Introduction
On April 9, 2017, Dr David Dao, a Vietnamese physician, was forcefully removed from a United Airlines flight at the Chicago International Airport. The incident was captured on video by one of the passengers on the flight and, within days, went viral on social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter. The event sparked a massive public backlash, and the forceful removal, which had injured the Doctor, resulted in calls for a boycott. In the aftermath of the incident, the carrier saw its stock prices drop significantly and was involved in numerous legal battles and settlements, resulting in losses of millions of dollars.
This study will explore the incidence in greater detail and uncover its impacts on United Airlines. The paper will rely on qualitative data analysis, including interviews with five participants and thematic analysis, to uncover hidden patterns. The research question for the paper is: To what extent did United Airlines use digital media tools to manage and mitigate the Dr. David Dao incident, and how did the interventions influence the Airline’s operational dynamics?
Objectives of the Study
This research seeks to understand the digital media platforms used by United Airlines. In particular, the research will investigate how the organization can handle crises, using Dr. Dao’s forcible removal from the Airplane as a case study. The study will examine how the Airline redesigned its key operations in response to new media in the aftermath of the case, leveraging interviews. The interview questions for the participants will seek to understand how United Airlines performs marketing, advertises its innovations and branding, and engages in community building through digital media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, its website, and online articles.
The Chosen Organization and Rationale
The chosen organization for understanding the impact of digital media on organizations will be United Airlines, one of the largest airlines in the United States. This organization has been in operation for many years, and the majority of Americans have had an opportunity to interact with the Airline. The Airlines were chosen because they actively communicate with their clients through digital platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and the organizational website, among others.
The organization also has a worldwide reach through Star Alliance, one of the largest global airline alliances. United Airlines has, over the years, become a major dominant force in air travel (Wang, 2023). The company has an extensive fleet, including narrow- and wide-body planes, serving both domestic and global routes. The dominance of the Airline is portrayed through its hubs at many airports, including Chicago O’Hare, Denver, San Francisco International Airport, George Bush Intercontinental Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport, Los Angeles International Airport, and Washington Dulles International Airport. These hubs have made it easy for the company’s clients to access its services, thus driving profitability.
The airport has used a merger strategy, and in 2010, it merged with Continental Airlines to become the second-largest Airline in the world. The name United Airlines remained in this partnership agreement, indicating the company’s commitment to maintaining its brand. Although it is naturally a budget airline, United Airlines offers a variety of services to its clients, including economy, economy plus, business, and first-class cabins (Ng & Nagalingham, 2023). The Airline also tries to maintain its clients’ loyalty by offering incentives for frequent flyers, allowing passengers to earn and redeem points for consistent flights. The Airline has been leveraging digital marketing platforms to ensure clients are aware of its products and offers.
It is interesting to study United Airlines because it recently faced a significant setback in a tumultuous incident that revealed the challenges organizations face in the era of instant information dissemination through social media platforms. The focal point of this crisis was the behavior of the Airline’s employees: overbooking flights in the expectation that some passengers would not show up, then calling for volunteers to take the next flight when problems arose. The Airline found itself in deep trouble after being caught forcibly removing passengers from airplanes. This incident was recorded on a smartphone and distributed through various social media platforms (Varma, 2021). The incident had a global impact and catalyzed discussions on passenger rights, corporate accountability, and best practices in crisis management in the digital era.
This case study is an intriguing one for understanding the impacts of new media on an organization’s innovation, branding, and strategy. The organization has been selected for further analysis for its unusual and revelatory nature, particularly in how it handled the 2017 incident involving David Dao. The manner in which Dr Dao was forcibly removed from the plane defied expectations of customer rights and privileges and catalyzed the outrage on social media that followed the incident.
The issues made famous by the new press also exposed the problem of overbooking and involuntary bumping in airlines, which was unusual and revelatory. This incident shed more light on how organizations had previously mishandled their clients and how these practices were no longer sustainable in the wake of the rise of digital media platforms (Varma, 2021). The incident also revealed how organizations could find themselves in trouble for not handling new media well, as United Airlines’ management initially seemed indifferent to the issue.
