The dangers of social media. How cancel culture and shitstorms can affect companies and how to recover from it

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2020 in the subject Communications - Public Relations, Advertising, Marketing, Social Media, grade: 1,1, Westfälische Hochschule Gelsenkirchen, Bocholt, Recklinghausen, language: English, abstract: The following Bachelor thesis is meant to analyze if and how cancel culture and shitstorms online, especially on social media, can affect companies and how affected companies can recover from the outcomes.
For avid social media users online shitstorms, especially on the platform Twitter, can frequently be witnessed. It was therefore a very interesting topic to look further into, to be able to understand what can trigger a shitstorm and what the consequences for companies could look like.

This thesis is also supposed to answer if or how a company can recover from a shitstorm, if they were affected by one. Furthermore it is meant to show what effective measurements could look like and if shitstorms could even be prevented in the first place and if yes, how they could be prevented. To achieve that, the first step will be to take a closer look at what makes social media so important to businesses. For that, an insight on the most important social media apps and websites will be given. After that, the dangers of social media to companies will be analyzed. The thesis will then continue by showing what makes shitstorms and cancel culture dangerous to a company. To achieve that, possible triggers of a shitstorm will be analyzed, as well as what phases a shitstorm has and what possible outcomes could look like.

Furthermore, a closer look will be taken at how consumers react to shitstorms by analyzing the results of a self made survey. The survey was made to understand, if and how consumers let shitstorms influence their buying decisions and if they would stop buying a certain product or brand if they were involved in a shitstorm. Following that, three companies, Nestlé, Amazon and Nike, which have already been at the center of a shitstorm, will be analyzed as case studies. To analyze the companies, a closer look will be taken at the reasons for these shitstorms, how each company was affected in terms of image and revenue and how they handled the situation. Furthermore, it will be explained if shitstorms could be prevented in the first place and how to successfully manage and recover from a shitstorm when affected by one. For this, a best practice example will be given in chapter 6.