Social Media Policies and Corporate Social Responsibility

• In Event: Top Four Papers in Organizational Communication

Abstract

Three global trends situate the context of this investigation: the increasing use of social media by organizations and their employees, the burgeoning presence of social media policies, and the heightened focus on corporate social responsibility. In this paper, these global trends are examined through a content analysis of 101 publicly available social media policies from top global corporations. Specifically, the extent to which social media policies facilitate and/or constrain the communicative sensibilities and values associated with contemporary CSR are considered, as well as regional and sectorial differences in policy contents. Overall, findings suggest that policies inhibit several communicative tenets of CSR (i.e., free speech rights, collective information sharing, and stakeholder engagement/dialogue) and diminish employee engagement in and influence over CSR activities. Thus, the promising affordances of social media for the inclusion of various voices in the public negotiation of what constitutes CSR are called into question.

Authors

• Cynthia Stohl, U of California - Santa Barbara

• Michael Andreas Etter, Copenhagen Business School

• Scott G. Banghart, University of California, Santa Barbara

• DaJung Woo, U of California - Santa Barbara