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Lessons from the digital crises of 2021

As I do every year, I'm publishing my full study of the year's digital crises, their key lessons and the various awards. Here are the year's main findings.

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#SaccageParis

A national crisis on the scale of global crises. Nowadays, the volume of tweets is more related to crises between politicians and organisations (the city of Paris and its #SaccageParis or the Evian tweet controversy during Ramadan). With 2,301,990 tweets over the course of a year, #SaccageParis achieved the record for the largest national crisis ever recorded for an organisation.

As a reminder, I gave a full analysis of the propagation in this article.

Company values on the rise

Anti-science still present in values

Daddy was called to order for saying that sugar was a plant. Very quickly, many communities mobilised to point out that this was not the scientific reality.

Wokism, the big trend of 2021

Wokism accounts for no less than 15% of this year' s digital crises. Motivations include the desire to rewrite history (Snow White's kiss being considered rape) and cultural appropriation (a pair of Balenciaga trousers).

This value is, however, especially present for the accusations of wokism that certain organisations have suffered. Disney, for example, has been accused of censoring The Muppet Show on its Disney+ platform.

At the same time, McDonald's tried to install gender-neutral toilets in Brazil, to great acclaim. The city of Paris was not to be outdone with its "single-sex" bicycle workshops.

Finally, Le Robert has added the word "iel" to the dictionary.

These cases of digital crisis will continue to persist insofar as the fact that there is a crisis around an organisation is above all due to the fact that the players involved are in strong opposition. This means that the organisation is almost always a loser for one of the two communities.

Confirmation of Instagram and the rise of Tik Tok

17% of crises commented on Instagram and a start at 4% for Tik Tok

After a timid start, Instagram is really establishing itself as an important place for commenting on crises. In fact, 17% of crises are commented on there. Tik Tok is a relative newcomer to digital crises, with 5.7% of crises commented on.

However, like Instagram in its early days, the sectors affected are mass-market, mainly leisure and fashion.

New price crises

It's a real new trend, but there are a whole series of crises surrounding the issue of product prices.

Among the most visible polemics, we think of Apple's €25 wipe or Chanel's Advent calendar, which was considered far too expensive for what was on offer. While Chanel's argument was that it was more of a collector's item than a collection of products, Mc Donald's, which sells tap water (€0.003 a litre) for between €4.60 and €7 a litre, had little use for the argument, which it justified by pointing out that the water is 99.9% purified.

On a more technological note, console rental offers from Micromania and a price increase for Xbox Live Gold have also sparked waves of outrage over the price.

While the last one caused Microsoft to backtrack, at the time of writing Micromania has not. Is it a random economic situation or the more pronounced rise in criticism of corporate pricing? Next year will tell.