Seventh International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

The legitimacy of information is often being questioned in the face of popularism during a situational crisis on Twitter. It reduces the vision with which the brand’s voice was created as Twitteratis can become opinionated in the face of disinformation. The organisational leaders often land up in a challenging position during the Twitter disinformation outrage. This paper reviews the challenges faced by the organisational leaders during a situational Twitter crisis to maintain their brand reputation. The purpose is to explore whether the brand voice of the organization is surpassed by the leadership voices during the crisis. This research is exploratory and based on inductive reasoning with the application of qualitative data analysis. The inferences were drawn after examining two Twitter crises that occurred in the airline industry due to onboard racism incidents. In the conclusions, the reasons for brand voices to give place to leadership voices or even allow silence during situational Twitter crises are summarized. This empirical research has expository implications for leaders and communication professionals. This research anticipates motivating others to continue researching the dependence and vulnerability of brand voice in future. The analysis in the paper suggests a leader decide on a consistent brand voice while creating branding strategies after considering both unforeseen and potential situational crises. This paper also determines that during a crisis when the brand voice is not appropriate, then the leadership voice generally surpasses the brand voice and is often used during critical conditions.