CSR Communication and Social Media a Critical Research Into the Impact of Communicating CSR on Social Media for Corporations and Consumers

CSR Communication and Social Media A critical research into the impact of communicating CSR on social media for corporations and consumers.

Name: Dagmar Corbeij SNR: u1279700 ANR: 785906 Date: 16/06/2019 School: Tilburg University Supervisor: Dr. Suzanne van der Beek Index

1. Introduction ...... 3 1.1 Problem indication ...... 3 1.2 Problem statement ...... 3 1.3 Research questions ...... 3 1.4 Overview ...... 4 2. Theoretical Framework ...... 5 2.1 How have social media impacted social discourse on corporate policies? ...... 5 2.1.1 History of Social Media ...... 5 2.1.2 Understanding Social Media ...... 6 2.1.3 The shift to social media ...... 9 2.1.4 Social media and language ...... 11 2.1.6 Corporate communication development on social media ...... 13 2.1.7 The use of social media from a consumer perspective ...... 16 2.2. How is the development of social media and the development of CSR interrelated? ...... 18 2.2.1 What is Corporate Social Responsibility? ...... 18 2.2.2 Development of CSR ...... 19 2.2.3 Corporate Communication on CSR and social media ...... 20 3. Method ...... 24 4. General Mills Case Study ...... 27 4.1 About General Mills ...... 27 4.2 General Mills’ CSR strategy ...... 29 4.3 Social Media Platforms: an introduction ...... 30 Facebook ...... 30 Instagram ...... 32 Twitter ...... 33 4.4 Social Media of General Mills ...... 35 4.4 Initial explorations ...... 37 4.5 Analysis ...... 45 4.5.1 Content of the different platforms ...... 45 4.5.2 Reactions to CSR-related posts ...... 46 4.5.3 Discussions among the community ...... 49 5. Results ...... 52 5.1 General Mills to the consumers ...... 52 5.2 The consumers to General Mills ...... 55 1

5.3 The consumers towards each other ...... 57 6. Conclusions and Discussion ...... 59 6.1 Conclusions ...... 59 6.1.1 How have social media impacted social discourse on corporate policies? ...... 59 6.1.2 How is the development of social media and the development of CSR interrelated? ...... 59 6.1.3.1 What is the content of the posts on the different platforms? ...... 60 6.1.3.2 What are consumers’ reactions to CSR-related posts on these platforms? ...... 61 6.1.3.3 What are consumers’ reactions towards each other on these platforms? ...... 61 6.1.3.4 How does the use of different social media platforms for the communication of CSR impact the relationship between companies and consumers? ...... 61 6.2 Discussion ...... 63 References ...... 64

1. Introduction

1.1 Problem indication Over the last 40 years, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been increasingly seen as a one of the top priorities for businesses and societies in today’s world (Tench et al., 2014). The main focus of CSR is to incorporate more socially responsible approaches to the way in which businesses operate. Furthermore, most consumers expect companies to be CSR active as well. According to CONE (2013), about one-third of stakeholders demands of business to change the way they operate to align with the environmental and social needs of the society. Therefore, the communication of CSR has automatically grown in importance as well, as corporations need to be able to inform the stakeholders and to meet stakeholder’s expectations. Halfway through this development, social media came to a rise. The development of social media has an enormous impact on today’s society. Social media have developed in numerous types of platforms, the largest of which is still Facebook. Yet, also Twitter and Instagram are popular social media platforms in today’s society. Businesses have adapted to the development of social media and most corporations nowadays are actively using social media platforms to promote business. Even more so, CSR is actively promoted through these social media platforms.

Although CSR communication and social media are both concepts that have been elaborately researched on separately, there is limited research done on the combination of the two concepts. Whereas CSR is being actively communicated about on social media platforms, its impact on consumers has still been rarely looked into. Therefore, this research will aim to provide an analysis that will focus on the impact of CSR communication on social media, for both corporations as well as consumers, on three different social media platforms.

1.2 Problem statement The main focus of this research is to answer the following question: How does the use of different social media platforms for the communication of CSR impact the relationship between companies and consumers?

1.3 Research questions The goal of this paper is to answer the problem statement by analysing three research questions.

1. How have social media impacted social discourse on corporate policies?

2. How is the development of social media and the development of CSR interrelated?

3. How does the use of different social media platforms for the communication of CSR impact the relationship between companies and consumers? This research question is addressed via a case study of General Mills. This case study research deals with the following three sub-questions:

3.1 What is the content of the posts on the different platforms? 3.2 What are the consumers’ reactions to CSR-related posts on these platforms? 3.3 What are consumers’ reactions towards each other on these platforms?

1.4 Overview The first two research questions are analysed via a literature review. First, the paper will set a theoretical foundation on social media. An insight will be given into what social media are, the history of social media and how social media influence numerous actors in the public sphere. Relevant authors are Van Dijck (2013), Mandiberg (2012), Fuchs (2017), Hoffman and Bublitz (2017), Weber (2014), and Culnan (2010) (2.1). The paper will continue by focusing on what CSR is, how the communication of CSR has developed, and how social media and CSR are interrelated. This section is based on, among others, Visser (2011) and Elving (2015) (2.2). Chapter 3 will focus on the case study methodology. As the case study research is based upon digital ethnography, this research method will first be explained. The case study company General Mills will be introduced in Chapter 4. This chapter also explains General Mills’ s CSR strategy (4.2) and its social media usage (4.3). Furthermore, this chapter will continue to explain the initial exploration (4.4) continued by the analysis of this case study research (4.5). The analysis will be classified into three categories: (1) the content of the different platforms (4.5.1), (2) the reactions to CSR-related posts (4.5.2), and (3) the discussions among the community (4.5.3). Chapter 5 will provide the results, where the literature research and the case study research will be combined. The results are also classified into three categories: (1) General Mills to consumers (5.1), (2) consumers to General Mills (5.2), and (3) consumers towards each other (5.3). Chapter 6.1 provides a conclusion of this paper and 6.2 the discussion.

2. Theoretical Framework The following two chapters will provide a literature review that will answer two central questions to this research: (1) How have social media impacted social discourse on corporate policies?, and (2) How is the development of social media and the development of CSR interrelated? The information provided in these sections is based upon existing literature, that is combined and analysed to provide an answer to these two central questions.

2.1 How have social media impacted social discourse on corporate policies? 2.1.1 History of Social Media Social media can be defined as ‘a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content’ (Kaplan and Haelein, 2010). To be able to better understand where Kaplan and Haelein based their definition of social media upon, it is important to look at the origin of social media. This will be explained using the foundations set by José van Dijck (2013). Before social media emerged, the Worldwide Web was introduced. Weblogs, list-servers and e-mail services helped to form an online community. However, this community was not as interactive as the platforms we know today. With the advent of Web 2.0, shortly after the turn of the millennium, online services shifted from offering channels for networked communication to becoming interactive, two-way vehicles for networked sociality (Castells 2007; Manovich 2009). This led to an increase in online activities on platforms which were programmed to be more than just a channel of communication. Whereas before, websites generally operated as channels for social activity, the new platforms increasingly turn these channels into applied services, rendering the Internet easier to use but more difficult to deal with (Van Dijck, 2013). Most platforms started out as an exchange of communication among friends based on similar interests. For example, when a group of people share the same creative ideas or interest in art and they can use their platform to share content with. Social media platforms therefore not only facilitate networking activities, but have also been mutually constitutive. In general, users ‘negotiate’ whether and how to appropriate social media platforms in their daily habits.

Social media platforms have been changing and adapting since the origin of Web 2.0. Social media platforms, rather than being finished products, are dynamic objects that are tweaked in response to their users’ needs and their owners’ objectives, but also in reaction to competing platforms and the larger technological and economic infrastructure through which they

develop (Feenberg, 2009). The first platforms that arose on the web were search engines, of which the most well-known being Google Search. Later other platforms emerged, more related to what we know as social media; Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn etc. These platforms can be categorized in different ‘types’ of platforms, yet important to note beforehand, is that there is no sharp boundary between the different types of these platforms. One major type is called ‘social network sites’ (SNS). These sites primarily promote interpersonal contact, whether between individuals or groups; they forge personal, professional, or geographical connections and encourage weak ties. Examples are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Foursquare. (Van Dijck, 2013). A second important type of platform is called the ‘user-generated content’ (UGC), which supports creativity and promotes the exchange of amateur or professional content. Well-known examples of UGC sites are YouTube, Flickr, Myspace and Wikipedia. Besides SNS and UGC sites, there are also trading and marketing sites (TMSs). These sites aim at exchanging products or selling them (e.g. Amazon, eBay, Groupon etc.). One other platform holds for play and games sites (PGS), examples of these are FarmVille, the Sims Social and Angry Birds. In 2017, more than 71 percent of internet users were also social network users. In total, there were 2.46 billion social media users around the world (Statista, n.d.). These numbers are expected to grow even more over the next few years. This paper will mainly focus on SNS, as these are actively used by consumers.

