TY - JOUR

T1 - Communicating effectively about CSR on Twitter

T2 - The power of engaging strategies and storytelling elements

AU - Araujo, Theo

AU - Kollat, Jana

PY - 2018/4/4

Y1 - 2018/4/4

N2 - Purpose: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication is becoming increasingly important for brands and companies. Social media such as Twitter may be platforms particularly suited to this topic, given their ability to foster dialogue and content diffusion. The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors driving the effectiveness of CSR communication on Twitter, with a focus on the communication strategies and elements of storytelling. Design/methodology/approach: Using a sample of 281,291 tweets from top global companies in the food sector, automated content analysis (including supervised machine learning) was used to investigate the influence of CSR communication, emotion, and aspirational talk on the likelihood that Twitter users will retweet and like tweets from the companies. Findings: The findings highlight the importance of aspirational talk and engaging users in CSR messages. Furthermore, the study revealed that the companies and brands on Twitter that tweeted more frequently about CSR were associated with higher overall levels of content diffusion and endorsement. Originality/value: This study provides important insights into key aspects of communicating about CSR issues on social networking sites such as Twitter and makes several practical recommendations for companies.

AB - Purpose: Corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication is becoming increasingly important for brands and companies. Social media such as Twitter may be platforms particularly suited to this topic, given their ability to foster dialogue and content diffusion. The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors driving the effectiveness of CSR communication on Twitter, with a focus on the communication strategies and elements of storytelling. Design/methodology/approach: Using a sample of 281,291 tweets from top global companies in the food sector, automated content analysis (including supervised machine learning) was used to investigate the influence of CSR communication, emotion, and aspirational talk on the likelihood that Twitter users will retweet and like tweets from the companies. Findings: The findings highlight the importance of aspirational talk and engaging users in CSR messages. Furthermore, the study revealed that the companies and brands on Twitter that tweeted more frequently about CSR were associated with higher overall levels of content diffusion and endorsement. Originality/value: This study provides important insights into key aspects of communicating about CSR issues on social networking sites such as Twitter and makes several practical recommendations for companies.

KW - Corporate communications

KW - CSR

KW - Information diffusion

KW - Social media

KW - Social network sites

KW - Media and communication studies

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85044384850&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1108/IntR-04-2017-0172

DO - 10.1108/IntR-04-2017-0172

M3 - Journal articles

AN - SCOPUS:85044384850

VL - 28

SP - 419

EP - 431

JO - Internet Research

JF - Internet Research

SN - 1066-2243

IS - 2

ER -