Shitstorm

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Shitstorm [ ˈʃɪtstɔɹm ] (composed of English shit “ shit ” and storm “storm”) describes in German the avalanche-like appearance of negative criticism against a person or a company in the context of social networks , blogs or comment functions on websites up to and including defamatory criticism . The Duden defines a shit storm as “a storm of indignation in a communication medium on the Internet that is sometimes accompanied by insulting statements”, for which there is no direct equivalent in English. The newspaper The Guardian explains the term as "widespread and vociferous outrage overexpressed on the internet" (widespread and vociferous outrage on the Internet). There is insufficient evidence to support the common claim that the English counterpart is firestorm . The term Shitstorm primarily refers to "blog posts or comments, Twitter messages or Facebook messages".

In doing so, "in a short period of time, a subjectively large number of critical statements [...], at least some of which are detached from the original topic and instead [are] made in an aggressive, offensive, threatening or otherwise attacking manner" are directed against companies , Institutions, individuals or groups of people who are active in public, such as parties or associations. The term was in Germany for Anglizismus the year 2011, and in Switzerland for Word of the Year chosen 2012th The Duden took up the word in 2013.

Salzborn (2015, new edition 2017) developed a comprehensive definition in his doctoral thesis on the "Shitstorm phenomenon" that emphasizes the complexity of the outrage:

"Company shitstorms are complex, unpredictable processes with a clear time limit and ambivalent outcome. They arise as a result of a topic (topics) that is perceived as a grievance by a narrowable collective of interests of individual users or groups that, in conjunction with a triggering element, provokes reactions that direct against the company and are characterized by an above-average number of platform-specific posts. These are predominantly critical, partly detached from factual criticism and argumentation, posted, commented on and disseminated in a short time through the characteristic communication options of social media and can increase through reporting by third parties gain public awareness. "

Word history

In German (as of 2013), “Shitstorm” only means an internet phenomenon; in the English language it generally means an uncomfortable situation. According to the linguist Anatol Stefanowitsch , the word, for which there is no adequate translation in German, “fills a gap in German vocabulary that has opened up due to changes in the public discussion culture”. The German terms criticism or storm of indignation fall short in this context. The vulgar combination of shit and storm is "a deliberately crude expression that can be seen to have its origins in American slang". The clear loan word character of the word cushions this coarseness to such an extent that the word is also accepted in public usage. A comparable figurative expression from English is about Shit happens ("crap happens").

In English-language literature, the term first appeared in 1940 in Gordon Graham's "The One-Eyed Man Is King: A Story of Winning". Here the "shit storm" stood for a dangerous, uncontrollable situation. Another use can be found in Norman Mailer's novel The Naked and the Dead from 1948, which was set in World War II. There, “shit storm” stood for a dangerous combat situation; likewise in the war novel The Day the Century Ended by Francis Irby Gwaltney from 1955. The latter two novels deal with the reconquest of the Philippines by the US Army and draw from the own experience of the authors who had served there. One can see this as an indication that the word soldier slang was used by US soldiers in the 1940s. In the 1960s, the use of the word appeared increasingly without a military context. In Ken Kesey's novel One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest , the word generally denotes chaotic situations. The term has been used more widely in American English since the 1980s.

One of the first uses in the German press was possibly in 2006 a comment by John Irving , who critically commented in the debate about Günter Grass' membership of the Waffen-SS that “the nationalist babble in the German media could be described as' shit storm ' . "

The term was nominated as Anglicism of the year 2010 in Germany . In February 2012 he was named "Anglicism of the Year 2011" by a jury and in an audience vote. A lecture by blogger Sascha Lobo at the web 2.0 conference re: publica in April 2010 was believed to have shaped the increased use . Lobo says he first came across the term in 2009 in blog comments. He later regretted having helped shape Anglicism.

As of December 2010, the term was also used more frequently in established print media and generally referred to broader participation in the (partially) public discourse that takes place in Web 2.0 forums and that is irrelevant. "Shitstorm fills a lexical gap that media democracy, social media and Web 2.0 have created". In 2013, Lobo told the Schwäbische Zeitung : "Today every little expression of indignation is referred to as a shit storm ."

The Society for German Language voted Netzhetze to sixth place in the German Word of the Year 2012. The choice was justified as the “German equivalent of the intermedial shit storm that was heard and perpetrated a lot this year ” and the emphasis on its negative meaning through “partial reduplication ” and “ Cacophony ”. In November 2012, the Green politician Volker Beck coined the antonym Candystorm (derived from Candy , German: sweetness, bonbon ) in German-speaking countries to express recognition. Previously had this in the German network jargon already the terms Flauschstorm and Love Storm established. The non-fiction book So You've Been Publicly Shamed (2015) by British author Jon Ronson was published in German translation as In Shitgewittern , alluding to Ernst Jünger's book In Stahlgewittern .

