Finding the Tipping Point: When Heterogeneous Evaluations in Social Media Converge and Influence Organizational Legitimacy

Can citizens impact the broader discourse about an organization and its legitimacy? While social media have empowered to publicly question firms through large volumes of online evaluations, high heterogeneity their evaluations dilutes impact. Our empirical study applying a threshold vector autoregressive model (TVAR) analysis 2.5 million tweets 1,786 news articles tests condition by which converges influences discourse. Although do not initially influence legitimacy, they become influential after reaching tipping point refracted attention, is created volume convergence individual around few aggregative frames. Thus, storms may when this reaches point, rather than merely massive participation citizens.