Formal, Non-formal, and Informal Approaches in Prosocial Crisis Communication while Dealing with Refugees from Conflict Areas

Abstract

The way formal organisations (governmental), non-formal (non-governmental) organisations, and informal citizen communication deal with social crisis pro-socially, that is, to the benefit of others, accounts for some characteristics that are worth fathoming in order to create the framework for the development of better communication strategies and better and faster prosocial reaction within socially challenging crisis contexts. Crisis communication has been tackled in public relations mostly with regard to governmental and nongovernmental organisations, whilst citizen informal communication has not been a matter of PR scientific focus so far, and neither has a comparison between these ways to communicate been approached for that matter. As speed is key in communication, and mostly within a refugee crisis, a double fold quantitative and qualitative analysis of the communication content and strategies used by key social actors in a hub-country of refugee reception like Romania in the emergency context created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may provide useful scientific information to generate consequent strategic improvements. This content analysis methodological approach on communication in the social media and on websites of such various outlets (the Facebook pages and groups of the Romanian Red Cross, UNICEF, Romanian Government, the “Uniţi pentru Ucraina” group, the Romanian government, UNICEF and Red Cross websites) from 24th February 2022, the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, to the moment, allows intriguing conclusions about the effectiveness, timeliness, and constancy in communicating support in times of social crisis within a prosocial approach in Romania to receiving refugees from the conflict areas in Ukraine.