Purpose: Although the crisis is associated with natural crises and environmental hazards in the eyes of public opinion and most research in the field of crisis management, in this article we examine the non-biological approach to the crisis with an innovative perspective because in the current era, man-made crises have become an inevitable reality in societies, which are considered to disrupt the order and norms of society. In this article, by emphasizing three predictive, preventive and preparatory approaches, the driving factors of mainstream media's effective activism in managing social and political crises and the consequences of this type of activism in the management of said crises were identified.
Method: This article is exploratory in nature, qualitative in terms of measurement, and semi-structured interviews in terms of purpose and method. The population studied included media policymakers, professors in the field of crisis communication, experts in the field of crisis management, and politicians in the field of socio-political affairs, who were reached by snowball sampling, and theoretical saturation was achieved with 15 interviews. The data analysis method was content analysis, and from a total of 250 initial codes, 159 basic themes, 26 organizing themes, and finally 8 overarching themes were obtained.
Findings: Based on the findings, the function of the media in crisis management includes the function of supporting public opinion, the function of raising awareness, the function of demanding from responsible institutions, the function of informing, and the strategic function, which is defined by the role of the media in the three phases before, during, and after the crisis.
Results: The results of the research showed that the factors underlying effective media activism in the phase of predicting socio-political crises include infrastructure drivers, media functional capabilities, human resources drivers, professional standards drivers, and media social capital. The results of effective media activism in the phase of predicting crises were obtained in three areas: social consequences of effective media activism before the crisis, political consequences of effective media activism before the crisis, and consequences resulting from social responsibility. The factors underlying effective media activism in preventing socio-political crises were also concluded in two areas: drivers related to the public and drivers related to the government and crisis managers. The results of effective media activism in preventing socio-political crises were divided into macro and micro consequences. The factors underlying effective media activism in the crisis preparation phase were also defined, including process, content, and contextual drivers. Finally, the results of effective media activism in the crisis preparation phase were categorized into three areas: educational, psychological, and functional media outcomes.