Operationalizing genuineness in CSR communication for public engagement on social media

Companies use corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures to communicate their social and environmental policies, practices, and performance to stakeholders. Although the determinants and outcomes of CSR activities are well understood, we know little about how companies use CSR communication to manage a crisis. The few relevant CSR studies have focused on the pressure on corporations exerted by governments, customers, the media, or the public. Although investors have a significant influence on firm value, this stakeholder group has been neglected in research on CSR disclosure. Grounded in legitimacy theory and agency theory, this study uses a sample of Chinese public companies listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange to investigate CSR disclosure in response to social media criticism posted by investors. The empirical findings show that investors’ social media criticism not only motivates companies to disclose their CSR activities but also increases the substantiveness of their CSR reports, demonstrating that companies’ CSR communication in response to a crisis is substantive rather than merely symbolic. We also find that the impact of social media criticism on CSR disclosure is heterogeneous. Non-state-owned enterprises, companies in regions with high levels of environmental regulations, and companies in regions with local government concern about social issues are most likely to disclose CSR information and report substantive CSR activities. We provide an in-depth analysis of corporate CSR strategies for crisis management and show that crises initiated by investors on social media provide opportunities for corporations to improve their CSR engagement.

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The Relationship of Sustainability Communication on Social Media with Banking Consumers’ Loyalty through e-WOM

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13073832 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (7) ◽

pp. 3832

Author(s):

Gao Wei ◽

Wang Lin ◽

Wu Yanxiong ◽

Yan Jingdong ◽

Sadik Yusuf Musse

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Structural Equation ◽

Positive Emotions ◽

Banking Sector ◽

Equation Modeling ◽

Consumer Loyalty ◽

Csr Communication ◽

Prior Literature ◽

Corporate Social ◽

The Impact

Prior literature has largely addressed corporate social responsibility (CSR) from outcomes related to organizational themes. However, its importance for achieving consumer-related outcomes is something that has been largely ignored by contemporary researchers. Likewise, how CSR communication through social media can create positive emotions on the part of consumers has to date been under-explored. Hence, the present study aims to fill these gaps by investigating the impact of CSR communication of an organization through social media on consumer loyalty. The study also proposes electronic word of mouth (e-WOM) as a potential mediator between this relationship. The proposed model of the present study was tested in the banking sector of a developing country. The data were collected from a self-administered questionnaire and analyzed through the structural equation modeling technique (SEM). The results of the present study validated that CSR communication of a bank through social media directly and indirectly, through e-WOM, influences consumer loyalty in a positive manner. The results of the present study will be helpful for policymakers to better understand how well-planned CSR communication of an organization on social media can lead towards better consumer-related outcomes such as consumer loyalty and e-WOM.

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The Relationship of CSR Communication on Social Media with Consumer Purchase Intention and Brand Admiration

Journal of theoretical and applied electronic commerce research ◽

10.3390/jtaer16050068 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 16 (5) ◽

pp. 1217-1230

Author(s):

Shuchi Gupta ◽

Nishad Nawaz ◽

Adel Abdulmhsen Alfalah ◽

Rana Tahir Naveed ◽

Saqib Muneer ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Purchase Intention ◽

Structural Equation ◽

Mediating Effect ◽

Equation Modeling ◽

Csr Communication ◽

Consumer Purchase Intention ◽

Relationship Of ◽

The Impact ◽

The Relationship

With the advent of the Internet and other digital technologies, contemporary businesses from all sectors are using social media for communication with consumers to engage them meaningfully with a brand. However, the use of social media for corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication is relatively new to the existing literature. Likewise, the impact of CSR communication through social media (CSR-S) on consumer emotions and behavior is, to date, underexplored. To address this, the present research aims to test the relationship of CSR-S on brand admiration and consumer purchase intention. The study proposes a direct relationship between CSR-S and purchase intention with a mediating effect of brand admiration. The data were collected from the banking consumers of Pakistan through a self-administered questionnaire. The authors distributed 800 questionnaires and received 463 questionnaires useful for data analysis, so the present research study response rate was around 59%. The data were analyzed using the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique in AMOS. The results revealed that CSR-S is positively related to purchase intention (β = 0.233). The results further showed that brand admiration partially mediates this relationship (β = 0.079). The survey respondents confirmed that their bank’s CSR communication helps enhance their purchase likelihood and their feelings of admiration for their bank. These findings will help policymakers at banking institutions better understand the importance of CSR communication on different social media platforms to achieve consumer-related outcomes.