2.1.2 Understanding Social Media Social media can be described as a multifaceted phenomenon, due to the interlinking of both user-technology interaction and the organizational socioeconomic structure. Therefore, social media are a difficult phenomenon to analyse according to existing, traditional models of media. There are two theoretical approaches one can use to analyse social media: actor- network theory (ANT) and political economy. In general, the actor-network theory is used to break down social media into specific elements. The political economy theory is used to build up these specific elements again to see how these elements are linked and which mechanisms are created.

Actor-network theory, developed by Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, and John Law, supports a view of platforms as sociotechnical ensembles and performative infrastructures (van Dijck 2013). The aim of ANT is to map relations between technologies and people. The platforms created by ANT are made up of a set of actors that attribute to the meaning of platforms. By

analysing these different actors and their interactions, the ANT can be a valuable tool to understand social media. However, there are also downsides to using ANT. One downside being the fact that the ANT does not distinguish between technologies and their social dimension, which makes is difficult to understand the relationship between the different agents. In addition, ANT pays scarce attention to content or cultural form as a meaningful force in the construction of technology and users (van Dijck 2013).

The political economy approach focuses on organisational (infra) structures. This means that this approach views platforms and digital networks as the basics of power relationships between the producers and consumers. According to the founder of the political economy approach, the theory identifies the ‘concrete social actors who are power holders’ and ‘examines their global networking and their local workings’ (Castells 2009: 430). These concrete social actors can be governments or organizations involved in economic schemes, legal processes, or political movements. The actors are dominated by the ‘programmers’, which are the people who invented the network, and by the ‘switchers’, explained as the people who can connect and ensure actors between different networks. This approach works better than the ANT in terms of the conjunction between economic and legal perspectives. However, the ANT clearly shows how the power is used between the different actors.

According to Van Dijck (2013), combining the theories of actor-network theory and the political-economy approach will lead to the best understanding of what social media is. I will use Van Dijck’s multi-layered model of social media that will combine these two theories to explain social media. The model is divided into two parts: (1) techno-cultural constructs and (2) socioeconomic structures. Each of these parts contains of three elements or actors. The techno-cultural elements consist of technology, users, and content. The socioeconomic elements consist of ownership status, governance and business models. See Figure 1 for an illustration of the in total six elements. This research continues to analyse the techno-cultural elements of this model. Therefore, these three elements will be elaborated on in more detail.

Figure 1. Six elements of the techno-cultural construct and the socioeconomic structures. Reprinted from The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media (p.28), by J. Van Dijck, 2013, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. The first element of the techno-cultural construct is technology. The technology of social media is created around the idea of a platform. This platform serves as a mediator as it shapes the performance of social acts. Technologically speaking, ‘platforms are the providers of software, (sometimes) hardware, and services that help code social activities into a computational architecture; they process (meta)data through algorithms and formatted protocols before presenting their interpreted logic in the form of user-friendly interfaces with default settings that reflect the platform owner’s strategic choices’ (van Dijck 2013). Basically, technology makes the platform function through five concepts: (meta)data, algorithm, protocol, interface and default. For this paper, it is not necessary to understand the exact technological process that makes a platform, however it is important to mention the key terminology.

User agency is a concept that grasps both conscious activity and unconscious activity. In addition, users are recipients and consumers, producers and participants of culture; they may be considered amateurs and citizens as well as professionals and labourers (van Dijck, 2013). This shows that the users of social media have many different identities. The online user activity can be divided into two levels of participation; implicit and explicit participation. Implicit participation is the usage of social media on the background, generally without the user’s awareness. Explicit participation is when the user consciously interacts with the social

media platform. This paper, will focus on the explicit participation of users on social media, since it primarily will focus on posts on social media and its responses.

The content of a platform is also a constitutive element in social media and often overlooked. For example, UGC platforms have given a boost to the importance of content like videos, photos, text, and music. Sharing content contributes to the connectiveness between people on such platforms. Analysing content can help to understand the opinions and interests of consumers, which can be used to by programmers to improve the platform according to consumers’ preferences, or in general help to understand a culture better from different perspectives. The content of the social media platforms will be analysed when discussing the case study on General Mills, as it shows the interaction between the company and consumers.

What is discussed so far, is relevant to understand the social media platforms as microsystems, divided into two layers with six constitutive elements. Even though each individual element is highly important, the interdependence of the elements and layers make the platform so interesting. Each platform implements a complex scheme of coding and branding strategies to shape specific niches of online sociality (Van Dijck, 2013). For businesses to understand the macrosystem of the online-business world, it is important to understand the individual microsystem, including the separate elements and their co- dependencies. For example, when adding a button for sharing, it influences not only the technological alignment, but it is also a strategic manoeuvre to boost the number of users accessing the platform. From all these different data flowing around from element to element and platform to platform, new impressions of the platform can be generated and used again.

2.1.3 The shift to social media The users or consumers of social media are nowadays also the audience of media in general. This means that before the arrival of social media, the general public were only on the receiving end of media and the public was receiving the information individually. The development of social media from traditional media will explained using the work of Mandiberg (2012). This is relevant to see what impact social media has had on today’s society. Examples of these media shifts are the following:

- The printing press gave the possibility to spread knowledge from large companies or organisations to the consumers, however now, blogs have given this press function to the consumers. This means that the ‘freedom of press’ is not in the hands of more actors. 9

- There used to be only a few radio stations broadcasting to the public, however now through podcasting, everyone can broadcast to anyone. - The TV has given the possibility to watch videos, only now with the arrival of YouTube, anyone can make, edit, and spread a video to the whole world. - Newspapers used to fully depend on what the editors place on the front page, however now, the public can make the choices depending on what gets most votes. - A highly centralized media system had connected people ‘up’ to big social agencies and centres of power but not ‘across’ to each other. Now the horizontal flow, citizen- to-citizen, is as real as the vertical one (Mandiberg, 2012).

All these shifts in media have given more voice to the people. As Mandiberg explains in the previous section, there is a much stronger citizen-to-citizen relationship nowadays. This means that as a consumer, one is much more informed and influenced by other citizens, whereas previously the consumers were mostly influenced by the ‘media-creators’ solely. These shifts have an impact on commercial activities as well. The commercial activities have had an impact on both corporate strategies and for consumers. For a company, it is important to make sure that the post-purchase engagement is better taken care of, to make sure the relationship with the customer remains strong. This will be more elaborated on in the following section.

Communicating with the consumers of a company looked different before the arrival of social media. There are many different segments within a company that are involved in communication, e.g. the marketing-team and the customer service. However, whereas nowadays companies have to make sure they pay enough attention to the post-purchase engagement with the customer, during times of traditional media methods, this was given little care.

Not only the post-purchase engagement of companies has changed with the rise of social media. According to Mandiberg (2012), also the period in which customers think about a purchase takes longer. Previously, people would go to a store desiring a certain product and they would likely buy it within that very same day. Whereas nowadays, potential customers are able to compare the offers on different websites before making a purchase. According to Google’s Zero Moment of Truth study, the average person pulls information from 10.4 sources before making a purchase (Weber, 2014). Potential customers than also look at the customer reviews, which can influence the buy in a strong way. These customer reviews are 10

based upon the post-purchase engagement again, which shows how much influence the Web and social media have.

Whereas previously, companies communicated with the customers through a one-way channel, nowadays social media have given the option for the customer to have a platform to ‘talk back’. Social media have multiplied the potential points of connection with the company’s prospects and customers and its interactive nature has turned static text into cross- channel dialogue (Weber, 2014). This has made it even more important for companies to exceed customer’s expectations both on the quality of the product or service as well as other business aspects.

The elements discussed in this section all show how social media has changed the communication of corporations. Although each corporation deals with social media differently, these basics discussed in this section are applicable to most corporations out there.

2.1.4 Social media and language A medium is based upon the essence that it makes communication possible. As communication is mostly done so through language, understanding the language is essential to analyse its impact. This section will be based upon the book written by Hoffman and Bublitz, named ‘Pragmatics of social media’ (2017). This section is based upon the foundations set by Volker Eisenhower. This book covers multiple perspectives that will provide for a strong foundation of theories.

The conditions in which the communication takes part, will influence the form of communication (Ermert, 1979). These different conditions are categorised by Holly (2011), which sets these conditions along three contextual parameters:

1. Modes and Codes, which means the type of communication the message is sent based on the senses, e.g., vision, auditory etc. 2. Communicative space, ‘which is characterized by different degrees of communicative copresence, reciprocity, and directionality/directness’ (Hoffmann and Bublitz, 2017). 3. Temporality, which has to do with the durability of the message and how long the message can be stored.

According to Holly, ‘[we] can speak of forms of communication whenever we can communicate particular signs in a particular direction (one-way or two-way), with a 11

particular range (public or private) and a particular durability (transmitting or storing) in their specific patterns/arrangements (Holly 2004: 2)’. Social Networking Sites are halfway in between the media and user/text interactions (Hoffmann and Bublitz, 2017). Besides using texts, SNS use visuals (sharing photos and videos, for instance) and audit (sharing and uploading music). In terms of communicative space, SNS promote multi-directional communication networks between members. Furthermore, SNS storages all posts and activities of its members.