When Chancellor Angela Merkel used the term in an English-language speech in 2018, English-speaking journalists expressed their amazement at what she saw as the obscene term.

Assessment and measurement

Shitstorms are now also the subject of scientific research. Salzborn (2015, new edition 2017) examined in his communication science doctoral thesis on the “phenomenon of shitstorm” the basic properties of the shitstorm and derived recommendations for action for crisis communication in companies. In a detailed definition, he referred to the complexity of a shitstorm, which goes far beyond the accumulation of critical comments, but is the sum of the properties and influences of the platforms, topics, actors and the reactions of those affected and the reporting on the storm (for definition see above). At the same time he emphasized the subjective component of the shit storm. So it can happen that the addressee does not perceive the criticism as a shit storm, but is ultimately "assigned" a shit storm by the reporting of third parties. Salzborn differentiates between real and constructed storms. At the same time, he clearly differentiates between hatspeech and shitstorms and defines three types of storm:

  1. The sudden storm (occurs surprisingly, hardly any possibilities of prevention, is over quickly)
  2. The smoldering outrage (outrage builds up in advance, possibilities for prevention, increased interest from the media and third parties)
  3. Social pillory (topics meet general social interest (climate change, animal welfare ...), great interest in the media, storms can drag on for a long time)

Shitstorms can be part of a crisis, but are not automatically to be equated with it. Accordingly, care must be taken to ensure that not "only" the storm is fought, but that the critical overall context is taken into account.

Pepper and a. (2013) explain various aspects of Shitstorms ("Online Firestorms" in English) with social and economic theories. The development and characteristics of a shit storm were categorized by Barbara Schwede and Daniel Graf in the context of the social media marketing conference 2012 on a scale from zero to six. A value of 0 means “no critical feedback” in social networks and media, the value 6 stands for “unbridled snowball effect with a whipped audience. Tone of voice mostly aggressive, insulting, threatening "in social networks and" hot topic in online media, intensive reporting in all media ".

The social media monitoring company Business Intelligence Group presented an analysis model in June 2012 to assess the severity of a shit storm . The model (called "Shitstorm Matrix") takes three factors into account:

  • the extent of the "acute phase" of a shit storm, measured by the number of posts in relation to the normal number of posts for the respective organization.
  • the persistence (durability) of the contributions, which depends on the platform on which they were published.
  • the "site relevance" (a key figure between 0 and 100, which is supposed to show the visibility and reach of the platforms on which the articles have appeared).

Björn Ivens , Nadine Kammerlander and Philipp Rauschnabel examined 30 shitstorms in a joint project between the University of Michigan , the University of Bamberg and WHU in 2016 and showed that this is a new form of brand crisis . Existing crisis communication models, such as the Situational Crisis Communication Theory , are , according to the results, only partially suitable for explaining shitstorms: a key difference between shitstorms and classic crises is that shitstorms can also arise through operational errors in the lowest management or outside the communication departments, while classic brand crises often arise mainly from mistakes in top management. In addition, the content of communication is often more subjective and emotional. However, the authors also show that there are certain " amplifiers " that increase the Shitstorm probability and intensity (e.g. wrong reactions). In addition, reaction strategies that are quite possible in classic crises (such as silence) turn out to be particularly unfavorable in shitstorms. A special Shitstorm reaction strategy is “content bumping”, in which companies try to push the Shitstorm to a lower rank in the search engine with a lot of new content of their own. In addition to transparent communication, the authors suggest cross-functional social media management , social media guidelines and continuous social media monitoring as prevention strategies .

Facebook has abolished some control options that until then could have helped to moderate the course of the discussion. This includes B. the abolition of the function for administrators to hide a comment without deleting it. The change in the EdgeRank algorithm is also seen as a favorable factor for shitstorms, as it means that critical comments are more often displayed in the news ticker.

Examples

The shitstorm is a phenomenon that has appeared frequently in the recent past. The companies and individuals affected saw their reputation or image damaged in some cases .

