Introducing technological disruption: how breaking media attention on corporate events impacts online sentiment

One modern strategy to anticipate consumer reaction to new products and services involves looking towards social media sites to explore consumer opinions. A rich body of literature on social media marketing suggests that an effective way to leverage social media platforms is the empirical analysis of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), particularly through sentiment analysis (SA). We propose a novel method for innovators to leverage social media by exploring how breaking media attention on notable corporate events impacts the general public sentiment surrounding a pre-introduced, potentially disruptive innovation (PPDI). Twitter conversations surrounding Facebook’s pre-introduced payment system called Libra, a permissioned blockchain-based cryptocurrency, were analysed as a case study. The analysis suggests that breaking media attention leads to a significant change in sentiment polarity. An event with a preannouncement leads to an emotional momentum effect whereby sentiment polarity accumulates across an anticipation period. Implications for how managers may leverage these insights are discussed.

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This research was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (external link, opens in new window)  [RGPIN-2019-06150].