Analysis of the online furore faced by Virgin Atlantic over passenger racism allegations. More analysis on my post: http://renaissancechambara.jp/2016/03/20/vs250-inside-virgin-atlantics-online-racism-crisis/

1. VS-250 Virgin Atlantic racism
accusations – inside an online
crisis
Ged Carroll
renaissancechambara.jp

2. What happened?
On March 1, 2016 – a Chinese passenger was allegedly abused by a
western passenger ‘Nathan Smith’ sitting two rows behind. The comment
‘You fucking Chinese Pig. Get the fuck out of here.’ was aimed at the
passenger. Flight assistants apparently did nothing initially, and then
allegedly threatened to throw her off the plane when the passenger
defended herself.
The passenger posted her complaint on a Weixin (WeChat) travel group. It
then blew up across China social media and Chinese mainstream media
with 158 pieces of coverage appearing at the beginning of March. Overseas
Chinese were joined by members of forum on Baidu’s online community,
who jumped the firewall and engaged in a ‘sticker war’ from March 16
onwards hammering Virgin Atlantic’s customer services team on Facebook
and Twitter.

3. How did it break online?

4. Platform posts (March 16-18, 2016)
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900
Twitter
Facebook*
Blogs
Instagram*
Global media outlets
Number of posts
Number of posts
* Measure limited by
platform restrictions on data
pulls

5. How the story grew March 13-18, 2016
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
March 13, 2016 March 14, 2016 March 15, 2016 March 16, 2016 March 17, 2016 March 18, 2016
Platform posts / day
Twitter Blogs Global media coverage Facebook

6. How it broke on Facebook & Twitter
mentions / hour
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600
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March18,2016|00:00
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What becomes apparent was there was a concerted effort to ‘bomb’ Twitter with posts
presumably to trend. Both this and the jump later in the day on Facebook would strain a
large customer services function in terms of responding.
Facebook Twitter

7. More information
• Virgin Atlantic targeted after
racism accusations | Global
Times
• Richard Branson sends
apologetic tweet after woman
claims she was called a 'f******
Chinese pig' on Virgin flight by
fellow white passenger... but
cabin crew threatened to kick
HER off the plane | Mail Online
• Trail of conversations on Sina
Weibo - you need an account to
log-in and see the content
• Richard Branson apologises to
woman called ‘Chinese pig’ on
Virgin flight | Metro.co.uk
• Chinese woman claims flight
attendants ignored her after
man called her 'Chinese pig' |
asiaone – asiaone is a
Singaporean news aggregator
owned by SPH who own The
Straits Times
• Virgin Atlantic investigates
abuse case as story goes viral |
China Daily – London bureau
breaks the social media debacle

8. About me
Amazon author page: amzn.to/1SeO5Il
LinkedIn page: linkedin.com/in/gedcarroll
About: renaissancechambara.jp/about
Blog: renaissancechambara.jp
Email address found here: scr.im/renaissance
Twitter account: @r_c
Sina Weibo: renaissancechambara
WeChat

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