  • The environmental organization Greenpeace reported at the beginning of 2010 that the palm oil production for Nestlé's KitKat product would destroy orangutan habitats and endanger the population of these monkeys. Greenpeace launched a social media campaign against Nestlé and KitKat and produced a chilling video. The fact that this campaign turned into a shit storm was due, among other things, to Nestlé itself. By switching off fansites and enforcing a ban on the video, the so-called Streisand effect set in . The video was uploaded several times; the campaign gained public attention.
  • In autumn 2010, Deutsche Bahn wanted to offer the so-called “boss ticket” via its Facebook fan site. The participants were able to buy a ticket for € 25 that could travel all over Germany. However, the platform was used by most of the people to vent their anger at Deutsche Bahn. The waiver of all communication or mediation with the network community turned the criticism into a shit storm and gave Deutsche Bahn a public relations debacle.
  • The detergent brand Pril experienced an online PR debacle in spring 2011. The parent company Henkel had called on the online community to send in creative design suggestions that could be evaluated by the network community and that should adorn the Pril bottle in the future. After a short time, absurd suggestions were almost exclusively in the first place. After cleaning up the list of results, which Henkel explained with an alleged manipulation of the vote, the former design frontrunners were at the bottom. Bloggers were angry; The image of Henkel was damaged.
  • A shitstorm can also hit individuals, like 13-year-old Rebecca Black . The American's parents had a music video produced for several thousand US dollars in 2011 and posted it on YouTube . The video for Song Friday was clicked 44 million times within a relatively short period of time and mostly received negative or insulting comments. Despite the bad reviews, this public perception brought the student a new record deal; it was able to use the popularity-building criticism of the network community.
  • On October 17, 2012, RTL broadcast the program Christopher Posch - I fight for your rights at prime time at 8:15 p.m. , in which a legal dispute between pop singer Michael Wendler and Sylvia and Nadine Simbeck was discussed. During the broadcast, the Facebook page “100,000 people who think Michael Wendler shit” was launched. At the height of the Shitstorm directed against Michael Wendler, the site gained 300 fans per minute. Two days after the program was broadcast, the site already had over 230,000 fans. This shitstorm is considered to be one of the fastest in German Facebook history and was picked up by numerous media outlets that dealt particularly critically with Wendler's attitude.
  • Since 2010, Volkswagen has been sending more warnings to dealers who, in the Group's opinion, have committed brand protection violations. On October 10, 2012, a warning was sent to the privately operated internet platform doppel-wobber.de for the first time . The protests about this culminated on October 23, 2012 with a shit storm on the Volkswagen Germany Facebook page. As with the first two major warning waves before, Volkswagen has so far not published a statement. On December 18, 2013, Der Spiegel took up the unsolved problem of Volkswagen customers and fans and published a background report.

