Applying sentiment analytics to examine social media crises: a case study of United Airline's crisis in 2017

Purpose In recent years, social media crises occurred more and more often, which negatively affect the reputations of individuals, businesses and communities. During each crisis, numerous users either participated in online discussion or widely spread crisis-related information to their friends and followers on social media. By applying sentiment analysis to study a social media crisis of airline carriers, the purpose of this research is to help companies take measure against social media crises. Design/methodology/approach This study used sentiment analytics to examine a social media crisis related to airline carriers. The arousal, valence, negative, positive and eight emotional sentiments were applied to analyze social media data collected from Twitter. Findings This research study found that social media sentiment analysis is useful to monitor public reaction after a social media crisis arises. The sentiment results are able to reflect the development of social media crises quite well. Proper and timely response strategies to a crisis can mitigate the crisis through effective communication with the customers and the public. Originality/value This study used the Affective Norms of English Words (ANEW) dictionary to classify the words in social media data and assigned the words with two elements to measure the emotions: valence and arousal. The intensity of the sentiment determines the public reaction to a social media crisis. An opinion-oriented information system is proposed as a solution for resolving a social media crisis in the paper.