I've written before (on this forum and on my personal blog) about the "age of social convergence" and its meaning for emergency managers and crisis communicators. In a nutshell, social networks have changed crisis management imperatives. They bring the need for speed, pre-approved communications plans and tactics that can be launched immediately and the absolute necessity for trust.

There is nowhere to hide anymore when a crisis erupts. You either take the lead, own your story or run the risk of irrelevance and even disappearance. At first, I'm certain the proponents of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the US Congress and in Hollywood thought they were dealing with nothing more than virtual gnats when the Internet started the fight against the proposed legislation. There are obviously many legitimate reasons to protect original content and companies are allowed to do so, but the bill seems to go overboard ... and so did Christopher Dodd, former senator and now head and mouthpiece for the movie industry.

According to many accounts, his overreaction to the global opposition to SOPA on the Internet and social networks was so over the top ... that it showed a complete misunderstanding of the audiences involved in this online crisis. This excerpt from a Politico.com story illustrates the risks you face when ignoring the new reality of the social age: 

Dodd's collision with the Internet revealed the strength of a new player in town: When the tech community taps into the energy of millions of Internet users, influence in Washington becomes an entirely different game.

I like the concept of online insurgency in the story cited above. The online campaign has significantly chewed away at the support for the bill in Washington. Instead of calling the protests "a gimmick", Dodd and the movie and recording industries could have engaged in real dialogue with the tech side. They decided to ignore the outcry and got burned.

One more mistake: they forgot that social media and the Internet are not only there for companies to push content ... or communicate in a one-way only channel ... people like to create. take content that exists and build on it ... More importantly, netizens want to be HEARD ... 

 Crisis communications lessons:

1. Don't ignore the issue ... face the threat
2. Don't misread your audiences and your opponents 
3. Occupy the same battleground or be defeated 
4. Monitor social networks ... and engage in real conversations.

Being heard is at the heart of the other story. So you have a cruise ship (the Costa Concordia) that runs aground off the coast of Italy. At first, it seems, the people in charge, from the ship's captain, to the cruise line owners, didn't gauge the enormity of the situation. More than a failure in command (see this piece by Chief Bill Boyd on that). Much of the blame is being put on the shoulders of the captain who displayed a "nero-like" detachment about the ongoing disaster.

 But there were also serious failures on the corporate side. Now, it seems that the Carnival company wasn't as prepared as they should have been to deal with one of their ships experiencing difficulties. Makes you wonder about their risk assessment process. They certainly weren't prepared to respond from a crisis management/crisis communications point of view. In the "IT'S A BIT TOO LATE" category ... the cruise line announced a company-wide review of emergency procedures.

They were not prepared to handle the pressures on the web. The Carnival site "sunK' under the relentless waves of visits by people seeking more information. So they turned to social media to get their messages out. See this very interesting analysis of the digital aspect of the crisis. In fact, the social media posture by Carnival proved to be their one and only saving grace. They had a presence. They were monitoring. It allowed them to go into "social crisis mode" and respond. Some quick lessons again:

1. Make sure your website is robust enough to handle "emergency traffic"
2. Ensure your crisis communications plans has a strong social media component that includes ongoing monitoring
3. Align corporate messaging during an emergency throughout your entire organization .... uniformity of messaging and all that ...
4. Nothing beats having the right people in place, with the right abilities and the right training ...