The Boycott Tweet.

• Author: Tahmincioglu, Eve
• Position: EDITOR'S NOTE

A Twitter spat between a cable news provocateur and a school shooting victim over college rejections doesn't seem like something that could embroil some of the nation's biggest corporations, but that's just what happened late last month.

David Hogg--one of the Parkland Florida high school students who have spawned a national movement for tougher gun control laws--was interviewed by celebrity news site TMZ and during the spot he mentioned some of the colleges that recently rejected his application.

While he said he was focused on "changing the world" and not college at the moment, Fox News host Laura Ingraham tweeted after the interview:

David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA ... totally predictable given acceptance rates.)

To that Hogg tweeted:

Soooo @IngrahamAngle what are your biggest advertisers ... Asking for a friend. #Boycott IngramAdverts (sic) Hogg then shared a list of company names he claimed were advertisers of the show with his 600,000 Twitter followers and the tweet went viral with lots of tweeters directly calling out companies to pull their sponsorships.

Soon after the tweet, Trip Advisor announced it was pulling its ad, telling CNBC that the company does not "condone the inappropriate comments made by this broadcaster."

With political discourse so heightened today, a corporation can quickly end up in the middle of a very public fight and a potential PR nightmare.

In this issue we take on the recent calls for boycotts surrounding the NPJV and look at whether we have reached "A Social-Risk Tipping Point"? D&B's senior editor April Hall writes about how directors must weigh the many risks involved when it...