“Did You See What Happened?” How Scandals are Shared via Social Media

Abstract

Social media has brought complexity and unpredictability to scandal situations, making it complex for brands to protect their reputations. In a scandal, the involvement of influential social media users in information dissemination often amplifies the attack on an organisation. This research sheds light on the role of influential users in the spread of scandals via social media. This study analyses multiple cases of for-profit and not-for-profit organisations impacted by value-based vs. performance-based scandals. We collected data from the discussions on Twitter to analyse fourteen scandals. Across all cases, 455 influential users’ tweets were analysed. The findings suggest that while in a performance-based scandal, the role of news outlets in the spread of information is significant, in a value-based scandal, individual influential users have more influence. The research introduces three main categories for influential users’ engagement approach; attacking, defending, and neutral, arguing that influential users’ engagement approaches towards a scandal, represented in the valence of their tweets, influence online users’ participation in online scandal discussion. The research finds that influential users are more likely to tweet about a value-based scandal and these tweets subsequently often receive more retweets compared to tweets on performance-based scandals. In addition, for-profit (vs not-for-profit) organisations typically do not have influential users' advocacy in the time of scandals.