Tweeting under the influence

Image courtesy of The Associated Press

Imagine a single Tweet had the power to cancel a multi-million dollar primetime television show, resulting in a loss of hundreds of jobs, piss off a pharmaceutical company, and cause a loss of a projected $60 million dollars in ad revenue. Sounds crazy right? Well unfortunately, this really happened. This all stemmed from one single Tweet that comedian Roseanne Barr broadcasted, putting the television network, ABC, into a communication crisis overnight. While this almost seems like unsolvable disaster, ABC came out on top due to their strategic crisis mitigation efforts (we’ll go over these later) in which they literally received standing ovations.

So, what happened?

Roseanne Barr had a hit show in the United States in the 90’s titled ‘Roseanne’. The ABC network decided to revive this hit in 2018, bringing Roseanne back to a primetime television spot. After a two month record smashing debut, the show’s star Roseanne sent several racist Tweets comparing African Americans to apes. This put the media into an instant frenzy. Rosanne later blamed the sleeping pill, Ambien, for obscuring her judgement. You won’t get off that easy, Roseanne! Within hours, ABC viewers as well as celebrities (including those on the show) took to Twitter to voice their opinion condemning the actress and ABC for the views posted by Barr. ABC reacted by cancelling the show immediately, removing the hit TV series from immediate circulation.

Image from Twitter.com

2 reasons ABC set the bar on efficient crisis management

“Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show,” - ABC President Channing Dungey

1. ABC reacted fast...really fast. The racist Tweets went out in the middle of the night when most of the United States was asleep. Once ABC caught wind of what was happening, the President of ABC released a press release at 10:48 PST the same day announcing that the show had been cancelled. Reacting to a crisis quickly is key as stakeholders expect fast answers [1] and it allows the organization to crush speculations or rumors that may begin to circulate [2]. In this case, stopping rumors and controlling the conversation was key as many celebrities began posting their criticisms of the show’s star on social media. This very public discourse could have lead to frames being built by influencers which may have impacted the public on how they viewed ABC [3].
2. ABC took a strong stance on the issue. ABC immediately utilized a strong strategic stance of corrective action, in which the company vowed to make an immediate change [4]. The cancellation sent a sense of shock to the public in which they were not expecting. The organization prioritized its value of not condoning racist remarks over the massive loss of revenue, something that helped shape ABC of having strong character and values.

As communication professionals, we should aspire to react like ABC did in times of crisis. The organization was fast and made hard decisions quickly, which was received quite well by the public. Had the organization been slower and had a different outcome, ABC could have been in the doghouse with viewers boycotting the network for endorsing a celebrity with bad judgement and ignorant views.

PS: As an honorable mention, I have to say I also quite enjoy Sanofi’s (The maker of Ambien) reaction to the incident:

image from Twitter.com

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About the author:

Tyler Pilgrim is a Communication Science Research Master’s student at the University of Amsterdam. Tyler is originally from the United States (No, he didn’t vote for Trump), but has been on this side of the pond since 2015. You can find him on Twitter here: @the.

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[1] Coombs, W. T., & Holladay, J. S. (2012). The paracrisis: The challenges created by publicly managing crisis prevention. Public Relations Review,38(3), 408-415. doi:10.1016/j.pubrev.2012.04.004

[2] Alfonso, G., & Suzanne, S. (2008). Crisis Communications Management on the Web: How Internet-Based Technologies are Changing the Way Public Relations Professionals Handle Business Crises. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management,16(3), 143-153. doi:10.1111/j.1468-5973.2008.00543.x

[3] Van der Meer, T.G.L.A. (2016) Public Framebuilding: the role of source usage in times of crisis. Communication Research 2016

[4] Benoit, W. L. (1997). Image repair discourse and crisis communication. Public Relations Review,23(2), 177-186. doi:10.1016/s0363-8111(97)90023-0