Employee Social Media Literacy to Promote Employee Communication Behaviors for Sensemaking and Sensegiving Countering Crisis Misinformation
Young Kim · 2025
This chapter explicates two important concepts of employee communication behaviors: employee communication behaviors for sensemaking (CBSM) and sensegiving (CBSG) . Furthermore, this chapter discusses the application of CBSM and CBSG in the context of crisis misinformation in order to explore how employees who are exposed to misinformation related to an organizational crisis engage in positive communication behaviors—that is, seeking out and disseminating valuable organization-related information, both internally and externally. To this end, this chapter proposes an application model of CBSM and CBSG, which emphasizes the importance of employee social media literacy (SML) and attitude toward verifying information to counter crisis misinformation. Therefore, this chapter suggests a theoretical extension of internal crisis communication integrating employee literacy, as SML can improve employees’ discernment in their sensemaking and sensegiving processes, ultimately leading to effective internal crisis communication. This chapter also provides directions for future research that brings much-needed empirical evidence on enhancing employees’ SML as a prescriptive measure against misinformation: this leads to voluntary employee communication behaviors that create a shared understanding of crisis-related information and that influence others’ sensemaking of such information, thereby mitigating the spread of misinformation on social media.