Crisis Response Strategies of political parties in the Egyptian Social Media- the Constitutional Declaration as a Case Study

It must be emphasized that the El- Dostor Party did not face the same crisis faced by the Freedom & Justice Party as the ruling party supporting the declaration, but faced a different crisis in that they claimed that the declaration was affecting the level of democracy and the limits of freedom available to those with authority. So, while the official page of the Freedom and Justice Party tried to prove importance of the declaration's issuance and attack the opponents for rejecting it, the official page of the El-Dostor Party used certain crisis response strategies (CRS) to attack the authority and escalate the crisis faced by the ruling party.
This article used the content analysis method to analyze the posts of both pages from the 22^nd of November through the 25^th of December 2012 that started with the release of the first constitutional declaration on the 22^nd of November till the issuance of the Constitution on the 25^th of December 2012.
The research supposes that each page is supposed to reflect different political trends that might led to some differences in their choices of CRSs. But the analysis shows that the attack strategy was used by both pages in different ways. It was used by Freedom and Justice Party to attack opposition parties of the declaration, as well as some opposition aligned media which they blamed them for having prejudgments about the president himself, his decisions and trying to overthrow him.  The El- Dostor Party used this strategy to attack the ruling regime and accused it of seeking to control the government. Furthermore, the posts attacked the president and accused him of the increased number of deaths due to violence resulting from the rejection of the constitutional declaration.
These results prove what Coombs had proposed. He argued that in a victim situation, organizations should use the deny strategy. In an accident situation, organizations should use the diminish strategy, while in a preventable situation organizations should use the rebuild strategy. Regarding the situation in Egypt discussed here, both parties witnessed themselves as victims. The then ruling party (Freedom and Justice Party) felt that the opponents wanted to  over-through the president, while simultaneously, the El- Dostor Party argued that the declaration restricted many of the civil liberties, thus giving the president unlimited authority.
While the attack strategy was the only CRS that was used by the El- Dostor Party, Freedom and Justice Party used another three strategies; the scapegoating, the justification and the bolstering strategies. The scapegoating strategy was used to blame opponents, both media and parties, for the crisis. Also, the justification strategy as one of the diminish postures was used to justify the declaration as a tool to eliminate Mubarak’s regime and his supporters, stop working with the declaration with the issuance of the Constitution, give the president the power to use his authorities, a way for correcting the way of the revolution's movement, and rebuild a revolutionary Egypt, all while achieving justice and achieving community safety. The bolstering strategy was also used to depict the president as a victim of the media and the judiciary who were pushing for the coup in order to take out the president by attacking his performance and decisions. Also, the analysis shows that both pages represented the views of the party supporters without presenting the views of the opponents which affected the objectivity of the posts, and this may describe what was said about this crisis as a war between those who supported the president and those who were against him.
While the El- Dostor Party used only the attack strategy within the analysis period, the official page of the Freedom and Justice Party used the strategies in a different manner. At the first stage (T¹) of the analysis that started with the release of the first constitutional declaration until the second constitutional proclamation from the 22^nd of November till the announcement of the second constitutional declaration on the 8^th of December 2012, it used three different strategies; attack, scapegoat, justification and bolstering strategies. While at the second stage (T²) of the analysis that started with the release of the second constitutional declaration until the issuance of the Constitution in the period from 9^th of December 2012 till the issuance of the new Egyptian Constitution on the 25^th of December 2012, it only used the attack strategy and this can be explained as a result of the severe attack that was directed towards the president and his party. In conclusion, this article proved that there is no difference between the choices of crisis responses mentioned in official pages posts of both parties and their political trend as each defended the position of the party and attacked the other party as one of its opponents.