One important aspect when analysing the language on social media, is that the meaning behind the text is always context-dependent (Hoffmann and Bublitz, 2017). This means that the environment that one is in will influence the context of the text written. However, due to the difference in online and offline worlds, the environment and context of the message become more complex. On some platforms, one is able to add a location to the post, yet this is still based on software inputs. Furthermore, there are many different relatives that one has on its social media, ranging from colleagues, to family, to friends, to teachers, etc. When one posts something on its social media account, it may be directed to only parts of its community, however all of them are reached. From this one can conclude that on SNS there is a ‘collapse [of] diverse social contexts into one, making it difficult for people to engage in the complex negotiations needed to vary identity presentation, manage impressions, and save face’ (Marwick and Boyd 2011: 123). This results in arguing and misunderstanding on social media, which would be prevented if this was to happen offline, where the context and audience is better understood.

An interesting note here, is the concept of ‘media ideologies’. This phenomenon explains the way in which people think about and use different media. The use of media will therefore also influence the language that is used on the media. According to Ilana Gershon, media ideologies are ‘a set of beliefs about communicative technologies with which users and designers explain perceived media structure and meaning’ (2010). This means that the way in which people think about media, will influence the way they use the media. However, people may have a different media ideology for the same media. This makes it difficult to generalise one true media ideology for a medium. For this research the phenomenon of media ideology gives an indication to why people use social media platforms differently.

The influence of context, audience and media ideology is not only relevant for users of social media as consumers, also companies need to consider these differences. For companies, 12

social media platforms enable companies ‘to create an online profile that complements traditional communication channels with news, service information, opportunities and requests for feedback in an online, accessible format’ (Mergel and Greeves, 2012). On the SNS such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, companies make use of microblogging and sharing photos and videos.

2.1.6 Corporate communication development on social media The study of Weber et al. (2014) explain how corporations have adapted to the rise of social media. This research is very relevant for this inquiry, as it contributes to the understanding of how corporations use social media and why it is important they do so. The following section will aim to address the transition in use of media for corporations and what techniques corporations have used.

The development of social media has had an impact on the communication of corporations to its customers, business partners and suppliers. With social media and the Web at their fingertips, stakeholders can discover and investigate anything and everything, establish decision-making criteria, seek opinions from their peers, evaluate their options, and share their impressions and experience with others, anytime and anywhere (Weber et al., 2014). Corporations are now able to communicate through video sharing, blogs, microblogging, and social networking. According to Statista, 90% of all U.S. companies used social media marketing in 2017. Not only is the need for companies to be active on social media more than ever before, the amount of money spent on the marketing on social media grows even so strongly. In the United States alone, social media marketing spending is expected to exceed 17 billion U.S. dollars in 2019 – almost ten billion increase, compared to 2014 (Statista, 2019). This shows how valued the social media platforms are, and how important they have become on a daily basis for every corporation.

Even though the use of social media by corporations has grown rapidly, there are many challenges faced by corporations when implementing social media. The value of social media comes not from the platform itself but from how a particular social media platform is used, as any given platform can be used for a variety of purposes (Culnan et al., 2010). Besides distributing content or driving sales on social media platforms, companies can use social media to create online customer communities – also known as virtual customer environments (VCEs). These VCEs can support branding, customer service and support, and product

development. Due to platforms like Twitter and Facebook, these VCEs can be very interactive, and a company can easily generate feedback with little effort.

Firms potentially gain value from VCEs when customers engage with the company on a regular basis, co-creating content and sharing power (Culnan et al., 2010). This creates many benefits for the company, most dominantly loyalty from customers, as they feel much more involved in the company itself. Creating a strong VCE is a very difficult task to do so, but can be very interesting for the company. Two essential characteristics are necessary for an effective implementation of social media as a communication source: (1) The firm attracts a critical mass of participants who form a community and who engage with the firm or other community members on an ongoing basis, and (2) the firm develops processes to benefit from the content created by its customers (Culnan et al., 2010). Next, it is important to look at what exact strategies are necessary when implementing social media:

- ‘Mindful adaptation’; - Community building; - Absorptive capacity (Culnan et al., 2010).

These three strategies will now be explained more elaborately.

Mindful Adaption Decisions all has to do with the right way of entering the world of social media. When social media arose, companies tended to jump in as fast as they could in order to not miss out. However, this strategy may lead to less beneficial results, compared to when they would have waited and analysed the phenomenon first. In a mindful adaption, a firm pays careful attention to its local context, weighing the expected business value with the risks before deciding to proceed (Culnan et al., 2010). It basically means, that a company chooses not to be one of the early adaptors. Companies try to analyse the phenomenon first to understand when is the right time to enter and what to do to make the phenomenon most beneficial to the company. According to the research done by Culnan et al. (2010), mindfulness adaptation of social media can be done so in 5 separate steps:

1. Making a good decision about which platform(s) to adopt and how they should be used. 2. Assigning responsibility for governance. 3. Identifying metrics to measure value. 4. Making sure all applications are readily accessible. 14

5. Managing risks.

These five steps are very important when it comes to understanding social media and what it can offer a company. For a company to complete these five steps takes a while and also asks for some experience. However, it is important for a useful adaptation of social media that a company is aware of the different factors at stake.

Building a community on social media is very effective to be able to link customers and to connect to customers on a daily basis. Doing so makes people more involved with the company and more likely to contribute to the company. Also, creating a community may result in people having a feeling of responsibility towards the community based on their relations with other members. Building such a community, however, is not as easy as it might seem. Between different companies, the number of followers reached through social media platforms differs a lot. For example, there are companies with over a million followers on Twitter or Facebook, yet there also companies who have as little as 500 followers.

Because the use of social media by customers is voluntary, and the community arises because of interactions among members over time, organizations need to take explicit steps to build a community (Culnan et al., 2010). One aspect that an organization needs to create, is an infrastructure, which enables and supports a community in their VCE. This infrastructure needs to help to attract and retain participants and potential customers. Some aspects of this infrastructure are content, recognition of contributions of community members, formal policies and respecting the norms and policies of public social media platforms.

Absorptive Capacity means that a company needs to recognize and acquire new knowledge and to subsequently be able to exploit any knowledge provided by their customers (Culnan et al., 2010). The most sufficient way to benefit from a VCE, is by both having a thriving community and being able as an organization to process or respond to the message of their customers. Prior to social media was traditional media. Traditional media differs a lot from social media in the sense that social media is public, whereas traditional media was private between the customer and the organization. Due to this difference a lot of traditional methods of customer service and interaction has changed. Therefore, each company entering social media has to re-adjust traditional strategies. For a company to develop absorptive capacity, it first has to assign formal responsibility for monitoring the content of social media. Next, the organization needs to develop formal systems and rules used by employees to process

incoming social media messages. Furthermore, organizations need to decide how reports about social media transactions will be created, shared, and used by the organization (Culnan et al., 2010).

2.1.7 The use of social media from a consumer perspective The previous section described the development of social media from a business perspective. However, from the consumer viewpoint, there have been many changes as well. The information provided in this section is mainly based on the findings of Landert, in the book Pragmatics of Social Media by Hoffmann, C., & Bublitz, W.

Before the public became a consumer of social media, it was the audience of media in general. The people formerly known as the audience are those who were on the receiving end of a media system that ran one way, in a broadcasting pattern, with high entry fees and a few firms competing to speak very loudly, while the rest of the population listened in isolation from one another (Mandiberg, 2012). Today, this situation has been completely changed, as there has been a shift in the relationship between consumers and the firms. Whereas previously, consumers only received media input from a larger professional text producer, now they are able to communicate among each other and also back to the text producer. There are three perspectives that are relevant when looking at participation as user involvement.

The first concept is ‘interaction’, which refers to the exchange of messages between participants (Landert, 2017). This means that if participant A writes something to participant B, participant B is able to respond and participant A will be able to receive this. This means that the communication needs to be a two-way-channel in order to be interaction. On social media, this is very much so the case. Many platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc., give the opportunity for the participants to communicate with each other and respond to each other directly through the platform. This is different from previous media sources, as participants were not able to directly communicate with other participants.

The second concept that attributes to participation as user involvement is ‘participation’. Social participation goes beyond mere interaction. It involves a certain degree of power, which means that participants not only have the opportunity to exchange messages, but that their messages also have an effect or, more precisely, that participants have influence on social organisation and social processes (Carah and Louw 2015: 231; Stein 2013). This does not mean that the development of social media has led to more democratisation. This is due 16

to two reasons: (1) not everyone has internet access, and (2) access to social media is sufficient for sharing messages with a large public, but whether these messages are read and whether authors are able to exercise influence through them is far from guaranteed (Landert, 2017). Before the rise of social media, there was no possibility for such participation.

Finally, the third concept is ‘involvement’, which means that individuals engage with content, most of the time on an emotional aspect. Most of the time when involvement is present, consumers are also actively interacting and participating. However, involvement can also be used more specifically to refer to internal states and emotional engagement of participants, as well as to characteristics of texts that are associated with emotional engagement (Landert, 2017). Involvement is more difficult to analyse on a platform, as it is hard to see from their message whether or not a consumer was emotionally affected or not.

These three concepts help to understand how consumer use a platform and communicate with each other. The three concepts can co-exist and are very often interlinked with each other. This section shows how consumers interact with social media and on which levels they can do so. This will contribute to the later study when analysing consumer behaviour on social platforms.

