Judging the Wrongness of Firms in Social Media Firestorms: The Heuristic and Systematic Information Processing Perspective
Authors: Chan, Tommy K. H.; Lee, Zach W. Y.; Skoumpopoulou, Dimitra; Situmeang, Frederik
Journal: Journal of the Association for Information Systems (2024)
DOI: 10.17705/1jais.00837
<jats:p>Social media firestorms pose a significant challenge for firms in the digital age. Tackling firestorms is difficult because the judgments and responses from social media users are influenced by not only the nature of the transgressions but also by the reactions and opinions of other social media users. Drawing on the heuristic-systematic information processing model, we propose a research model to explain the effects of social impact (the heuristic mode) and argument quality and moral intensity (the systematic mode) on perceptions of firm wrongness (the judgment outcome) as well as the effects of perceptions of firm wrongness on vindictive complaining and patronage reduction. We adopted a mixed methods approach in our investigation, including a survey, an experiment, and a focus group study. Our findings show that the heuristic and systematic modes of information processing exert both direct and interaction effects on individuals’ judgment. Specifically, the heuristic mode of information processing dominates overall and also biases the systematic mode. Our study advances the literature by offering an alternative explanation for the emergence of social media firestorms and…