Towards a cultural sociology of reputational crisis: the Rohingya Genocide and Aung San Suu Kyi’s international reputation

This article advances a theory of how a public figure simultaneously obtains the status of hero and villain through a case study of Aung San Suu Kyi, a human rights activist and former leader of Myanmar. Building on debates in sociology of reputations and social performance theory, this article proposes a model of “reputational crisis” during which existing moral evaluations about a public figure come under intense and systematic scrutiny. A reputational crisis results in one of three outcomes: (1) a “fall from grace”, in which the reputation is tarnished; (2) preserved reputation, in which the reputation is relatively unharmed; and (3) polarized reputation, characterized by enduring fragmentation and division. Employing qualitative media content analysis of news sources from six countries (Australia, Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Thailand) and Aung San Suu Kyi’s 2019 speech at the International Court of Justice, this article demonstrates how her reputation became increasingly polarized over the course of the Rohingya Genocide at domestic and international levels.