See also

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: Shitstorm  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Shitstorm, der , duden.de, accessed on April 2, 2013.
  2. ↑ Shitstorm arrives in German dictionary . July 4, 2013, accessed January 22, 2018.
  3. ↑ a b c d Susanne Flach: Candidate II: Shitstorm . ( Memento from June 2, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) In: * / ˈdɪːkæf / - coffee & linguistics . January 17, 2011, accessed January 16, 2012.
  4. ^ Sascha Lobo : How to survive a shit storm . Lecture at the re: publica 2010.
  5. ↑ a b Anatol Stefanowitsch: And the winner is: Shitstorm! In: Sprachlog. February 13, 2012, accessed February 13, 2012.
  6. ↑ Shitstorm is the word of the year 2012 . In: DRS 3 . January 22, 2012, accessed December 6, 2012.
  7. ↑ Leonie Feuerbach: #HATE. Frankfurter Allgemeine Magazin, September 2019, pp. 56–57 (Interview with Jürgen Pfeffer , Professor for Computational Social Science and Big Data at the University of Politics at the Technical University of Munich).
  8. ^ Salzborn: Shitstorm phenomenon. Tectum Verlag, 2017, accessed on April 17, 2020 .
  9. ↑ "No suitable translation" - "Shitstorm" is Anglicism of the year. In: Handelsblatt.de , February 13, 2012.
  10. ↑ Shitstorm over the German language. In: Abendblatt.de , February 14, 2012.
  11. ↑ Anatol Stefanowitsch : And the winner is: Shitstorm! In: SciLogs.de , February 13, 2012, accessed on May 3, 2013.
  12. ↑ John Irving: "Grass Remains a Hero to Me". In: Frankfurter Rundschau. August 18, 2006; quoted from: Today in the feature pages. "The calf skin of an SS uniform" . In: Spiegel Online . August 18, 2006, accessed on January 16, 2012. Susanne Flach described this article as one of the earliest documents in German: Candidate II: Shitstorm . ( Memento from June 2, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) In: * / ˈdɪːkæf / - coffee & linguistics . January 17, 2011, accessed January 16, 2012.
  13. ↑ DER SPIEGEL: Sascha Lobo on the origin of the term Shitstorm - DER SPIEGEL - Netzwelt. Retrieved August 24, 2020 .
  14. ↑ Sascha Lobo: "Shitstorm" term is used too often . ( Memento from February 21, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) In: dpa via stern.de.
  15. ↑ Press release on Word of the Year 2012 ( memento of December 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) by the Society for German Language, accessed on December 18, 2012.
  16. ^ A b Green party leader #Candystorm for Claudia . In: sueddeutsche.de , November 12, 2012, accessed on February 14, 2013.
  17. ↑ a b Candystorm - Claudia Roth is happy about "Candystorm" . In: derwesten.de , November 12, 2012, accessed on February 14, 2013.
  18. ↑ Candystorm instead of Shitstorm on Twitter . In: Der Tagesspiegel . November 12, 2012, accessed February 14, 2013.
  19. ↑ The Anti-Shit . In: sueddeutsche.de , May 10, 2012, accessed on February 17, 2012.
  20. ↑ Netzgemeinde - Claudia Roth and the first Candystorm . In: Frankfurter Rundschau . November 13, 2012, accessed February 14, 2013.
  21. ↑ Matthias Heine: "Shitstorm": Americans and English are amazed at Merkel's obscenity . In: THE WORLD . December 6, 2018 ( welt.de [accessed August 24, 2020]).
  22. ^ Daniel Graf, Barbara Schwede: Weather report for social media. In: feinheit.ch , accessed on May 10, 2012 (PDF; 211 kB).
  23. ↑ Jörn Brien: Shitstorm scale: When does heavy seas prevail? . In: t3n.de , April 25, 2012, accessed on May 10, 2012.
  24. ↑ Andreas Köster: The phenomenon "Shitstorm" . ( Memento from June 17, 2012 on WebCite )
  25. ↑ Philip A. Rauschnabel, Nadine Kammerlander, Bjorn S. Ivens: Collaborative Fire Attacks in Social Media: Exploring the antecedents, Characteristics, and Consequences of a New Form of Brand Crises . In: Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice . tape 24 , no. 4 , October 1, 2016, ISSN  1069-6679 , p. 381-410 , doi : 10.1080 / 10696679.2016.1205452 .
  26. ↑ Philipp Rauschnabel: press release / press release (in German) Dearborn, Bamberg, Vallendar, autumn 2016 "Shitstorms": How they arise and how companies (should) react to them. Retrieved July 31, 2017 .
  27. ↑ Falk Hedemann: Vodafone, H&M, Galileo, McDonald's: Facebook and the digital mob. In: t3n.de. August 8, 2012, accessed August 9, 2012 .
  28. ↑ Anna-Lisa Menck, Stephan Frühwirt: From "Have a Break" to Break Down. In: smtu-berlin.de , accessed on March 27, 2017.
  29. ↑ The train is falling into the Facebook trap. Chefticket turns into a PR disaster after the strike. In: Meedia. October 26, 2010, accessed August 13, 2012 .
  30. ↑ Jörg Breithut: Pril competition ends in PR debacle. In: Spiegel Online. May 20, 2011, accessed August 13, 2012 .
  31. ^ Nils Dietrich: ridicule for teen song "Friday" . ( Memento from January 11, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) In: RP Online from March 28, 2011.
  32. ↑ Anti-Wendler site wins 300 fans per minute. 116,000 fans within 19 hours. In: SocialPunk.de. October 18, 2012, archived from the original on October 21, 2012 ; Retrieved October 20, 2012 .
  33. ↑ Michael Wendler announces on Facebook: “I will face the SHIT-STORM.” In: SocialPunk.de. October 19, 2012, archived from the original on October 21, 2012 ; Retrieved October 20, 2012 .
  34. ↑ Michael Wendler comments on the Shitstorm. In: Focus Online. October 19, 2012, accessed October 20, 2012 .
  35. ↑ Frank Patalong: Pop singer Wendler - Beautiful Shit. In: Spiegel Online . October 19, 2012, accessed October 20, 2012 .
  36. ↑ Kai Kolwitz: dispute over vintage cars: Volkswagen warned from spare parts. In: Spiegel Online. December 18, 2013, accessed December 18, 2013 .
  37. ↑ Volkswagen Germany Facebook page. Retrieved October 24, 2012 .
  38. ↑ Volkswagen against Doppelwopper. In: Doppel-wopper.de. October 15, 2012, accessed October 24, 2012 .
  39. ↑ Kle: Wake Up Volkswagen, Wake Up. October 24, 2012, accessed October 24, 2012 .
  40. ^ Jürgen Pander: Resistance against wave of warnings at VW: Fan riots in Wolfsburg. October 25, 2012. Retrieved October 25, 2012 .
  41. ↑ htz: Warnings: VW annoys car fans. October 26, 2012, accessed May 15, 2017 .
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