In Vietnam, social media has become an emerging and popular communication platform. Despite the powerful effect of social media in conditioning a crisis, and the trend to integrate social media into crisis management strategies in many countries, Vietnamese companies have often ignored or underutilized these channels. Therefore, this study seeks to fill the gap, to understand how Vietnamese companies perceive the importance and use of social media in crisis communication. The focus of this study is to compare the perceptions of Vietnamese and American public relations practitioners. As America has always been considered a role model and primary influencer for Vietnam’s public relations practice, this study compares the perception of social media in Vietnam to that in the U.S. This study aims to understand the underlying factors contributed to that perception and to evaluate the perceived importance of social media in Vietnam’s crisis communication.