• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, January 8, 2016

It’s probably fair to say 2015 was the year from hell for Volkswagen, with revelations that the world’s biggest carmaker had been systematically deceiving environmental regulators for years with software designed to cheat on emissions tests. This year isn’t looking much better, as governments around the world get set to levy massive fines, shareholder lawsuits loom, and the possibility that investigators will uncover further misdoings hangs uneasily in the air.

It’s no surprise, then, that the carmaker has adopted a largely defensive stance on social media, dramatically scaling back its attempts to engage consumers and instead using its social platforms as mostly passive news channels to keep the public informed about its measures in response to the scandal.

ListenFirst, the social measurement and analytics outfit which powers MediaPost’s Digital Engagement Index, measured VW’s online activity across its social platforms and found the volume of engagements fell by 74% from 4.55 million in the third quarter of 2015 to 1.17 million in the fourth quarter of the year. 

Predictably, VW saw a surge of social media attention immediately following the EPA’s issuing the first notice of violation on September 19, when VW post engagements spiked to over 1.4 million, but the number of posts and consumer engagement both dropped steeply in the fourth quarter, reflecting the defensive strategy.

The number of new posts fell from 366 in the third quarter to 103 in the fourth quarter, for a 72% drop, including a total cessation of posts on Instagram. Meanwhile consumer comments plunged 93% from 22,200 in the third quarter to 1,600 in the fourth quarter, while engagements including likes and favorites plunged 97% from 629,000 to 14,100.

In the fourth quarter the most shared posts on VW’s Facebook and Twitter accounts have concerned the scandal, including links to vwdieselinfo.com, the site VW created to answer public questions about the scandal and share information about internal and external investigations as well as its planned remedies.