Case study: the anatomy of a blog storm

It used to be that companies could count on a "bad news day" a few times a year. Ah, the good old days. Today, activists, critics and watchdogs are using the latest social media tools to mobilise public opinion rapidly and keep the unsavoury discussion topic in the public eye for weeks.

On a number of occasions over the last year Matthew and I have seen up-close the 'long tail' social media effect of a PR scandal that's been taken up by social media-savvy activists. It's what is now commonly referred to as a "blog storm", but don't let the name fool you. These agenda setters are also using YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and the message boards on niche, influential sites to mould public opinion. Of equal importance is the symbiotic relationship that exists between bloggers, the "new trade press" of on-demand niche news outlets and the major media. Information flows up and down through these conduits at a rapid pace. And, because information is published on a generalist blog or in a new trade press blog that provides mainstream media with a hook (or crutch) on which to cite the information. The impact is disturbing for any company that still thinks it can control its reputation online -  only because it's such an effective way to stifle a company's position and keep bad news in the public discourse for a longer period.

The best way to illustrate this is through a little case study we've prepared. What you are about to see is a blog storm around a real, global consumer service brand. We've removed all names and all identifying characteristics but the way the crisis played out is real.

A few months ago Company X signed a partnership with Company Y. Company Y has a poor social and environmental track record that activist critics have attacked for years. Now that Company X is doing business with Company Y, Company X becomes the focus of attacks on its commitment to the environment and its customers.

The day Company X signs the deal and issues a release, the activists start howling. This is Stage 1 (as indicated in the chart at left; please click to enlarge). The outcry gets picked up by the trade press (the MSM misses the story entirely at this stage) and activist bloggers dedicated to the cause. Once the bloggers begin to dig their teeth into the news, more bloggers are alerted to the story and it passes from niche, specialist blogs to more generalist blogs. There are no checks or balances on the information the bloggers are disseminating and Company X has no social media response to answer the critics.

Stage 2 begins with mainstream media stepping into the debate. Tipped off to the controversy from the brewing, but still relatively small furore in the blogosphere, a well-read newspaper publishes a lengthy analysis of the deal and resulting debate online. With MSM now on the story, the blog chatter more than doubles (as illustrated in the second major spike in blog chatter) as new bloggers become aware of the story. For more than a week, bloggers continue to grumble about the deal. Because mainstream media has taken up the story, there is now a new air of authority behind the bloggers' criticism. Company X still has no prepared response for the brewing controversy.

As the grumbling in the blogosphere grows, more MSM journalists pick up the story. The is Stage 3. They may have missed stages one and two, but the mainstream press have a built-in, hard news lead practically pre-written for Stage 3. "Company X's controversial deal with Company Y has triggered a swell of debate online..."

The bloggers-feeding-MSM-feeding-bloggers cycle often repeats itself, and it does here too (illustrated in Stages 4 and 5). Each new wave of coverage generates more attention in the blogosphere. And each swell of blogger reaction attracts yet more attention from the mainstream press. Each subsequent stage brings the story fresh legs, stretching it out over a period of several days, and often weeks. For Company X, for a period of five weeks -- from mid-February to mid-March -- the story rumbled on as public opposition to the deal grew.

Just when you think it can't get any worse for company X, the blog-fueled furore attracts the attention of a politician who vows to investigate the deal. Here, we have the sixth spike (Stage 6 on the chart above) in the news cycle as each of the bloggers and journalists who were following the story weighed in in unison creating the biggest clamour yet in the news cycle.

CONCLUSIONS

In the case of Company X, it was hit by 377 blog posts over a span of 35 days. The intensity of the blog posts (as depicted in the graph) occurred in six waves over a five-plus week period with the intensity -- as measured by volume of posts -- growing more than six-fold between Stage 1 and Stage 6. We break down the blog storm by numbers in the chart below.

The commotion begins to simmer down over time, but it's unlikely this story will ever truly go away. That's the incredibly resilient nature of blog storms. They are capable of building tremendous momentum for a story and resurrecting the debate long after the mainstream press have moved on to the next story. It's a bad-news phenomenon we call the half-life of social media - stories that impact a company's reputation may eventually run their course, but they never really die. In this index-able/searchable/Google-able news cycle we live in, a related development can reignite the controversy at any point.

Want to learn more about the anatomy of a social media communication crisis? We'll be presenting a session on the New Influencers at our Social Media Influence conference on 4 June at the Cavendish Centre in London.

If you want to know more about Custom Communication and the work we do with companies to help them with their social media strategy (yes, this involves crisis PR work), visit us here.

-- Bernhard

Comments

[Urs E. Gattiker]

This is a very interesting post. Reading your account of events what intrigued me was:

1) it all happens about in a months time or so - is faster worse or is it better to have more time?

2) would be curious to see what cultural setting this was I would guess North America or UK - would it be the same in Germany or France?

3) Can a community blog, such as described here http://commetrics.com/?p=10 for Dell or Southwest Airlines mitigate these effects somewhat?

Nice job really. Appreciate this.

[Remi]

This blog shows how blogs and the mainstream media feed off each other to create and the extend the life of a controversial issue. Thanks for the informations.