The Paris Uber strikes: a French crisis that went international on Twitter

July 2 2015

By @G_Parsons33

Published in Crisis

Uber is having a tough time at the moment. The private transport service has a history of causing tensions with the taxi industry, but things escalated to a whole new level last week. In France, taxi drivers took to the streets in protest of Uber Pop, Uber’s cheapest service yet, calling for it to be banned. News of the violent demonstrations quickly went international and were trending several times last week on Twitter.

Using the Visibrain Twitter monitoring platform, we can find out how Twitter contributed to the news going viral, and how Uber responded to the brand crisis.

A brand crisis on an international scale

A negative buzz had already been brewing around Uber Pop in France days before the start of the Paris protests. It all started in Lyon, when @Thibaut_Octave tweeted about a friend who had been badly beaten by taxi drivers while trying to take an Uber Pop. By the following morning the news had gone viral, with @Thibaut_Octave’s tweet alone having been retweeted 1299 times. Thousands of other tweets from individuals expressing their support were also posted. On the graph below, we can see the brief spike in Twitter activity on June 23rd caused by these events.

The French Twitter stream prior to the Paris strikes

This particular incident wasn’t enough to turn the Uber Pop tensions into international news however.

On Thursday June 25th, Parisian taxi drivers organized a protest against Uber Pop, blocking off roads to Charles De Gaulle airport. The situation degenerated rapidly as the strike became more and more violent: cars were burned and turned over, and people trying to pass the barricades were threatened and even attacked.

Using the Visibrain platform’s Focus feature, we can zoom in on the Twitter stream of tweets in English to find out when, and how, news of the #ParisUberStrike went beyond France.

Tweets about the protest started to appear as early as 6 am, but if we look at the graph below, we can see that the number of tweets rose drastically from 10 am, as the first pictures of the increasing violence were released.

The Twitter stream as news of the violent protests spread

The first photo of demonstration violence to be tweeted in English was posted by @peterallenparis, a Parisian journalist.

The first photos of the violence of the Paris Uber strikes

Such violence and disruption was always going to attract international attention, but the story gained traction from a little unexpected celebrity help. The most retweeted post of the day appeared at 12.33 pm, when celebrity Courtney Love’s car was attacked by protesting taxi drivers as she tried to leave the airport.

This post was retweeted 909 times in just one hour, which could well have been aided by her mention of rap star @kanyewest, who with 13.1 million followers, gave added visibility to her tweet: just four minutes after her tweet, Kanye West fan account @KimYeWestDaily retweeted her.

A retweet thanks to the mention of Kanye West

News got out as she continued to live-tweet increasingly irate messages and photos from her car, and it didn’t take long for high-influence media accounts to start tweeting. If we sort tweets by date and time, we can see that the first original tweet from a media account was posted by @TFMRadioNews at 12.51 pm:

The first original tweet about the attack on Courtney Love

Barely an hour later, news of the violent protests had been tweeted by BBC World News, and by late afternoon, the story had been covered and tweeted by some of the world’s most influential media accounts.

Below, we can see a list of the tweets which gained the most impressions over the course of the day, tweeting about both Courtney Love’s experience and the violence of the protests in general.

The highest impression tweets from influencial media accounts

An excessive persecution that rallied fans

So how did fans react to the persecution of Uber Pop?

The protests of taxi drivers trying to defend their livelihoods could have turned people against Uber Pop, but it seems that things went too far for Twitter users to have any sympathy.

We can use the Visibrain feature to analyze the semantic content of English tweets about Uber Pop. If we focus on top expressions used in tweets containing the #ParisUberStrike hashtag, a lot of negative terms show up in the word cloud below, such as “unprofessional behavior” and “dangerous psychopaths”. There are even several uses of “jesuisuber”, a variation of the expression used to support the victims of Charlie Hebdo this year, showing that the excessive actions of taxi drivers had turned the public against their cause. The general tone is that of shock at the violence of the protests.

Negative expressions used in tweets in English

The most retweeted links are photos exposing the violence of the protests. The most popular is the photo tweeted by Courtney Love of her car while it was being attacked.

The most retweeted links in Paris Uber strike tweets

If we turn our attention to top expressions used in tweets in French about Uber Pop, the results are just as clear. There are many negative expressions that stand out, such as “violence” and “I’m scared” but in general French tweets adopt a far more mocking tone. The top three French tweets are all dry, tongue-in-cheek comments about the actions of the taxi drivers. The most popular tweet, by @JezequelB, was retweeted 4,794 times and said :

“I’ve just been beaten up by a gang of postmen who caught me sending an email at work. This country is going to the dogs. #UberPop”

Whether they were shocked or simply exasperated, one thing is for certain, most tweeters were on Uber’s side. In total, taking both English and French tweets into account, the #jesuisuber hashtag was used 3,677 times.

Uber tweets to reassure customers

Whatever the reason for them may be, violent protests around your brand is an image crisis that has to be dealt with. Uber adopted a very cautious approach to dealing with this particular crisis on Twitter. Surprisingly, the English Uber account, @Uber, did not tweet about the Paris strikes at all.

The French Twitter account @UberFR did communicate about the crisis, but in a very limited way. The brand chose not to comment over the actions of the taxi drivers during the protest, which was a good choice. On the day of the strike, a tweet was posted offering to answer questions via the Uber France customer service email address.

Instead of getting involved in the already venomous discussion on Twitter about the violent protests, Uber France concentrated on keeping customers informed by clarifying their legal situation, in an attempt to reassure them that the service was legal. For the rest of the day, @UberFR tweeted “10 facts about Uber Pop”, an image explaining why the service was legal. This particular tweet appeared six times during the afternoon of the strike.

Tweets posted by Uber during the protests

At 7.08 pm, Uber launched #ouipop, an online petition to save Uber Pop from being banned. It was the brand’s most popular tweet by far, and had been retweeted 900 times by June 29th.

The most popular tweets from Uber during the Paris strikes

Uber Pop is currently banned in France, and the brand was trending on Twitter yet again on Monday with the news that two of its French managers had been arrested over charges of illicit activity, racking up thousands of tweets.

It looks like the fight is not over yet for Uber, so keep an eye on your Twitter streams.

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Published in Crisis