2.2. How is the development of social media and the development of CSR interrelated? 2.2.1 What is Corporate Social Responsibility? This section aims to define and explain the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility, based on Wayne Visser (2011). To be responsible is to be proactive in the world, to be sensitive to the interconnections, and to be willing to do something constructive, as a way of giving back (Visser, 2011). This means that the task of getting something to change, is in one’s own hands. To take responsibility means that one takes action to change something, because one feels the need to do this. In short, responsibility is the choice society makes to respond with care.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a more specific type of responsibility and can be defined as ‘the way in which business consistently creates shared value in society through economic development, good governance, stakeholder responsiveness and environmental improvement’ (Visser, 2011). This means that CSR is an approach done by businesses in order to build, rather than destroy, economic, social, human, and natural capital. Whether a CSR strategy is beneficial or not should depend on whether the community and/or ecosystem is getting better or worse. This seems very obvious, however in practice it shows that this might not be as clear cut. On the micro-level, a CSR strategy might seem as a success, yet on the macro-level social, environmental and ethical health is in decline (Visser, 2011).

Why is it then that corporations need to be involved in improving social and economic structures? In today’s world, more than half of the Top 100 economies are multinational corporations (Visser, 2011). This means that corporations have a huge impact on the economies. However, the corporations are subject to rather limited rules and regulations. As a result, many corporations are in fact ‘cost externalization machines’, this means that they will naturally and obsessively try to avoid paying for any negative human, community, and/or environmental costs that they impose on society (Visser, 2011). This leads to serious issues, and without the help of these corporations, there is only so little the rest of the economies can do.

Implementing CSR strategies has become more and more important to companies as part of their business strategy. The KPMG (2013) survey reveals that reporting about CSR actions is a mainstream practice worldwide, undertaken by more than 70 per cent of the 4,100 companies KPMG surveyed in 2013 (Elving et al., 2015). From here we can conclude that

many corporations nowadays are using CSR strategies. Therefore, this is an important phenomenon to analyse, as the concept is relatively new in the business world and therefore little research has yet been done on the matter. This research will not so much focus on CSR strategies in general, however it will take a critical look at the different effects of communicating CSR strategies to the general public.

2.2.2 Development of CSR This section will continue to build upon the work provided by Visser (2011). Corporate Social Responsibility is not a new phenomenon in the business world, however, it has taken on a new meaning since the beginning of the 21st century. CSR is a counterreaction to the ‘Age of Greed’. This was the age that began when the first financial derivatives were traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in 1972 and peaked with Lehman’s collapse in 2008 (Visser, 2011). During this era, the ‘American dream’ was the central economical motivation and being greedy and dreaming bigger was the key to success, according to Visser. This means that everything involving in business had to be both time and money efficient. Although this era has led to great economic wealth, it has also led to many problems. Most of these problems are now well known by the general public, for example the climate change, social inequality, poor working conditions, etc. After the collapse of Lehman Brothers, this era was interrupted. The crisis has led to huge financial problems and unemployment on a global scale. The financial crisis that started in 2008, gradually diminished the ‘Age of Greed’.

Now that this era has faded, there is a shift in managing corporations. The public has become more sceptical towards the bankers, who were partly blamed for the recent financial crisis. Corporations have to adjust their strategies to be able to regain the trust from the public. In order for the corporations to be accepted, they need to take into account the working conditions of their workforce, the general community they work for, the environment that they work in etc. Instead of earning as much profit, corporations now need to focus on more factors than they previously did. This shows that we now have entered a new era: The Age of Responsibility (Visser, 2013).

2.2.3 Corporate Communication on CSR and social media This research will continue to look at how CSR strategies are communicated to the outside world. The theories discussed in Corporate Communication: the bad, the ugly and the good (2015) by J.L. Elving, U. Golob, K. Podnar, A. Ellerup-Nielsen, and C. Thomson, will provide the foundation for this section.

As the use of Corporate Social Responsibility-strategies has grown over the past decade, it seems logical that the communication on CSR has grown also. A research report prepared by the MIT Sloan Management Review and BCG (Kiron et al. , 2015) shows that communication on sustainability has increased in the last four years, that it is often communicated and measured through clear key performance indicators and quite firmly put on the top management agenda (65 percent companies in 2014 compared to 46 per cent in 2010) (Elving et al., 2015). This shows that CSR communication has increasingly gained importance. The public is increasingly aware of CSR and their expectations of companies implementing CSR strategies therefore also rise. Communicating about their CSR strategies is then very important, as the public needs to be informed in order for the company to fulfil the expectations set by the public.

However, CSR communication can be risky to a company as well. If the public suspects the company of unethical behaviour, deliberately hiding these actions by communicating on their CSR strategies, might lead to adverse reactions of the public. Therefore, it is very important for a company to minimize stakeholder scepticism (Du et al., 2010). The public views CSR as something good and it would not want it to be used as a PR stunt. The insistence on consistency among actions and communication is explicitly expressed in terms like ‘greenwashing’, ‘blue-washing’, ‘pink-washing’, ‘identity washing’ and ‘window dressing’ (Elving and van Vuuren, 2011). These concepts all boil down to the same definition: companies that engage in CSR, however these CSR strategies and its communication clash with the truth (Alves, 2009). This may indicate that corporations make certain CSR claims, however in reality these claims do not line up with the actual actions of the company. For a company, it is very important to not only use its CSR strategies as promotion, but companies need to be careful that their CSR strategies match the rest of their company.

Du et al. (2010) propose that there are two kinds of motives for companies to influence the stakeholder’s attribution towards their CSR: extrinsic or intrinsic. Extrinsic, is when a company is seen to focus mainly on profit maximisation. Intrinsic however, is when a 20

company is perceived to genuinely care about their CSR strategies and to have honest motives (Du et al., 2010). A company that is perceived by its stakeholders to have intrinsic motives, leads to a more positive reference on their corporate image and its character. Yet, if a company is perceived to have extrinsic motives, stakeholders tend to be less favourable towards the company and this may lead to scepticism.

Furthermore, companies have different strategies towards their CSR communication. The paper will focus on two perspectives on CSR communication: ‘strategic action’ and ‘communicative action’, which are developed by Habermas (1984). Although this research will not engage with the broader theories set out by Habermas in which these concepts are embedded, these two strategies are most suitable for this research and are relevant to analyse further. Important to note here, is that both these perspectives are quite extreme, however it gives a clear indication of which sides there are to corporate communication.

Strategic action is aimed towards the success of the company. In the case of strategic action an actor tries to influence the decisions of the other party in order to achieve a specific outcome (Habermas, 1984). This means, that it is not about understanding the other party, yet it mainly focusses on influencing the other party. Language is therefore a very important factor, as through language one party is capable of influencing the other party by choosing the right words and timing. In terms of CSR and CSR communication this would entail persuading others about the ‘good’ actions or using the language as a medium of self- presentation of the organization as responsible and sustainable (Elvin et al., 2015). Using this strategy comes very close to manipulating the other party using language.

However, using the strategy of communication action generates cooperation. The aim is not to pursuit one’s own goals per se but rather to seek a common understanding and coordinate actions by way of agreement, meaning that here ‘the central concept of interpretation refers in the first instance to negotiating definitions of the situation which admit of consensus’ (Habermas, 1984). This means that when a company communicates about their CSR, their goal is to achieve understanding about social and environmental issues and their way of improving these.

These two approaches lead to two different views on CSR and its communication. Some claim that the current state of CSR and CSR communication can be viewed from what scholars refer to as the instrumental perspective, or which Habermas describes as strategic

action, where business dictates the game and its discourses on CSR prevail in society (Brammer et al., 2012). This means that business has organised a system in which the business dominates over the individuals (being consumers and clients). This would mean that individuals are not likely to investigate the real CSR strategy of a company, however, individuals would ‘just’ accept that what is given to them through their communication. In this frame, the business discourse is trying to institutionalize CSR and sustainability by pursuing CSR purely as business case seeking instrumental benefits. (Carroll and Shabama, 2010).

The communication action approach shows a very different view on the matter. As stakeholders are becoming increasingly more critical and more aware of business practices, businesses are forced to adopt to these critics. The global research shows that about one-third of stakeholders demands of business to change the way they operate to align with environmental and social needs of the society (CONE, 2013). These social movements have successfully caused for change in the corporate world. For example, Kiron et al. (2015) report that 90 per cent of the companies worldwide agree that collaborations are needed for sustainability with 47 per cent stating they already engage in some form of collaboration to tackle these issues. This example clearly shows the impact of the public and the shift from purely profit generation to a more diverse spectrum of goals.

Using the first approach of strategic action, the main communication of a corporation is through a one-way channel, mainly from business to consumer. However, using the second approach of communication action, a two-way channel arises, where you can see that there is communication both from company to consumer and consumer to company. With the development of social media, the two-way channel is better facilitated, giving consumers an easy option to talk to the business. However, even though the development has simplified this interaction, it does not necessarily mean that companies are actually involving their consumer in their CSR strategies. They are also able to use social media as an extra source of communicating, however they can neglect feedback or critics by the consumer to a certain extent.

