From #InsideAmazon to #WeAreVolkswagen

Defending their employer on LinkedIn, attacking their organisation on Twitter, publishing videos in solidarity on YouTube: A ubiquitous social-mediated environment allows employees of crisis-stricken organisations to reach out to a mass audience potentially in the millions with only a few keystrokes. But is such employee social-mediated crisis communication (ESMCC) an opportunity or a threat to their organisations? By developing the perspective of the internal employees in contrast to external stakeholders such as consumers, the research investigates the specific conditions for ESMCC to be-come either threat or opportunity to assets such as organisational reputation. To generate knowledge in line with scholars’ calls for quantitative, “evidence-based” crisis communication, a sur-vey with experimental conditions was conducted among 594 participants constituting the publics of an organisation. The findings show that in comparison to consumers, employees attacking their or-ganisation cause disproportionally more damage to organisational assets such as reputation than those defending it. In the latter scenario, employees are not more influential than consumers. It would still be a premature conclusion that ESMCC is only a threat – to this end, the study provides implications for both scholars and practitioners alike that outline positive and negative aspects.