The authors examine consumer activism as a form of power used by individuals when they experience a perceived failure with organizational service performance. Consumer citizens demonstrate the power of their voices through digital vigilantism consisting of injurious and constructive digital content sharing. The authors use agency theory and power concepts to study an instance in which a public service provider breached consumer performance expectations. They study digital responses to the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right rally because an independent review found the public service providers culpable. Tweets (n = 73,649) were analyzed utilizing qualitative thematic coding, cluster analysis, and sentiment analysis. Consumer conversations (tweets) during and after the rally yielded five types of digital vigilantism characterized by the following consumer voice clusters: “Shame on them!”, “Hear ye, hear ye…”, “Can you believe this?”, “Let’s get ‘em!”, and “Do the right thing.” The authors also present a new facet of digital vigilantism represented by the pessimistic and optimistic power of consumer voice. Several proactive and reactive responses are presented for policy and practice when responding to digital vigilantism.
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