Public Opinion Towards Organisational Crisis: Insights from the Cognitive Appraisal Theory

Social media such as X is often used during crises as a platform to obtain information and share opinions. For organisations, public opinion serves as a source of information to understand public emotions. Therefore, this study used the context of crisis communication regarding organisational problems, and sentiment analysis to categorise tweets and understand the tones of public sentiment. It also aimed to test public reactions in the form of tweets related to an internal case faced by Whitelab, a cosmetics, beauty and personal care company. To achieve these objectives, a sentiment analysis was conducted. The data were obtained from X between 7 and 10 November 2022, using certain hashtags. The results showed that out of 7,224 tweets, 4,992 had negative, 450 positive and 1,782 neutral tones. In this study, a chi-square test showed significant differences among the types of sentiment score. The tweets were dominated by negative emotions in assessing organisations experiencing what was a preventable crisis. The study’s findings suggest that organisations suffering internal crises and receiving negative public responses should respond quickly and consider public emotions when establishing a crisis response strategy. The answer should be aimed at transforming negative sentiment to positive sentiment and neutral sentiment into positive sentiment. As a result, it would increase support for the organisation while minimising the negative impact on its reputation.