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Producing deflective online strategies: Lessons from New Zealand women’s management of social media engagement

Information Polity ◽

10.3233/ip-210320 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-16

Author(s):

Sarah Hendrica Bickerton ◽

Karl Löfgren

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

New Zealand ◽

Public Engagement ◽

Analytical Approach ◽

Gender Effect ◽

Social Location ◽

Strategic Approach ◽

Online Strategies ◽

Twitter Users ◽

Different Levels

Public engagement is a gendered experience, whether offline or online, something which is reflected in women’s experiences of social media. In this article, we seek to systematically explore the experiences from politically engaged women twitter users in New Zealand in order to draw some lessons, through a thematic and interpretative analytical approach, at four different strategic levels on how to deflect intimidating and aggressive behaviour. We conclude that understanding strategically how structural social locations like gender effect the ability to contribute to political participation and engagement, if addressed, can produce more inclusive and productive online political and policy spaces. Further, this strategic approach involves connecting together different levels of response to online negativity such as platform tools, space-curation, and monitoring, having these made coherent with each other, as well as with this strategic understanding of how structural social location plays into access and use of online political and policy spaces.

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From Organizational-Centric Engagement to Network-Centric Engagement: The Role of Autonomous Public Communities in a Mediated Public Policy Advocacy Network

Social Media + Society ◽

10.1177/20563051211038262 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 7 (3) ◽

pp. 205630512110382

Author(s):

Aimei Yang ◽

Maureen Taylor

Keyword(s):

Public Policy ◽

Social Media ◽

New Deal ◽

Public Engagement ◽

Policy Advocacy ◽

Social Movement Organization ◽

Advocacy Network ◽

Movement Organization ◽

Nuanced Understanding

In this study, we explore how a social movement organization ( Sunrise.org ) and its autonomous public community advocated for the Green New Deal on social media. An autonomous public community is a group of publics that initially connect with each other through their engagement with a focal organization. Then, they go on to develop ties among themselves that go beyond simply responding to organizations’ messages. Autonomous public communities are ubiquitous on social media. Our research identifies unique patterns of interactions in an autonomous public community and finds that the Tertius Iungens orientation brings the network together. We also find that while the focal organization is not centralized in an autonomous public community, it still significantly affects tie formation and discourse as the networks evolve. Our study reveals a nuanced understanding of networked organization–public engagement where network structure and discourse are co-created by the organizations and the communities that they engage.

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Exploring public engagement with missing person appeals on Twitter

10.31235/osf.io/wugxs ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Reka Solymosi ◽

Oana Petcu ◽

Jack Wilkinson

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Public Engagement ◽

Evidence Base ◽

Evidence Based ◽

The Public ◽

Missing Persons ◽

Early Return ◽

Police Agencies ◽

Key Factor ◽

Twitter Account

Police agencies globally are seeing an increase in reports of people going missing. These people are often vulnerable, and their safe and early return is a key factor in preventing them from coming to serious harm. One approach to quickly find missing people is to disseminate appeals for information using social media. Yet despite the popularity of twitter-based missing person appeals, presently little is known about how to best construct these messages to ensure they are shared far and wide. This paper aims to build an evidence-base for understanding how police accounts tweet appeals for information about missing persons, and how the public engage with these tweets by sharing them. We analyse 1,008 Tweets made by Greater Manchester Police between the period of 2011 and 2018 in order to investigate what features of the tweet, the twitter account, and the missing person are associated with levels of retweeting. We find that tweets with different choice of image, wording, sentiment, and hashtags vary in how much they are retweeted. Tweets that use custody images have lower retweets than Tweets with regular photos, while tweets asking the question “have you seen...?” and asking explicitly to be retweeted have more engagement in the form of retweets. These results highlight the need for conscientious, evidence-based crafting of missing appeals, and pave the way for further research into the causal mechanisms behind what affects engagement, to develop guidance for police forces worldwide.

