How Organizations Control Narratives in the Public Defamation Process in Cases of Human Rights Violations

Abstract

Violations of human rights and labor analogous to slavery remain serious problems in the private sector. When these scandals become public, a narrative dispute emerges between corporate communication efforts aimed at mitigating reputational damage and initiatives of denunciation, defamation, and boycott against the organizations involved. However, the online environment enables segments of the public to articulate defenses of these companies, even in the face of severe accusations. This study examines the influence of online narrative disputes on the normalization of cases of human rights violations. The research draws on Critical Document Analysis, employing inductive coding of organizational statements, open letters, news articles, and tweets about the scandal of labor analogous to slavery involving an outsourced company and three major Brazilian wineries. The wineries relied on mechanisms widely discussed in the literature, such as denial of the facts, outsourcing of responsibility, and, subsequently, attempts at reparation. The study argues that online narrative disputes contribute to the normalization of human rights violations by illustrating how organizational strategies shape the creation of narratives that seek to anonymize, relativize, selectively compare, and construct counter-narratives in defense of the organizations. Such strategies constitute a discursive mechanism aimed at neutralizing initiatives of denunciation, defamation, and boycott, thereby exerting control over the debate in the digital space. However, the tools mobilized by the companies’ defenders ultimately distort the public debate without effectively addressing the persistent and serious problem of human rights violations in business activities.