TY - JOUR
T1 - Finding the Tipping Point
T2 - When Heterogeneous Evaluations in Social Media Converge and Influence Organizational Legitimacy
AU - Illia, Laura
AU - Colleoni, Elanor
AU - Etter, Michael
AU - Meggiorin, Katia
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2022.
PY - 2023/1
Y1 - 2023/1
N2 - Can citizens impact the broader discourse about an organization and its legitimacy? While social media have empowered citizens to publicly question firms through large volumes of online evaluations, the high heterogeneity of their evaluations dilutes their impact. Our empirical study applying a threshold vector autoregressive model (TVAR) analysis of 2.5 million tweets and 1,786 news media articles tests the condition by which the heterogeneity of online evaluations converges and influences the broader media discourse. Although social media evaluations do not initially influence media legitimacy, they become influential after reaching a tipping point of refracted attention, which is created by high volume and convergence of individual evaluations around few aggregative frames. Thus, social media storms may influence the broader discourse about an organization when this discourse converges and reaches a tipping point, rather than merely through the massive participation of citizens.
AB - Can citizens impact the broader discourse about an organization and its legitimacy? While social media have empowered citizens to publicly question firms through large volumes of online evaluations, the high heterogeneity of their evaluations dilutes their impact. Our empirical study applying a threshold vector autoregressive model (TVAR) analysis of 2.5 million tweets and 1,786 news media articles tests the condition by which the heterogeneity of online evaluations converges and influences the broader media discourse. Although social media evaluations do not initially influence media legitimacy, they become influential after reaching a tipping point of refracted attention, which is created by high volume and convergence of individual evaluations around few aggregative frames. Thus, social media storms may influence the broader discourse about an organization when this discourse converges and reaches a tipping point, rather than merely through the massive participation of citizens.
KW - Twitter
KW - convergence
KW - heterogeneity
KW - news media
KW - organizational legitimacy
KW - social media
KW - tipping point
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85124596365&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85124596365&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/00076503211073516
DO - 10.1177/00076503211073516
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85124596365
SN - 0007-6503
VL - 62
SP - 117
EP - 150
JO - Business and Society
JF - Business and Society
IS - 1
ER -