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Public engagement and dialogic accounting through social media during COVID-19 crisis: a missed opportunity?

Accounting Auditing & Accountability Journal ◽

10.1108/aaaj-08-2020-4884 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽

Author(s):

Stefano Landi ◽

Antonio Costantini ◽

Marco Fasan ◽

Michele Bonazzi

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Social Media ◽

New Zealand ◽

Public Engagement ◽

Fake News ◽

Public Agencies ◽

Content Type ◽

Public Health Agencies ◽

The Public ◽

Health Agencies

PurposeThe purpose of this exploratory study is to investigate why and how public health agencies employed social media during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak to foster public engagement and dialogic accounting.Design/methodology/approachThe authors analysed the official Facebook pages of the leading public agencies for health crisis in Italy, United Kingdom and New Zealand and they collected data on the number of posts, popularity, commitment and followers before and during the outbreak. The authors also performed a content analysis to identify the topics covered by the posts.FindingsEmpirical results suggest that social media has been extensively used as a public engagement tool in all three countries under analysis but – because of legitimacy threats and resource scarcity – it has also been used as a dialogic accounting tool only in New Zealand. Findings suggest that fake news developed more extensively in contexts where the public body did not foster dialogic accounting.Practical implicationsPublic agencies may be interested in knowing the pros and cons of using social media as a public engagement and dialogic accounting tool. They may also leverage on dialogic accounting to limit fake news.Originality/valueThis study is one of the first to look at the nature and role of social media as an accountability tool during public health crises. In many contexts, COVID-19 forced for the first time public health agencies to heavily engage with the public and to develop new skills, so this study paves the way for numerous future research ideas.

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Promoting Public Engagement of Natural History Collections through Science Communication

Biodiversity Information Science and Standards ◽

10.3897/biss.2.28479 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 2 ◽

pp. e28479

Author(s):

Bryan Lessard

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Natural History ◽

Public Relations ◽

Public Engagement ◽

Science Communication ◽

Public Speaking ◽

Wide Audience ◽

The Public ◽

Natural History Collections ◽

New Students

Natural history collections are essential for understanding the world’s biodiversity and drive research in taxonomy, systematics, ecology and biosecurity. One of the biggest challenges faced is the decline of new taxonomists and public interest in collections-based research, which is alarming considering that an estimated 70% of the world’s species are yet to be formally described. Science communication combines public relations with the dissemination of scientific knowledge and offers many benefits to promoting natural history collections to a wide audience. For example, social media has revolutionised the way collections and their staff communicate with the public in real time, and can attract more visitors to collection exhibits and new students interested in natural history. Although not everyone is born a natural science communicator, institutions can encourage and provide training for their staff to become engaging spokespeople skilled in social media and public speaking, including television, radio and/or print media. By embracing science communication, natural history collections can influence their target audiences in a positive and meaningful way, raise the profile of their institution, encourage respect for biodiversity, promote their events and research outputs, seek philanthropic donations, connect with other researchers or industry leaders, and most importantly, inspire the next generation of natural historians.

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Experts in Self-Isolation? Monastic Outreach during Lockdown

Religions ◽

10.3390/rel12100814 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (10) ◽

pp. 814

Author(s):

Richard D.G. Irvine

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Public Engagement ◽

Max Weber ◽

Social Withdrawal ◽

Digital Ethnography ◽

The World

This paper draws on digital ethnography to examine the experience of a Catholic English Benedictine monastery in the context of restrictions on religious gatherings during the global COVID-19 pandemic. As the monks expand their digital presence and social media involvement, it is their experience of social withdrawal and apparent expertise in self-isolation that provides the grounding for their public engagement. While Max Weber depicts the monk as a world-transcending “virtuoso”, in a time of lockdown, this separation from the world provides a point of connection with the experience of wider society.

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