Examining the role of CEO's authentic communication on corporate reputation: Analysis of public opinions regarding Zoom's layoff announcement on social media

Negative organizational events, such as mass layoffs, often trigger intense backlash on social media, thus posing a reputational threat. The viral nature of social media can amplify the concerns associated with a negative organizational event, making it highly visible and attractive to various stakeholders. It is thus imperative for organizations to understand the driving factors behind the negative reactions for effective crisis management. Using Zoom's 2023 layoff as the context of a para-crisis, this study examined publics’ responses on social media toward the CEO's authentic communication of the layoff announcement. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) Topic modeling and VADER sentiment analysis were utilized to analyze 7,611 social media posts. Findings demonstrated that publics responded positively on social media toward the authentic attributes reflected from the CEO's communication. The positive sentiment toward the CEO seemed to have transferred to Zoom's reputation. Practical implications suggest public relations practitioners should involve executives in crisis communication to proactively attenuate reputational damages and analyze online public opinion to obtain a realistic assessment of the reputational threat and the effectiveness of crisis communication.