Don't Downsize This! Social Reactions to Mass Dismissals on Twitter

Abstract

We study social reactions on Twitter to job destructions. We use information on large-scale restructuring events announced in the United Kingdom from 2013 to 2018. We match it with data on the number and sentiments of the tweets involving the company name posted around the time of the announcement. We show that job destruction announcements elicit numerous, strongly negative reactions, four times larger than the positive reactions to job creation announcements. We also show that these negative reactions are associated with significant losses in the market value of the downsizing firms, pointing to costs that add to standard dismissal costs.