The previous section also explains how these two strategies can be identified. A company may communicate on their social media about their CSR strategies, however, it may choose to not react to customers through this channel. For example, Company X posts about their support in cleaning the ocean, yet the company does not respond to any critical question 22

commented on this post. This means that the company uses social media still as a one-way channel: from business to stakeholder. If company X would react to either positive or critical comments on the post, there would be a two-way channel through which is communicated. This would indicate that the company implies a strategy on communicative action. Communicative action in this example, would mean that there is a two-way channel established through which the corporation communicates, this does not directly mean that the company will also listen to its consumers in terms of changing its business strategies.

3. Method The third research question is addressed via a case study research with digital ethnography as the dominant research method. Digital ethnography is a relative new form of ethnography, which is developed as ‘a response to the need to study communities in which the use of electronic communications such as provided by computer network are routine’ (Hine, 1994). This means that digital ethnography attempts to study the different cultures and communities of the online-world. This type of research is suitable for this topic, as it analyses and uses current online-data, which will be analysed on a small scale. This paper explains digital ethnography on the basis of the book Digital ethnography: principles and practice from Pink, Horst, Postill, Hjorth, Lewis and Tacchi (2016).

Ethnography in itself is a traditional research method. Ethnography has always been a type of research in which contextuality has been of great importance (Pink et al., 2016). This means that how ethnography is used, is dependent on the context in which the researcher works. There is a diverse range of definitions that aim to explain what ethnography is, varying between a more open interpretation and a more prescriptive interpretation (Pink, 2015). This paper focusses on ethnography as a more open interpretation, therefore, it uses O’Reilly’s definition of what ethnography entails: ‘iterative–inductive research (that evolves in design through the study), drawing on a family of methods … that acknowledges the role of theory as well as the researcher’s own role and that views humans as part object/part subject’ (2005: 3). Ethnography therefore is a way of researching in which there are some ground rules – which will be elaborated on more in the following paragraphs – however, the interpretation of the researcher determines a large part of the research.

Ethnography is essentially based upon the idea that researchers should have ‘direct and sustained’ contact with human agents (O’Reilly, 2005: 3), however as this paper will use digital ethnography, some of these basic concepts will change. As a researcher, one is not directly in contact with the human agents, however one functions as a mediator that aims to analyse the behaviour of human agents online. Analysing human agents in the ‘online’ world instead of the ‘offline’ world holds for a change in the environment for both the human agents as well as the researcher. Therefore, digital ethnography has different practices than ethnography has (Pink et al., 2016). Yet still, digital ethnography is just like ethnography, different for every researcher as it depends on the context and discipline in which the researcher operates. 24

According to Pink et al., there are five key principles for doing digital ethnography. The first principle is ‘multiplicity’, which holds that there is more than one way to engage with the digital world. The central idea behind this concept, is that digital ethnography can be used for different disciplines using a different framework. The second principle is ‘non-digital-centric- ness’, this means that the digital is de-centred in digital ethnography. The general assumption behind this is that ‘the idea of studying media in a way that always puts media at the centre of analysis would be problematic because it would pay too little attention to the ways in which media are part of wider sets of environments and relations.’ (Pink et al., 2016). The third aspect is ‘openness’, defining digital ethnography as an open event. This means that digital ethnography is seen as a collaborative process, in the sense that researchers are depended on others and not only the research him-/herself. The fourth principle is ‘reflexivity’, indicating that digital ethnography involves reflexive practice. This means that as the researcher is context-dependent, it is important that one is aware of the influences this has on the research. The last principle central to digital ethnography is ‘unorthodox’, meaning that it requires attention to alternative forms of communicating. As digital ethnography may potentially open doors that have not yet been discovered, it is important to note how it enables a researcher to go beyond academia, disciples and the standard written production of academic scholarship (Pink et al., 2016).

The key principles of Pink et al. (2016) are established in this research. Th first principle emphasizes the multiplicity of this type of research. This research analyses General Mills' social media accounts through three different categories, which will be explained more elaborately in the next section. The second principle is established by analysing social media from a wider perspective. This research measures the impact on corporations and consumers. The third principle of 'openness' is set, due to the use of open social media accounts, which can be analysed and used by anyone. The fourth principle is established by explaining in detail why and how these platforms are analysed in the next sections. This provides insights into the interpretation of the posts by this research. The last principle is 'unorthodox', which is mostly addressed during the chapter 6.2 'Discussion'. This chapter discusses the implications and/or further research on this paper.

This paper has set its theoretical framework in previous sections, which contribute as the foundation of this research. Understanding these concepts and theories will be useful to understand the analysis and results of this case study research. This research will continue by

focusing on one specific company called General Mills, that will be introduced in terms of what the company does and how it implements CSR. From there, the social media activities will be analysed, focusing on General Mills’ Facebook profile, Instagram and Twitter account. The main focus when analysing their social media accounts will be what type of posts General Mills publishes and their engagement; meaning how consumers react towards the CSR-related posts and how consumers react towards each other. When analysing these platforms, the main findings will be categorised, to see what the different types of posts and reactions are. From there, the results from communicating CSR through social media will be formulated for both General Mills as well as its consumers. The section ‘Initial explorations’ will elaborate more on the details of this research.

4. General Mills Case Study A case study research makes it possible to look at the influence of communication about CSR on social media in a very detailed manner. This will lead to small-scale results, which may contribute to the communication about CSR for individual companies and consumers. The case study company is General Mills, www.generalmills.com. This company has a very strong CSR strategy in combination with actively-used social media accounts. According to CSRHub, General Mills is given a 94% on its CSR involvement, making it one of the highest ranked companies in the world in terms of CSR (2019). This makes it interesting to analyse General Mills, as CSR plays a dominant role in their business-strategy.

4.1 About General Mills This section will mainly describe the company General Mills. This will help to understand what type of company this paper will deal with and in what context the company can be placed. The information provided in this section is based upon the website of General Mills.

General Mills was founded in 1866 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, by Cadwallader Washburn. The company started when Washburn build a flour mill at St. Anthony Falls, which soon became the largest mill of the whole west of Buffalo, New York. James Ford Bell became president of the Washburn Crosby Company in 1925. During the First Wold War, Bell had to look for several financiers, making sure that the company could continue to work. Bell was able to find these financiers, and on June 20, 1928, ‘General Mills’ was born. Public trading debuted on the New York Stock Exchange on Nov. 30, 1928 at $65 per share. The price climbed to $86 in early trading (www.generalmills.com, n.d.). During the Great Depression, General Mills was one of the few companies that flourished, with net income rising and its stock paying relentless dividends.

During the times when Bill was president of General Mills, he set up a research department named Kix. Also, Bill used the development of the radio dominantly to promote General Mill’s products. During World War II, General Mills had an important role in the U.S. production of food. During that time, all of the U.S. industry was focused on helping the military. By the end of the war, General Mills had expanded as an appliance business, yet this part was sold in 1954. In that same year, General Mills expanded its roots to Canada. Besides its appliance business, General Mills also made guns during the war and later worked on the submersible ALVIN in 1962, which was built to discover the Titanic (www.generalmills.com, n.d.). 27

In 1961, Edwin W. Rawlings was named General Mills president. From 1961 to 1969, General Mills bought 37 companies in the U.S. and abroad, of which most were non-food businesses (www.generalmills.com, n.d.). In 1983, Pillsbury bought Häagen-Dazs, which later became part of General Mills. Häagen-Dazs has become a popular ice-cream brand on a global scale, which suggests that this is an important addition for General Mills. Although General Mills was also expanding in the toy-industry during that time, the company realised that it wanted to continue focusing on where it all started: quality food. This was seen with their cereals called Cheerios, which was clinically shown to lower cholesterol levels when included in a low-fat diet. That earned the right to bear the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's heart healthy claim (www.generalmills.com, n.d.).

During the beginnings of the 2000s, the two competitors Pillsbury and General Mills started a merger. From its milling roots, General Mills had leveraged its grain expertise into breakfast cereals, cake mixes and grain-based snacks. Pillsbury had evolved to develop unmatched expertise in refrigerated dough products. It also had a bakeries and foodservice business, and a growing international portfolio (www.generalmills.com, n.d.). On October 31, 2001, the New General Mills marketed. Sanger was the CEO of General Mills at that time.

In 2000, General Mills acquired Small Planet Foods, which is part of General Mill’s CSR strategy. By 2016, General Mills had eight natural and organic lines, making the company the third-largest U.S. maker of natural and organic food. The current CEO of General Mills is Ken Powell.

