The national and the European economic crisis has plunged
Portugal in a difficult situation aggravated by consecutive down ratings
of the country’s economy and IMF’s demanding objectives, resulting in
more austerity measures, cost of living raise, salary cuts and a growing
unemployment rate. Such conditions put an extra pressure to the everyday
life that seems to have found in the digital world a platform for
active criticism, a quick and right to the point response often based on
what seems to be a patriotic sentiment against the intrusiveness of hard
economic measures. Powerless to fight back in equal terms, consumercitizens
are empowered by easy access technology and appear to be
eager to express their discontent in the digital world.
This paper will focus on three Portuguese organizations: President Cavaco
Silva, after a comment on how his pension was hardly enough to
pay his costs; FNAC, after airing an exchange books campaign that appealed
to the abandon of allegedly boring Portuguese classic authors for
more updated international literature; Pingo Doce, the main retail corporation
in Portugal, after the announcement of the transfer abroad of
the majority of its capital. We will analyse each case from the starting
point that motivated reactions, the speed and type of reactions it caused
and how organizations reacted to them. The choice of these cases
intends to understand if there is a common trait in different profile institutions
behaviour and to observe how are organizations dealing with
unwanted, unforeseen and extremely exposed critic reactions to their
communication in the digital platforms, namely in social media
