Progress Tracking and Responding to Online Public Shaming Events on Twitter

Online public shaming events on Twitter often have devastating consequences for ordinary victims. Yet, little has been explored about such events from the perspective of these victims. The research gap is starker in comparison to the related domain of corporate crisis communication, which by virtue of a prolonged interest of both the academia and the industry spanning over decades has established theories and practices for managing a crisis event. This work attempts to bridge the gap by addressing two specific questions about managing an ongoing public shaming event. First, once an event has started, can the victim estimate the progress of the event? Second, how should a victim responds—whether by tendering an apology or posting a denial, based on the current progress to restrain the shamers efficiently? We try to address these by providing a way to measure and predict the progress of an ongoing shaming event with considerable accuracy and devising a response strategy depending on the present progress. The progress is measured from the event peak making it uniform for events of different lengths and intensities. The victim’s response can be one of denial or apology. Learning from past shaming events, we recommend the best response type depending on event progress. Moreover, the entire pipeline is language-agnostic benefiting even non-English tweet shamed victims.