Currently, General Mills has a broad range of food-products. The following section will provide a list of all the products that are owned by General Mills per food-category:

BAKING PRODUCTS Betty Crocker, Bisquick, Gold Medal, Immaculate Baking, Jus- Rol, Knack & Back, La Salteña, Pillsbury, Pillsbury Atta and Yoki CEREALS Cascadian Farm, Cheerios, Chex, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Fiber one, Kix, Lucky Charms, Monsters, Total, Trix and Wheaties DOUGH/PASTRIES Jus-Rol, Knack & Back and Pillsbury FRUIT Cascadian Farm ICE CREAM Häagen-Dazs

MEALS Annie’s, Betty Crocker, Green Giant, Helper, Old El Paso, V. Pearl, Wanchai Ferry and Yoki ORGANIC/NATURAL Annie’s, Cascadian Farm, EPIC, Food Should Taste Good, Immaculate Baking, Lärabar, Liberté, Mountain High and Muir Glen PASTA Annie’s, La Salteña, Latina and Wanchai Ferry PET Blue Buffalo PIZZA Annie’s and Totino’s/ Jeno’s SNACKS Annie’s, Bugles, Cascadian Farm, Chex, EPIC, Fiber one, Food Should Taste Good, Fruit Snacks, Gardetto’s, Lärabar, Nature Valley and Yoki SOUPS Annie’s and Progresso SPICES Parampara and Yoki VEGETABLES Cascadian Farm, Green Giant and Muir Glen YOGHURT Annie’s, Liberté, Mountain High, YoPlait and YoPlait France Source: www.Generalmills.com

4.2 General Mills’ CSR strategy According to their website (www.generalmills.com), General Mills aims to focus on four specific goals within their CSR strategy; Food, Planet, Community, and Workplace. Each of these goals are again split up in different strategies. General Mills describes their CSR strategy in their yearly Global Responsibility Report and on their website.

General Mills’ main focus for ‘Food’ is to improve nutritional values, certified food safety and producing organic food. For ‘Planet’, General Mills aims to decrease their gas emissions, use sustainably sourced ingredients and advance regenerative agriculture practices. When it comes to ‘the community’, they donate each year for over 100 million dollars to charitable causes and they donate full meals and improve livelihoods of people in cocoa and vanilla farming communities in Africa. For their ‘workplace’, General Mills has reduced their total injury rate, have equal positions between men and women and train leaders through their Engaging Leader initiative.

General Mills has a scientific health and nutrition expertise – Bell Institute of Health and Nutrition – where product development is promoted. The Bell Institute of Health and Nutrition mainly focuses on the following aspects: 29

- Nutrition science research; - Insights on regulatory matters; - Health communications to customers, nutrition communities and consumers; - Recommendations for product innovation and reformulation.

General Mills has divided different tasks among different segments within the company. Marketing communication is done so by the Chief Marketing Officer, whereas the Chief Innovation, Technology and Quality officer is responsible for product health and safety, and product labelling. Also, General Mills has a Health and Wellness Advisory Council, which is a group of experts that provide perspective from academia and research institutes.

Figure 2: [Leadership and Governance of General Mills]. Reprinted from General Mills website, by General Mills, 2019, retrieved from https://globalresponsibility.generalmills.com/HTML1/general_mills- global_responsibility_2019_0015.htm This research will mainly focus on what their CSR communication is on social media, therefore, it will mostly focus on ‘product marketing and communication’ of General Mills.

4.3 Social Media Platforms: an introduction The case study research will analyse three separate social media platforms. These three platforms are Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The following sections will provide an introduction to these platforms, in terms of how they operate, and their influence on society.

Facebook Facebook has grown to be the largest and most popular social networking site globally. It was founded in 2004 by a Harvard Student named Mark Zuckerberg. Initially, Facebook was meant only for Harvard students to connect those that lived on campus, however quickly it had grown larger to eventually become a network site that connects everyone around the world. Facebook is now a multi-billion-dollar business, due to effective expansion based on diversification, language, and innovation (MarketLine, 2012). Facebook main source of 30

income is through advertising; matching businesses to potential customers by implementing algorithms. To continue growing, Facebook’s main aim is to keep innovating and improving in line with the latest trends and tastes. According to the most recent numbers provided by www.omnicoreagency.com, the total number of monthly active users is 2.23 billion worldwide. A little over half of the users is female (53%), and 47% is male. For the year 2018, 72% of the online users on Facebook are between the age of 18-29, 84% between the age of 30-49, 72% of the online users have Facebook between the age of 50-64 and 62% of the online seniors have Facebook (age 65+). On average, 55 million status updates are made every day in 2018.

Just like most social networking sites, Facebook allows for the users to create an online personality by building a personal profile. On this profile, users list their basic, personal information (name, birthdate, place of birth, hometown etc.) and users can add photos, videos, links and other extras on these profiles as well (Stefanick, 2011). Facebook also offers a ‘wall’ where users can post ‘status updates’, which are messages that can be seen by other users which they are connected with. These connections are made by adding other users as their ‘friends’. Friends can view each other’s profiles and post messages on each other’s walls (Stefanick, 2011). Also, friends can ‘tag’ other friends in photos that they are in, or they can share events with each other.

Facebook is mainly used by users to connect with people they know, or used to know. Furthermore, Facebook is useful to form groups of individuals with a like-minded interest in something. However, the biggest role of Facebook, is to create virtual communities. These communities have a broad range of different forms, yet they all have changed the speed with which information can be shared and how people connect with each other to share common interests (Stefanick, 2011).

For businesses, Facebook is mainly used to build a community and advertise for customers (Funk, 2012). Businesses have a different page than normal users have. A business page on Facebook is provided with information of the business (description, market-segment, location, website link, updates etc.). As a user, if one is interested in a certain business, he/she is able to ‘like’ this page. By ‘liking’ the page, you are updated on the business through your wall. For a business, Facebook offers the most customisable page, compared to other networks. The platform makes it possible for businesses to support text posts, photo sharing, video sharing, organising events, groups, application and more, which results in social calls 31

to action. These social calls to action result in a strong ripple effect that can be beneficial for businesses in terms of reach (Funk, 2012).

One major topic of discussion of this social media platform is its privacy-settings. In these discussions the value of privacy takes a central role, but as it does not directly impact the present research, this will not be discussed here.

Instagram Instagram is a social networking site of which its main aim is to share photos and videos. Instagram is a smartphone application, which provides a platform for users to capture, edit and share photos and videos (Manikonda and Kambhampati, 2014). Its main essence is to provide visual communication, rather than communication through words. Whereas Facebook started as a platform that could be used using Web 2.0 on a computer, Instagram started later as a platform which could only be used using a mobile device, such as a smartphone. The platform was launched in October 2010, and was an immediate hit. By the end of 2013, Instagram had already more than 150 million active users, which posted on average 55 million photos per day (Manikonda and Kambhampati, 2014). Just like Facebook, Instagram’s main source of income of from running advertisements on its platform. According to the most recent numbers provided by www.omnicoreagency.com, the total number of daily active Instagram users is at 500 million worldwide and the amount of photos and videos uploaded per day is more than 100 million. Furthermore, 68% of the Instagram users is female in 2018, compared to 32% males. Out of all the teens in the U.S, 72% are a user of Instagram in 2018. Among teens, Instagram is used more often than Facebook and Twitter. However, for other generations this is not the case, as for the U.S. in 2018, 59% of internet users between the ages of 18 and 29 used Instagram, and 33% of the internet users between the age of 30 and 49 used Instagram. This means that the older generations are less likely to be on Instagram, compared to teenagers.

Users on Instagram are less likely to add a lot of personal information on their profile, as the platform does not specifically ask for it like Facebook does. Furthermore, users can connect with other users by ‘following’ the other user (which is similar to ‘friending’ someone on Facebook). However, if user A ‘follows’ user B, user B does not automatically ‘follows’ user A, which means that Instagram’s social network is asymmetric (Manikonda and Kambhampati, 2014). Whereas Instagram started as a platform to share photos and videos, it now also provides the opportunity to talk to someone directly in private using ‘direct

messages’. Furthermore, Instagram recently added the ‘story’ feature, where followers can see a photo or video for a 24-hour timeframe, after which it deletes itself.

When the users of Instagram post a photo or video, they have the possibility to also add a caption, including hashtags using the ‘#’ symbol (which aims to categorize posts) and mention other users by using the ‘@’ symbol. In general, the content posted by users of Instagram are visible for all users of the platform, unless their profile is set to a ‘private account’, which means that only ‘followers’ that are accepted by the specific user can see the content. Users see photos and videos mostly by viewing a core page showing a ‘stream’ of the latest photos and videos from all their friends (Manikonda and Kambhampati, 2014). Users can respond to these posts by ‘liking’ the post, or by commenting underneath the post. On a user’s ‘update’ page, the user can keep track of the people that have liked or commented on the user’s post.

Instagram promotes a more informal setting compared to Facebook and Twitter, due to idea of sharing ‘snapshots’ (Schroeder, 2013). These snapshots can best be described as ‘a straightforward, generally un-posed photograph of everyday life’ (Schroeder, 2013). This is caught up upon by businesses, which are using this platform to advertise in this type of way as well. Previously, companies advertised products by sharing highly posed studio photos, however now they can promote their products using these snapshots. These types of photos promote user-generated photos, which results in a more ‘sincere and less directive strategic style’ (Schoeder, 2013). Not only companies itself do this on their own platform, they also use ‘influencers’ to promote their products.

Similar to Facebook, Instagram also struggles with privacy settings of the users and has been under more and more pressure over the years by society.

Twitter Twitter launched in 2006 and has quickly grown to one of the largest social media platforms available today. Within six years, Twitter had over 500 million registered users, and the platform generated 340 million tweets daily (Lunden, 2012). According to the most recent numbers provided by www.omnicoreagency.com, there were 326 million monthly active users on Twitter in 2018. A little more males use Twitter than females do, as 24% of all internet male users use Twitter, compared to 21% of the females. Most of the Twitter users are between the age of 18 and 29 (37%), and 25% of the users are between the age of 30-49. Interestingly too is, that 74% of all the Twitter users claim that they use the platform to be 33

updated on news. This indicates that Twitter is less likely to be used as a network to connect with people they know, yet more used as a platform that provides insides and news from accounts that people are interested in.

