Earlier this week, theme park Sea World announced that it planned to put an end to its controversial orca displays in San Diego. The attraction’s reputation has been stuck in a downward spiral for years following the release of the incredibly damaging documentary “Blackfish” in 2013, seeing its profits and attendance rates plummet.

“Sea World” was a worldwide trending topic on Twitter this Tuesday morning as a result of the company’s latest attempt to salvage its poor image. But how did users react, and will it be enough to save the company’s reputation? We used the Visibrain Twitter monitoring platform to try to find out.

The announcement that Sea World’s orca shows were coming to an end broke on Twitter on the evening of November 9th. We can see from the screenshot of the Visibrain platform below that there were 132,312 tweets from 81,745 users between November 9th and November 11th. Tweet volumes spiked from 5 pm, as large numbers of high-audience media accounts picked up the news, and it didn’t take long for the announcement to go global.

Mixed reactions on Twitter

So what did Twitter users think of the news? Unsurprisingly, the announcement got mixed reactions. Some users expressed joy at the changes:

Very excited for all the awesome changes happening @SeaWorld Still proud to be part of the company @BuschGardens I #standwithseaworld

— Riley Shepherd (@Rwshepherd13) November 9, 2015

#Orcas win! #SeaWorld #SanDiego to end all #KillerWhale shows by 2017! #Blackfish pic.twitter.com/4SXfdSEP9l

— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) November 9, 2015

However, many criticized the fact that only one venue was concerned by the change, and that in spite of putting an end to the shows, Sea World has no plan to release its captive whales into the wild:

Ending orca shows does not equal ending captivity. Don't be fooled by #SeaWorld smoke & mirrors #Blackfish

— Sandy McElhaney (@SandyMcElhaney) November 10, 2015

Don't believe the hype. Joel Manby's statements don't end #Blackfish captivity, shows or breeding @SeaWorld cc @TheOrcaProject @OrcaSOS

— Jeffrey Ventre (@jeffrey_ventre) November 9, 2015

If we take a closer look at the most-retweeted posts that mention the @SeaWorld Twitter handle, the idea of divided opinions really shines through. The top tweets go from the neutral (in the top two posts from the @nbcsandiego and @wsvn media accounts) to the highly critical (from @QuadSeaShepard) to the largely positive (from @tautoo).

Unfortunately for Sea World, once we start to dive a little deeper into the data, it quickly becomes apparent that these positive tweets were few and far between.

Shows of support drowned out by floods of criticism

Sea World’s image may be in serious trouble, but it still has its fans. The park’s defenders used the #StandWithSeaWorld hashtag to show their support. If we look at data for the first hour after news of the announcement broke on Twitter, we can see that #standwithseaworld appears in 8th position in the most frequently used hashtags.

However, by the time the first 24 hours were up, it had been largely drowned out by negative hashtags, sinking to 30th place with just 0.1% of overall tweets using it.

If we look at the top hashtags used over the following 24 hours, things don’t look good for Sea World. An impressive number of negative dedicated hashtags were used: #blackfish, #opseaworld and #emptythetanks are in the top four most commonly occurring:

Other negative hashtags such as #boycottseaworld, #captivitykills and #dontgotoseaworld also appear in the cloud.

Damage increased by influential critics

Sea World has been under heavy fire from the world’s top animal protection organizations for years, and this time was no exception: many of them used Twitter to comment on the announcement. Let’s use the example of #emptythetanks.

If we filter on the most influential users that tweeted the hashtag, we can see below that it was used by well-known charities and researchers such as PETA and Blue Planet Society:

By comparison, the users tweeting the #standwithseaworld supportive hashtag had relatively low audiences, rarely over 2,000 followers each.

Even the small show of support we can observe from the #standwithseaworld hashtag may not be completely genuine: the highest-audience user tweeting the hashtag was @jilleeeebean, who’s bio is very clearly anti-Sea World.

To gain more context around how the #standwithseaworld hashtag was truly being used, we can filter on the most common expressions figuring in tweets containing the hashtag. We can see that in spite of there being positive expressions such as “amazing plan” and “awesome changes”, weak signals of negativity are visible. If we look closely at the word cloud, we can spot expressions such as “desperate PR move” and “liars”.

This confirms that the #standwithseaworld hashtag was also being used by the park’s critics, and that it had even less support than originally expected.

BlackFish: an irreversible blow to Sea World’s reputation

Sea World’s announcement that orca shows were coming an end may have been a positive step for the company, but Twitter’s reaction shows that its past scandals are far from forgotten.

As well as #BlackFish being one of the top hashtags used in tweets about the annoucement, the @blackfishmovie Twitter handle was one of the most-mentioned accounts.

The top Youtube links used in tweets about the announcement also confirm that Blackfish is still on people’s minds: three videos containing excerpts from the documentary and video updates about Tilikum (the killer whale whose backstory is told in Blackfish) figure in the top ten most-retweeted links.

There were also over 600 tweets mentioning One Direction star Harry Styles, who earlier this year urged fans to boycott the theme parks at one of his concerts, thus starting the #dontgotoseaworld hashtag. The singer joined other celebrities such as comedian Ricky Gervais and Jackass star Steve-O in pressuring the company into changing its policies.

Sea World’s current plight is a textbook example of the long-term damage a crisis can do: however clever the PR campaign, old scandals are never more than a Google search away and can be revived at the touch of a button.

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In spite of Sea World’s good intentions by announcing they would end orca shows, the public is understandably far from convinced.

It certainly wasn’t enough to stop the decline of the company’s reputation: it looks as though animal lovers and conservationists all over the world won’t be satisfied until they #emptythetanks for good.

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