Abstract:

Companies are now facing new challenges and more media crises, which affect their image and reputation and threaten their economic, social and cultural legacies. This article examines the response of an Egyptian telecommunications company to a social media crisis. The analysis is based on the study of a famous Mobile Service Provider in Egypt, Mobinil, which has undergone a media crisis on social media when its tweet published by the company’s CEO in June 2011 triggered a wave of frustration against his business because it has touched the morals and traditions, which are considered a taboo in Egypt. Netnography and Actor-Network theory (ANT) were used to analyze the data. The key question is "How can a tweet affect the e-Reputation of a company? And to what extent would the socio-cultural factors play a key role in social-media crisis management? Many academic and practical implications are presented in this article.