Blurred (Identity) Lines: A Content Analysis of the #deleteuber Crisis on Twitter

Abstract

Social media have established a growing prevalence and influence in social change, in political movements, and as vehicles for messages related to crisis. The movement #deleteuber demonstrated this growing trend. Using quantitative content analysis, 2,000 tweets posted on Twitter were analyzed in the 2 weeks following the incident to measure how media framing may impact organizational identity. Findings reveal that users on Twitter largely framed the crisis as political, opinionated, and episodic in nature. Additionally, users most commonly associated the crisis with the organization as a collective rather than with the CEO as an individual responsible for actions prompting the crisis, thus blurring the demarcation between personal and organizational identity in online spaces.