This study investigated the role of social media in crisis management and crisis communication in an age where late modern, crisis management approaches argue that crisis managers have to improve their ability to improvise. A qualitative case study of Scandinavian Airlines’ use of social media highlights (1) important tensions between the classical and new approaches for the understanding and practice of crisis management and crisis communication in that context; (2) the need for new metaphors for the understanding and practice of future crisis communication within social media; (3) the need to redefine the concepts strategy in digital crisis management and crisis communication. The study suggests that the digital age, crisis manager can, metaphorically speaking, be described as an improvising real-time director. Another concluding suggestion is that effective strategy in today’s digital crisis communication landscape is more about crafting strategy, than implementing strategy.