The Right Spin’s consultant Jia Ning has authored a chapter in the book ‘Crisis Communication Cases from Asia’. The chapter focuses on how a single message posted by a FoodPanda employee on social media in Thailand negatively impacted the company’s reputation within a day and led to a deluge of criticism by thousands of its customers.

Titled ‘FoodPanda Faces Boycott for “Terrorist” Comment’, this academic piece analyses the communication nuances in Thailand – the only Southeast Asia nation that has never been colonized – illustrating the nexus between crisis communication and five socio-political factors, namely political culture, economic systems, societal culture, media systems and activist environments.

It also looks into the role of communication practitioners in this pendulum – how can they strike a balance between organizational and national interest? There is a need for companies to invest more time and resources to upskill communication practitioners, enabling them to be a strategic communicator, critical thinker and problem solver in order to assist organizations through the peaks and troughs.