On Twitter, users are able to create a profile, on which little personal information is shared, unless the users deliberately choses to add this data. Twitter’s main focus is to provide the user to write small texts of 140 characters per post. These posts are shared with the people that follow you. The users of Twitter are likely to also follow people that they do not know in person, yet want to be updated on or find inspirational in some sense. As Twitter is part of the microblogging services, the phenomenon where people follow other people that is not in their direct social network, is very common (Hoffman and Bublitz, 2017). The social network of Twitter is also asymmetric, which means that the people you follow, do not have to follow you back. The posts people place on their profile, can also be found on a ‘wall’, which is similar to the one described for Facebook and Instagram. Only on Twitter, it is mainly based upon texts, whereas on Instagram its photos and videos.

Twitter is very often perceived as a platform made to share simple status updates and to engage in phatic communication (Miller, 2008). However, Twitter has had a huge impact on many occasions, e.g., for activists who have relied on the platform during political and social protests. An example of such a protest is during the Occupy Movement in 2011, against economic inequality. Twitter has been a major communication channel through which this protest was communicated. Furthermore, Twitter has been used to analyse customer behaviour, detecting and tracking complex real-time events and disease propagation (Bruns, Weller, and Lewandaowski, 2014). For this reason, Twitter has served many purposes in different contexts.

According to Funk (2012), Twitter is for business more interesting when having a Business- to-business (B2B) business, rather than a business-to-customer (B2C) business. Twitter allows for businesses to easier communicate directly to followers either through public messages or direct messages. Twitter makes it very easy to find experts, bloggers, tastemakers, real-world journalists, specialists, and consultants (Funk, 2012). Businesses can easily use these accounts by following them, retweeting them and starting to comment on them. This makes their own platform more interesting, by sharing knowledge of professionals. The audience on Twitter is mostly following a business to be informed. Due to

easy access to professionals and with a suiting content, business can make use of Twitter through formal engagement.

Twitter deals with the same privacy issues as Facebook and Instagram. Although the limited privacy settings have been advantageous for academic studies in the behaviour of customers on Twitter, and also for marketeers, for the users of Twitter it is more harmful. Due to the limited options Twitter provides in its privacy settings, users have to agree for the most part what Twitter has set as general rules for the platform. Users therefore can choose to either use the platform and to hand in much of their privacy, or to not use Twitter and miss out on other benefits they might have from the platform. Furthermore, there are many users of social media, and thus also of Twitter, that are not aware of the complications these privacy issues have on their own life. For this research, the privacy issues regarding social media will not be further looked into, as this research will aim to focus on the different platforms of social media in regard to CSR and its impact.

4.4 Social Media of General Mills General Mills is very active in its communication to the outside world. The company has a very accessible website, where they elaborate on the key activities of the company. Also, there are multiple interviews that can be found with current and previous employees of General Mills. Furthermore, General Mills publishes an annual report where more than just finances are discussed. This gives an indication to where General Mills’ money flows to. As already mentioned before, General Mills also issues the Global Responsibility Report each year, where they show what the company has been doing with their CSR that year. Just like most companies, General Mills uses advertisements through traditional media to communicate to the public. For this research however, neither of these communication tools will be analysed, as this paper will fully focus on their social media accounts.

General Mills is active on multiple social media platforms. This research will focus on three of these platforms, namely Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. All three of these platforms are Social Networking Sites as explained earlier in this paper. However, each of these platforms have a different tool to do so. Instagram is mostly about sharing photos and videos with a short description. Twitter is mainly about sharing a short message of less than 140 characters. Facebook is used to share longer messages with it can also include pictures and videos. General Mills has a relatively strong reach through social media, as their platforms and

interactions are intensive. On Twitter, their account has around 95K followers. On Instagram, their account has 36.6K followers. Their Facebook profile has over 87K likes (March, 2019).

General Mills’ main focus on social media is to communicate about their products, CSR, their employees or other information regarding General Mills. For most posts, they have a visual added to the posts, e.g. a photo or a video. The text provided in the posts are in general friendly and formal, with mostly relevant information regarding the post. General Mills choses to switch between long texts and shorts texts between the posts. Long texts provide more of a storyline, whereas short texts are more informative. The content of the posts differs for some part between the platforms, however, they sometimes also post the same thing on each platform.

In a previous section, Culnan et al. (2010) described two general characteristics a company should have when implementing social media: (1) The firm attracts a critical mass of participants who form a community and who engage with the firm or other community members on an ongoing basis, and (2) the firm develops processes to benefit from the content created by its customers. For General Mills, one could presume that they have met their first characteristic, as the platforms of General Mills contain a lot of activity and are reached by numerous people. Whether or not General Mills benefits from this social media activity will be further analysed and can therefore not yet be stated.

4.4 Initial explorations The research is based upon an analysis and categorisations of the social media posts and comments. These categorisations are based upon the initial explorations of the social media platforms of General Mills. The first section provides some insights into the different types of posts based on the content of the posts, for the three platforms. This will provide an indication for the communication from General Mills to consumer. The second section provides an analysis of the relationship from consumer to business, by analysing the comments published underneath each CSR-related post, on each platform. The last section presents an initial exploration on the relationship among consumers. Here, the reactions to other comments underneath each CSR-related post will be analysed per social media platform.

Figure 3: [A CSR-related post of General Mills]. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/GeneralMills/ . Screenshot by author.

Figure 4: [A product-related post of General Mills]. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/GeneralMills/ . Screenshot by author.

Figure 5: [An Employee-related post of General Mills]. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/GeneralMills/ . Screenshot by author. From the initial categorisation, four different themes have been made: CSR, products, employees, and other. The theme ‘CSR’ is for this research the most important one. A post will be categorised as CSR, when it is specifically about a CSR-strategy that General Mills itself is working on. This means, that some posts about campaigns that are done so by others (e.g., a competition that General Mills holds, but the participants do all the work) will not be added to this theme. An example of a CSR-related post can be seen in Figure 3. Furthermore, the theme ‘products’ will contain any post that has something directly to do with a specific product of General Mills. An example of such a post can be seen in Figure 4. The content which is placed in ‘employees’, specifically focuses on posts that highlight what a certain employee of General Mills contributes to the company. Figure 5 exemplifies a post regarding this topic. Posts that do not fit any of these three categories, will be placed in the category ‘other’. The categorisation of content into these themes will be done so separately for each platform: Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The timeframe of this analysis is between the 1st of January, 2018 until the 26th of April, 2019. This will give an indication about the amount of posts that contain CSR-content, compared to other types of content. Also, it will show whether each platform is used differently or whether they are used the same.

Second, the paper provides an analysis that will look at the direct reactions on these CSR- posts by consumers. Then the paper will categorise these reactions into different categories. These categories are the following:

- Positive and related: This means that the reaction to the post is both positive towards General Mills and relates to the content of the post. For example, when General Mills posts something on volunteering with their employees to pick apples on the farm land, this is the reaction:

Figure 6: [An example of a positive and related reaction]. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/GeneralMills/ . Screenshot by author.

- Positive but unrelated: this means that the reaction to the post is positive towards General Mills, however it has nothing to do with the content of the post. For example, the post of General Mills is concerned with supporting education for children in Africa, whereas this is the comment:

Figure 7: [An example of a positive and unrelated reaction]. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/GeneralMills/ . Screenshot by author.

- Negative and related: this means that the reaction to the post is negative towards General Mills and is related to the content of the post. For example, when General Mills posts something on helping to feed children in Africa, this is the reaction:

Figure 8: [An example of a negative and related reaction]. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/GeneralMills/ . Screenshot by author.

- Negative and unrelated: this means that the reaction to the post is negative towards General Mills, however it is not related to the content of the post. For example, when General Mills posts something on supporting the forest by planting trees, this is the reaction:

Figure 9: [An example of a negative and unrelated reaction]. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/GeneralMills/ . Screenshot by author.

- Unrelated: this means that the reaction to the post is both unrelated to General Mills and to the content of the post. For example, when General Mills posts something about improving the soil of farmland, and someone comments with the following:

Figure 10: [An example of an unrelated reaction]. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/GeneralMills/ . Screenshot by author.

- Not understandable: this means that the reaction to the post was not understandable, in terms of language barriers and/or difficult phrasing. For example:

Figure 11: [An example of a reaction that is not understandable]. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.instagram.com/GeneralMills/ . Screenshot by author.

Next, the paper provides an analysis of the community that is active in reacting to General Mills’ CSR posts. Here, the paper will analyse the people that react on each other’s comments and see what the attitude of consumers is towards each other and General Mills. By doing so, an insight into the relationship between these two parties will be visible. The analysis will be done so on all three social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, and

Twitter. During this research, the paper provides a categorisation consisting of the following themes that seem to be most dominant:

- GM responding to a compliment. This can be when General Mills responding to someone who commented something positive about General Mills. For example:

Figure 12: [An example of General Mills responding to a compliment]. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/GeneralMills/ . Screenshot by author.

