Racial Discrimination in Social Media Customer Service: Evidence from a Popular Microblogging Platform

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dc.contributor.authorGunarathne, Priyanga
dc.contributor.authorRui, Huaxia
dc.contributor.authorSeidmann, Abraham
dc.date.accessioned2019-01-03T00:53:19Z
dc.date.available2019-01-03T00:53:19Z
dc.date.issued2019-01-08
dc.description.abstractThe concept of racial inequality has existed from the early days of service provision, with evidence dating back to ancient civilizations. While the emergence of the Internet and social media has drastically transformed almost every aspect of everyday life, including the intrinsic values of social relationships, the impact of racial disparities on receiving services on online platforms is not so evident. Although many consumer brands provide customer service on social media today, little is known regarding the prevalence and magnitude of racial discrimination in the context of social media customer service. Thus, in this study, we examine the existence and the extent of racial discrimination against African-Americans in social media customer service. We analyzed all complaints to seven major U.S. airlines on Twitter for a period of nine months. Interestingly, our empirical analysis finds that African-American customers are less likely to receive brand responses to their complaints on social media. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to empirically analyze the racial discrimination phenomenon in the context of social media customer service.
dc.format.extent10 pages
dc.identifier.doi10.24251/HICSS.2019.815
dc.identifier.isbn978-0-9981331-2-6
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10125/60116
dc.language.isoeng
dc.relation.ispartofProceedings of the 52nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
dc.rightsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.subjectThe Impact of Digitization on Business Operations
dc.subjectOrganizational Systems and Technology
dc.subjectAfrican-American, customer service, deep learning, racial discrimination, social media, Twitter
dc.titleRacial Discrimination in Social Media Customer Service: Evidence from a Popular Microblogging Platform
dc.typeConference Paper
dc.type.dcmiText

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