The Volkswagen #DieselGate scandal rocked the world in September this year as one of the worst crises the automotive industry has ever seen. The event was massively covered by mainstream media and social media alike.

Visibrain’s very own Georgina Parsons was invited by Philippe Borremans, creator of the Wag the Dog PR podcast, to take part in a discussion around how the crisis unfurled, both on Twitter and across other channels.

The first part of the discussion is led by Juan-Carlos Molleda, Ph.D. – Professor and Chair, Department of Public Relations, College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida. He gives his expert opinion on how the crisis spread through the media on a global scale, and what it all means for Volkswagen and their customers.

The second part of the podcast concentrates on how the crisis unfurled on Twitter: dates of peaks in tweet volumes, the general sentiment coming from users tweeting about the scandal, the first appearance and spread of the #DieselGate hashtag, and more.

One of the key points covered in the discussion was how Volkswagen dealt with the crisis. The brand committed a critical faux pas by allowing the media to be the first to report about their wrongdoing, instead of holding their hands up to it beforehand. Also, Volkswagen took a very long time (by modern media standards) to respond to the crisis, giving negative sentiment and rumours time to develop, which made an already catastrophic situation even worse.

You can listen to the full podcast here:

All of our thanks to Philippe Borremans for having us on his show!

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