The Public Reactions to Elon Musk’s Controversial Tweets: A Computational Content Analysis

Theoretically grounded in the Social-Mediated Crisis Communication model (SMCC), the current study examined the public’s reactions to Elon Musk’s controversial tweets, focusing on his position as an organizational spokesman at Tesla and as a social media influencer (SMI) from a crisis communication perspective. This study examined the public’s reaction to Musk’s six most controversial tweets related to Tesla from 2019 to 2021 by analyzing user replies through computational analyses, including Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LWIC) and Leximancer. This study argues that Musk’s controversial tweets could cause paracrises; yet it also acknowledges the public's polarized expectations of an influential CEO. Findings show that a portion of the public expects Musk to behave like an ethical CEO, while others consider him an influencer and appreciate the provocative information he tweets. Thus, this study reveals how companies can use social media to improve their PR strategies and come up with an effective approach before a crisis happens.