Despite the setback, it is clear that United Airlines has remained successful in the aftermath of the incident. The majority of the Airline’s customers remain loyal because of how it operates. The strategy of ensuring convenience and reasonable pricing has led clients to ignore Dr. David Dao’s incident. Additionally, the organization’s formal apologies have further reduced the impact of the incident. United Airlines remains committed to managing its digital media platforms effectively to ensure smooth operations and client satisfaction.
Theory
United Airlines leverages digital media for organizational operations, drawing on the stakeholder engagement framework. Stakeholder engagement refers to the two-way communication and collaboration between the organization and key stakeholders, including customers, investors, suppliers, governments, and the community. Good stakeholder engagement policies lead to reduced risks, greater trust in the organization, and more accurate decision-making (Kujala et al., 2022). The dynamics of this relationship become more crucial during crisis management, when there is a risk of bonds breaking, making effective communication essential.
United Airlines has a wide array of active stakeholders, including but not limited to employees, customers, government, and shareholders. The incident involving the removal of Dr Dao from the plane, amplified by digital media, brought these stakeholders to the forefront, making it necessary to formulate a strategic engagement plan. It has been established that during times of crisis, stakeholders generally make decisions based on the information available to them.
In this new era, the data can be disseminated using social media, websites, and other online forums. Therefore, the engagement strategies employed by United Airlines, particularly on digital platforms, have a considerable impact. The company used a dialogic communication style, emphasizing two-way communication with its various stakeholders (Hearit et al., 2021). The organization’s initial responses were not as effective as the company actively listened to the grievances, concerns, and feedback from its customers and other members of the public.
The concept of co-creation of value adds more context to how the Airline handled the incident. At its core, co-creation of value involves an organization engaging relevant stakeholders to find solutions to complex problems (Torfing et al., 2021). Thanks to the availability of social media platforms, United Airlines had a chance to engage with its various stakeholders through collaborative dialogues and online reviews to devise a win-win solution to its problems. This strategic approach would have led the company to demonstrate empathy, transparency, and a commitment to addressing its clients’ issues. This concept is interesting because it would fit Dr Dao’s case: had the attendants followed its principles, the crisis would have been avoided.
Methods
Data Collection
A qualitative research design was chosen to examine the extent to which United Airlines used digital media tools to manage and mitigate the impacts of Dr. Dao’s incident, and how these interventions influenced operational dynamics. This method relies on structured and unstructured interviews with participants and on focus groups to develop an interpretive, naturalistic solution to a specific research hypothesis (Johnson et al., 2020). Data were collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with five United Airlines customers who had the opportunity to follow the incident on various social media channels and observed the interventions the Airline took to mitigate the situation. The interview guide followed a framework from the literature to ensure comprehensive participation by the interviewees. Although the number of people interviewed was limited, it enabled the researchers to delve deeper into individual narratives, perceptions, psychological aspects, and choices after the incident.
Data Analysis
Following the steps outlined in previous literature, the thematic analysis will be used to identify patterns and themes from the semi-structured interview data. This method is suitable for analyzing qualitative data, as it allows researchers to gain more profound meaning than that found on the surface. It facilitates a deeper understanding of the data by following an iterative process that allows coding to identify themes, refine them, and ultimately interpret their meaning (Kiger & Varpio, 2020). The researchers familiarized themselves with the data, systematically generated the codes, collated the codes into potential themes, refined the themes, defined and named them, and finally wrote a report. This analysis enabled the researchers to examine how United Airlines handled the Dr. Dao crisis on its digital media platforms.
Results
Conducting a thematic analysis of the interview data revealed several relevant codes and latent themes, facilitating a nuanced understanding of the data. Overall, five latent themes of trust restoration, digital media impact on travel decisions, perception evolution, information source influence, and skepticism were observed. For each latent theme, two semantic themes were identified together with the coded data, as shown in Table 1.
Table 1: Thematic Analysis Results of the Interviews
Discussion
Trust Restoration
Thematic analysis of all respondents, apart from those who showed, indicates that the incident affected their trust in United Airlines. However, after the company apologized on social media and in the mainstream media, they regained their trust. Participant 1 was clear about this, stating that they appreciated the Airline’s transparency and its apology, but it took some time for them to regain their trust.
