When social media speaks, Hollywood listens ... and acts

Grammy-winning R&B singer Chrisette Michele is the latest artist to sign on to play a Trump inaugural event. But will she still be on the roster once she’s seen the backlash on social media?

In just the last month, the power of social media has scuttled several high-profile entertainment events — from inaugural performers to new TV shows. And it could be the new normal as more people take to social media to voice concerns and Hollywood reacts rapidly in an effort to minimize offense and damage.

“Twitter is a relatively new medium, but it’s really just a replacement for the old-fashioned wisdom of listening to your customers," says Rich Matta, the CEO of ReputationDefender.com, a northern California-based firm. “It provides a real-time megaphone for a large swath of your fans to give you feedback. ... If you’re doing something that could affect you for the rest of your career with half or more of your fans, it may not be a smart business decision."

Essence and the New York Daily News confirmed Michele's participation on Wednesday, but her agent, Jeff Epstein, has not said whether she has signed a contract with the inaugural committee. The Daily News says the deal was done weeks ago but kept under wraps as a safeguard against blowback from fans and fellow artists. (The Roots' Questlove offered to pay her to turn down the gig.)

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Michelle posted a statement on her website Thursday addressing online criticism without using the word inauguration or Trump's name or specifying at which event she'll perform.

"Today, I hope that great moments begin in peaceful and progressive conversation. I am willing to be a bridge," she wrote. "I don't mind 'these stones', if they allow me to be a voice for the voiceless."

The feedback, especially from her African-American fans, has not been positive. The consensus on Twitter? She has sold out and they won't soon forget, nor do they appreciate her use of Martin Luther King Jr. quotes to justify her choice.

Until Thursday, director Spike Lee had been considering licensing Michele's song Black Girl Magic for his upcoming Netflix series She's Gotta Have It. "Not anymore," he proclaimed on Instagram.

Lee's announcement was the first sign of what could be long-term career damage. That's a risk that she takes by proceeding with the Trump inaugural performance despite her fans' feelings, cautions Matta.

Inauguration singer Jackie Evancho: 'It's not about the politics'

He points to the example of Jennifer Holliday, who withdrew from Thursday's pre-inaugural welcome concert one day after the inaugural committee announced her name. While the Tony-winning star of the musical Dreamgirls had accepted the committee’s offer, she hadn’t yet signed a contract when her LGBT fan base registered their disappointment.

"Initially, it seemed like she thought performing would increase her exposure, maybe expand her audience," Matta says. "But as she got feedback via the Twitter storm, particularly from her core fanbase in the LGBT community that supported her for so long, she realized they skewed vehemently anti-Trump and it was probably a bad business decision for her to go forward with performing."

Singer Jennifer Holliday backs out of Trump inauguration concert

Indeed, in an open letter published by TheWrap.com and obtained by USA TODAY, Holliday wrote that she would "stand with the LGBT community," a group she says was “mostly responsible for birthing my career” and had “provided me with work even though my star had long since faded.”

Fans of Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, who has previously performed for Trump and is a longtime friend, made their feelings clear when his name was floated by the inaugural committee in December. The #BoycottBocelli movement on Twitter was threatening enough that he and the inaugural committee never proceeded any further.

The last month has also seen successful social-media campaigns put the kibosh on TV projects.

After a January Twitter campaign led by Michael Jackson's daughter Paris and nephew Taj, Britain's Sky TV canceled plans to air an episode of Urban Myths, a Drunk History-like sketch show that featured Joseph Fiennes, a white actor, as the King of Pop on a fabled road trip with Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando. Two days after the trailer debuted, Sky tweeted that it had decided "not to air the episode in light of the concerns expressed by Michael Jackson's immediate family." They noted that Fiennes supported the decision.

'Urban Myths' episode with Joseph Fiennes as Michael Jackson axed

Social media also helped influence A&E's plans for a docuseries about the Ku Klux Klan. Days after the project was announced, public outcry led the network to changed the title of its Ku Klux Klan docuseries from Generation KKK to Escaping the KKK  "to ensure that no one can mistake its intent and that the title alone does not serve to normalize the Klan."  (A week later, the series was pulled after learning subjects were paid.)

Mark Feldstein, a former NBC reporter and professor at the University of Maryland who has lectured on censorship, freedom of the press, and journalism history and ethics, says the Michael Jackson decision could be viewed two different ways: On the right end of the political spectrum it could be seen as "political correctness gone amuck," and on the left "it's stopping an insensitive or racist portrayal."

"What's interesting is when does Hollywood react and when doesn't it? When you have a show that's kind of farcical to begin with, it's a bit surprising that there was such a reaction," he says.

Social media has also taught companies that attempts to tie their product to dead celebrities often end in embarrassment — but that hasn't deterred social media editors from trying to make their homages go viral.

Last month, when Cinnabon tried to mark the death of Carrie Fisher with an illustration of Princess Leia with cinnamon rolls for hair and a caption that read, "You'll always have the best buns in the galaxy," fans made it clear they found the tweet to be in bad taste. The company pulled it and apologized within a day, explaining, "Our deleted tweet was genuinely meant as a tribute, but we shouldn't have posted it. We are truly sorry."

Cinnabon deletes, apologizes for Carrie Fisher tweet after backlash

After getting such rapid response, have fans come to expect that their outraged tweets will always instantaneously affect artists’ decisions?

“The horse has left the barn on that one,” Matta laughs. “People already have a degree of empowerment based on their ability to interact directly with public figures on social media and that does not necessarily come along with a feeling of responsibility in all cases. Not everyone is fair and judicious with their feedback. It’s just a fact of the Internet, and we live in a country where everyone has freedom of speech and social media is a new forum for that. It’s inevitable that people of different opinions are going to express them quickly online.”

Just look at Donald Trump, he says.

“The president-elect is also prone to reacting in a knee-jerk way to every Alec Baldwin appearance on Saturday Night Live,” Matta points out. “The president-elect himself is modeling the use of social media as an immediate reaction to current events. I think we can only expect individuals to react in a similar way.”