Comunicação em mídias digitais: estratégias comunicacionais empreendidas pela Samarco Mineradora no contexto da crise de Mariana

Abstract

Crises are increasingly common in the digital environment, particularly by the fact that all companies want to be present, but not all are actually prepared to work through digital media. Given this context, this work has as subject the crisis communication strategies and delimits to analyze the online publications of a company in the context of crisis. The object of study is Samarco Mineração S.A., a Brazilian mining company. The corpus of the research consists of the publications made in the company's fanpage on Facebook social media, during the months of November 2015 through May 2016. The issue of this research seeks to answer: What were the digital communication strategies used by Samarco Mineração S.A. to manage the crisis caused by the rupture of dams in Mariana? The general objective refers to analyze the positioning of the Samarco Mineração S.A. when confronted with a crisis that, besides the priceless damages with respect to environmental, human, social, financial and material factors, was intensified through social media. With regard to specific objectives, seek to: 1) map the posts related to Samarco's crisis on the company's fanpage on Facebook; 2) to analyze the posts published in the crisis triggering period up to 6 months later; 3) identify what were the strategies used by the Company to cope with the organization's crisis. The methodological research procedure corresponds to a triangulation of methods and techniques, consisting of bibliographical research (Lakatos, 1992), a case study (Yin, 2010) and non-participant observation techniques in the internet environment (JOHNSON, 2010), followed by descriptive analysis of strategies, according to selected theoretical framework. As a result, it is inferred that Samarco mining company portrayed himself and has positioning rapidly on his Facebook page. This approach helped its institutional discourse and corporate image, as evidenced in communication strategies found through analysis, such as the development of legitimacy and visibility strategies and the fulfillment of crisis communication principles such as transparency and accountability.