Navigating the firestorm: a framework for managing corporate sociopolitical activism-driven social media crises with linguistic insights

Many brands are increasingly navigating corporate sociopolitical activism (CSA) – driven online firestorms. Recently, Bud Light’s relationship with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney sparked a firestorm, leading to the loss of its best-selling beer ranking in the United States. We situate the Bud Light case within the broader pattern of online firestorms by examining news and media coverage and user-generated content (UGC) during this timeframe and introduce a new linguistic measure, operationalized in Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC-22), to monitor self-congruity in UGC. Using these findings, we develop a managerial decision framework to support crisis communication during a social media firestorm.