An online firestorm is a rapid surge of negative word-of-mouth and public complaints directed at a person, company, brand, politician, or institution through social media platforms. Firestorms typically develop within hours and fade within a day, and have played out primarily on fast-turnover platforms including Twitter (now X), Facebook, and Weibo. Mainstream press coverage amplifies firestorms with traditional reporting driving further online activity. They can damage reputations, prompt customer or audience defections, and have contributed to the resignation of public figures.
The term was introduced in 2014 in marketing communications literature by Pfeffer, Zorbach, and Carley, an interdisciplinary team spanning computer science and marketing. Firestorms occur in commercial brand communities, where they target businesses, and in social and political settings, where they target public figures, institutions, policies, or perceived violations of social norms.
As a form of mass verbal venting, online firestorms consist of aggressive comments directed at a shared target that escalate as other users add similar comments. In the marketing literature, the individual posts can also be referred to as negative electronic word of mouth (eWOM). Firestorms are related to other forms of aggressive online commenting such as flaming, cyberbullying, and hostility in online discussion forums. The term is also used in mainstream press to describe viral social media controversies.
Consequences for the targets of online firestorms include damage to reputation, loss of customer goodwill, customer defection, and in some cases measurable drops in sales and share price. Evidence on financial impact is mixed, with firms that hold strong prior reputations often recovering quickly. Online firestorms have also contributed to the resignation of public figures, including Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg and Christian Wulff in Germany in 2011.
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