Participants 2, 3, and 4 argued that the incident shook their confidence in United Airlines, but seeing the organization publicly admit the failure helped. The fifth participant, however, was different, acknowledging that the incident prompted them to explore other airplane options. Despite the differences, thematic analysis reveals that the intervention efforts benefited the Airline.
Impacts of Digital Media on Travel Decisions
The transcripts and the thematic analysis of the data showed that digital media affects travel decisions involving United Airlines. Participant 1, in their late 30s and working in marketing, said that the digital press influenced their travel decisions, as they regularly checked the company’s tweets for travel updates. Participant 2 also confirmed following the Airline on Twitter and checking the Airline’s website for information.
Participant 3 admitted that they are active on Instagram and checked the organization’s updates on this social media site and on the website to see if there were any promotions or updates. Transcripts of the fourth participant’s responses reveal that the fifth participant claimed to follow United Airlines’ digital media for inspiration. The participants showed that many rely on digital media when making travel decisions.
Perception Evolution
Perception evolution refers to how people view an organization over a particular period. Thematic analysis reveals that Participant 1 had a positive perception of United Airlines, but this perception changed after the incident. Similarly, Participant 2, a 40-year-old working in finance, stated that they had been using the Airline for many years, but their perception of the organization changed after the incident.
Participant 3 noted that although the incident affected them, it did not alter their perception of the company or their travel decisions. Similarly, participant 4 admitted that the incident influenced how they viewed the company, but did not significantly impact their decision-making processes. The incident influenced Participant 5’s overall perception, and they admitted they considered changing the Airline. Based on this thematic analysis of the participants, it is clear that Dr David Dao’s incident had a substantial negative impact on customers’ perceptions of the organization.
Information Source Influence
All five participants interviewed stated that they relied on digital media platforms to gain information about United Airlines. The first participant noted that Twitter was the first place they got information about the incident and relied on Twitter alongside the organization’s website for updates. The second participant stated that they first saw the incident on the news and later followed it on social media platforms. They also followed the organization on Twitter and on its website.
Participant 3 heard about the incident from the news and social media buzz, admitting they rely on Instagram and the organization’s website for updates. Similarly, participant 4 knew about the incident from the news and online articles and agreed they follow the organization’s Twitter website. Participant 5 stated that they saw a video of the incident circulating on Twitter and followed the company on Instagram for updates. Comparing these sources for the information they provide shows that Twitter, Instagram, websites, and news are the primary sources.
Skepticism
Participant 1 states that Dr Dao’s incident made them skeptical of the Airline but did not affect their travel decisions, as other factors, such as price and convenience, also played a critical role. Participant 2 lost trust in the Airline because of the incident and has considered other options since then, although other factors also influenced their travel decisions. Participant 3 was skeptical of the company, but measures to restore trust improved their overall perceptions of it. For Participant 4, there was an initial dip in trust, but they still flew United Airlines, saying they were committed to preventing such actions in the future. Participant 5 became skeptical about the Airline after the incident and admitted that they considered other airlines.
Conclusion and Recommendations
United Airlines effectively used social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram, as well as its website, to mitigate the impact of Dr. David Dao’s incident and prevent a loss of its client base. An interview with five company clients and a thematic analysis show that, despite initial public backlash, continued efforts to mitigate challenges on digital platforms have yielded results. During the interviews, it was also discovered that other factors, such as convenience, smooth flights, prices, and high-quality attendance services, made it easy for clients to forget about the incident.
In the future, it is recommended that United Airlines stop overbooking flights to avoid problems like those in 2019. The Airline should also ensure its employees are well-trained to handle conflicts, such as the one they encountered with the Doctor. Analysis shows that the company actively communicates with potential clients through various digital channels, including Twitter, Instagram, and its official website. United Airlines should always be careful about emerging social media platforms like TikTok to enhance its reach. Skilled content creators and brand ambassadors must be employed to manage these digital platforms and maintain a positive brand image.
References
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