official Facebook of the airline companies must be trained
on how to respond on behalf of their companies when issues are raised by customers as
well as answering Facebook queries and they must be able to do so promptly. It is suggested
that airline companies should have a team of well-trained employees to manage their
official Facebook.
Furthermore, airline companies took a considerable length of time to respond to
queries from customers and they either ignored or answered indirectly to questions asked.
Such practice must be avoided since an angry customer may viral the issue and contribute
to the crisis. As such, airline companies must have a guideline on how to communicate using
social media such as Facebook. Any relevant information must be posted swiftly as the
concept of “stealing thunder” shows that the organisation which chooses to provide the
information first will be less likely to suffer from reputational damage during a crisis.
This study is just a preliminary one looking at the simple analysis of Facebook
content for indication of potential crisis that may occur in selected airline companies. It is
possible that further research looks at other social media such as Twitter, YouTube and
other similar channels to determine issues that may contribute to the crisis in airline
companies and other corporate bodies. Beside content analysis other method of data
collection such as interviews with airline management, and other organisations can be
conducted to identify potential crisis.

BIODATA
Nor’izah Binti Ahmad is a senior lecturer at the School of Human Development and
Technocomunication, Universiti Malaysia Perlis. Email: [email protected]
Narimah Ismail is a former senior lecturer at Universiti Putra Malaysia. She is currently
involved in writing modules as well as being a subject matter specialist (SME) for
communication subjects for Open University Malaysia. Email: [email protected]
Sharmini Abdullah is a senior lecturer at Centre for International Languages, Universiti
Malaysia Perlis. Email: [email protected]

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 Jurnal Komunikasi
Malaysian Journal of Communication
Jilid 34(1) 2018: 270-283

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