The Online Image of the Romanian Gendarmerie after the Diaspora Protest on August 10, 2018: Crisis Communication Strategies

In this study we conducted a research on the Facebook page of the Romanian Gendarmerie, to understand the magnitude of the effects of the crisis this institution is facing after the Diaspora Protest ended in violence. We monitored the posts from August 10 to December 31, 2018 and analyzed the most relevant 50 comments from each post, in order to determine their character: positive, negative or neutral. In conducting this study, we started from the hypothesis that this event has affected the image of the Romanian Gendarmerie in the long time, and the crisis communication strategies used by the representatives of this institution have made a significant contribution to postponing the image restoration.