Title of Paper

Social media responses to service failure in the airline industry: Incorporating textual content with emojis

Author Bios (50 Words for each Author)

Yaqi Gong is a master’s student in the Department of Recreation, Park and Tourism Management at The Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests include social media analysis in the tourism context, destination resilience, and ethical issues behind technology-enhanced tourism.

Dr. Ashley Schroeder is an Assistant Professor in the School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management at the University of South Carolina. She is Research Lead of the Crisis Management Working Group in the SmartState Center for Economic Excellence in Tourism and Managing Director of the Tourism Crisis Management Initiative.

Dr. Pennington-Gray is an endowed professor and director of the Richardson Family SmartState Center for Excellence in Economic Development and Tourism in the College of Hospitality, Retail and Sport Management at the University of South Carolina. Her area of research is tourism crisis management and resilience.

Abstract (150 Words)

Social media plays an important role in information sharing during tourism crises and service failure incidents. Monitoring online public responses to service failure is crucial for service providers to develop service recovery strategies. This study examines public responses on Twitter during a multi-day service failure in the airline industry. Relevant tweets for 15 days (starting on the first day of the service failure) were retrieved to detect the temporal, topical, and sentiment characteristics of the online public response. Applying automated sentiment analysis and the human rater, this study also incorporated textual content with emojis to investigate the information and emotion dynamics of the online public response. Findings suggest that the public is eager to question the reasons behind service failure. Additionally, people tend to use emojis to express their negative sentiments and convey sarcastic criticism after a service failure in the airline industry. Academic contributions and managerial implications are discussed.

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Social media responses to service failure in the airline industry: Incorporating textual content with emojis

Social media plays an important role in information sharing during tourism crises and service failure incidents. Monitoring online public responses to service failure is crucial for service providers to develop service recovery strategies. This study examines public responses on Twitter during a multi-day service failure in the airline industry. Relevant tweets for 15 days (starting on the first day of the service failure) were retrieved to detect the temporal, topical, and sentiment characteristics of the online public response. Applying automated sentiment analysis and the human rater, this study also incorporated textual content with emojis to investigate the information and emotion dynamics of the online public response. Findings suggest that the public is eager to question the reasons behind service failure. Additionally, people tend to use emojis to express their negative sentiments and convey sarcastic criticism after a service failure in the airline industry. Academic contributions and managerial implications are discussed.