#KateGate: How the passionate energy of publics’ social media posts affected the royal communications crisis

Abstract

This paper analyzes how passionate publics creatively reshaped the crisis narrative during the British Royal Family’s 2024 #KateGate controversy. When the Royal Communications team released vague and inconsistent messages about Princess Kate’s absence from public life, a narrative void emerged—one rapidly filled by publics operating across social media platforms. Drawing from a decade of immersive netnographic research on royal fandom and influencer networks, this study reveals how publics responded with a surge of humor, visual creativity, digital remixing, and alternative storytelling. Rather than casting publics as passive consumers of PR, this paper positions them as participatory cultural actors who interpret, contest, and even co-author institutional messages. Passion, in this context, is not just an emotion but a structuring force which organizes attention, drives critique, and sustains the viral circulation of memes, remixes, and reframed messages. By tracing how collective intelligence materializes through digital play and satire, the study contributes to crisis communication theory by advancing a cultural model of PR engagement. It urges PR professionals to look beyond sentiment analysis and consider how passionate publics detect inconsistencies, challenge legitimacy, and propose alternative narratives. Publics are not a problem to be managed but are potential collaborators and opponents in PR professionals’ active shaping of meaning.