- GM responding to a question: this is when a comment asks something to General Mills, and General Mills tries to answer this question. For example:

Figure 13: [An example of General Mills responding to a question]. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/GeneralMills/ . Screenshot by author.

- GM responding to a complaint: this can be when General Mills responses to a comment regarding something negative about the company. For example:

Figure 14: [An example of General Mills responding to a complaint]. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/GeneralMills/ . Screenshot by author.

- Community criticising GM: this can be when the community response to a comment by reacting negative directly towards the company of General Mills. For example:

Figure 15: [An example of the community criticising General Mills]. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/GeneralMills/ . Screenshot by author.

- Community criticising each other: this can be when the community disagrees on each other. For example:

Figure 16: [An example of the community criticising each other]. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/GeneralMills/ . Screenshot by author.

- Community supporting GM: This phenomenon occurs when the community responses to a comment by backing General Mills. For example:

Figure 17: [An example of the community supporting General Mills]. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/GeneralMills/ . Screenshot by author.

- Community supporting each other: this happens when the community let each other know that they agree on each other. For example:

Figure 18: [An example of the community supporting each other]. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/GeneralMills/ . Screenshot by author.

- Community informing each other: this happens when the community reacts to a post by explaining a certain phenomenon. For example:

Figure 19: [An example of the community informing each other]. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/GeneralMills/ . Screenshot by author.

4.5 Analysis This section will provide the data that has been gathered from analysing the social media accounts of General Mills. The analysis is divided into these three different themes, where the data will be presented per platform. For each theme, two tables are provided: (1) a table which consists of the total data in numbers, and (2) a table which provides the data in percentages of the total.

4.5.1 Content of the different platforms General Mills is very active on social media when it comes to posting content. On many occasions, General Mills posted items several times a day, however, on other days they did not post anything at all. In total of all the three platforms, General Mills posted 792 posts between the 1st of January, 2018 and the 26th of April, 2019. Of these posts, 213 were posted in Facebook, 326 were posted on Instagram and 253 were posted on Twitter. This shows that Instagram is posted on most actively, and Facebook and Twitter are posted on almost equally.

Furthermore, in total of these 792 posts, 157 were about CSR. Whereas, 202 were about their products, 93 about their employees and the remaining 340 posts were about something else. This shows that about 19.8% of their total social media activity on these three platforms had CSR-related content. However, between these three platforms there was a difference in the amount of CSR-related posts. On Facebook, 56 of the total 213 posts were about CSR. On Instagram, ‘only’ 30 of the total 326 posts were about this topic and on Twitter, 71 posts of the total 253 were about CSR. This shows that on Instagram, much less on CSR is communicated, whereas on Twitter much more. Facebook is in between these two platforms when it comes to CSR communication.

When analysing the content of their Twitter profile, much more attention was drawn to business results and the belonging numbers. Whereas on Instagram, much more attention was devoted to the products and employees of General Mills. On Facebook, General Mills choses to be a little bit in between these two platforms in terms of content. The posts on Facebook were focused on all different elements; CSR, products, employees and others.

Facebook Instagram Twitter Total CSR 56 30 71 157 Products 39 97 66 202 Employees 29 60 4 93 Other 89 139 112 340 Total 213 326 253 792 Table 1. Amount of posts categorised based on content.

Facebook Instagram Twitter

CSR in % 26.3 14.1 28.1 Products in % 18.3 29.8 26.1 Employees in % 13.6 18.4 0.02 Other in % 41.8 42.6 44.3 Table 2. Amount of posts categorised based on content, in percentages.

Content of the Platforms - Total

CSR Products Employees Other

Figure 20. Pie chart summarising the total posts on the basis of its content, on all three platforms in total.

4.5.2 Reactions to CSR-related posts This section provides a more detailed analysis at the CSR-related posts of General Mills on their social media accounts. As explained in the section ‘Initial Explorations’, there are six different categories in which the different reactions on each CSR-post are placed. In total, there were 839 reactions on their CSR posts. From these, 624 were on Facebook, 90 on Instagram and 125 on Twitter. This shows that for General Mills, most interactions are on 46

Facebook, about 74.4% of the total interactions happen through Facebook. Instagram shows the least interaction, and Twitter a little bit more than Instagram. However, Facebook clearly dominates in terms of interaction.

For General Mills, 421 reactions on social media were positive on their CSR posts. Of these, 400 were also related to the content of the posts, whereas 21 reactions were not related, yet still positive. In total there were 250 negative reactions to their CSR posts, of which 80 were related to the content of the posts and 170 were not related. The remaining 168 reactions were either unrelated to both the company of General Mills and the content of the posts, or were not understandable (e.g. another language). These reactions are therefore not relevant for this research and will not be further analysed.

Interesting to see from this data, is the difference in reactions between the different platforms. Of the total positive and related reactions to the posts, 80,25% is from Facebook, whereas only 15.5% is from Instagram and only 4.25% is from Twitter. This is logical in the sense that Facebook has a lot more reactions too. However, from the total reactions on Facebook, 51.4% is positive and related to the CSR post of General Mills. However, on Twitter ‘only’ 13.6% is positive and related to the CSR post. Instagram shows a large percentage of positive and related interaction on CSR posts, namely 68.9% of the total reactions are positive and related.

On the other hand, there is much less negative feedback relatively speaking on Facebook and Instagram, than there is on Twitter. On Facebook, 149 related and unrelated critics to the CSR posts were published. This is 23.9% of the total reactions on the CSR-posts on Facebook. For Instagram, ‘only’ 9 critical reactions both related and unrelated to the CSR- posts were given. That makes 10% of the total reactions on Instagram. However, on Twitter, there were in total 92 critical reactions published both related and unrelated to the CSR-posts. This is 73.6% of the total reactions on Twitter.

The negative reactions on all three platforms were mainly about two different topics: (1) General Mills is the mother-company of YoPlait. YoPlait sells yoghurt in small cups in supermarkets. These cups are thrown after usage on the street by consumers. Squirrels and other animals get their head stuck in these cups and very often die because of this. This leads to consumers being angry at General Mills for still distributing these cups, as many animals have died from this. The other topic (2) is about GMO’s and other additives in the products of

General Mills. This means that the products are not fully organic and/or modified. This leads to people being angry and scared that there are toxic supplements in the products.

In general, the most positive feedback comes from Instagram. However, this platform also generates the least interaction. On Facebook however, there is much more interaction which is more positive than it is negative. Yet, the interaction on Twitter is much more negative than it is positive. Also, there is much fewer interaction on Twitter and Instagram, than there is on Facebook.

Reactions to CSR Facebook Instagram Twitter Total Positive related 321 62 17 400 Positive unrelated 15 2 4 21 Critical related 68 4 8 80 Critical unrelated 81 5 84 170 Unrelated 128 16 12 156 Not understandable 11 1 0 12 Total 624 90 125 839 Table 3. Amount and type of reactions to CSR categorised per platform.

Facebook Instagram Twitter Positive related in % 51.,4 68.9 13.6 Positive unrelated in % 2.4 2.2 3.2 Critical related in % 10.9 4.4 6.4 Critical unrelated in % 13.0 5.5 67.2 Unrelated in % 20.5 17.7 9.6 Not understandable in % 1.8 1.1 0

Table 4. Type of reactions to CSR categorised per platform, in percentages.

Reactions to CSR - Total

Positive related Positive unrelated Critical related Critical unrelated Unrelated Not understandable

Figure 21. Pie chart summarising the total reactions to CSR-related posts, per category.

4.5.3 Discussions among the community This section focuses on the discussions that arise in the ‘comment’- section between the community itself on each CSR-related post. This means that the research analyses how the participants on social media react on each other directly. In total, on all the three platforms, there were 642 reactions among the participants themselves. The overall biggest share of reactions was on Facebook, in total there were 619 reactions among the community. For Instagram, there were 11 reactions and on Twitter 12. This is an interesting observation, as it would indicate that on Facebook, there is a much more active community than on the other two platforms. On Facebook, consumers are much more likely to react to each other, than they are likely to do so on Instagram and Twitter.

In total, General Mills has reacted 32 times to comments underneath its CSR-posts. Of these 32 comments, 9 were a respond to a compliment or something positive about General Mills. Again 9 responses were about answering a question someone asked underneath a post. The remaining 14 responses were a reaction to a complaint or something negative towards General Mills.

The community has responded 610 times upon each other. This implies every time someone replies to a comment posted underneath a CSR-post. Of these 610 replies, the biggest share (489) was about criticizing each other, which means that the community disagreed on a certain manner with each other and started a discussion. In total, 17 reactions were about the

community directly criticizing General Mills, whereas 8 replies were intended to support General Mills. On several occasions (50 replies), people were supporting each other, or showing agreement. The remaining 46 replies were mainly about informing one another.

From these results, one may be implied to say that Facebook has the biggest community in terms of reactions among the participants. However, as this is a relatively small study, it cannot be seen as more than a mere suggestion. Also, on Facebook, there is a lot of criticizing between the participants, which might result in a different community feeling compared to a more supportive environment.

Discussions among the community Facebook Instagram Twitter Total GM responding to a compliment 6 3 0 9 GM responding to a question 8 1 0 9 GM responding to a complaint 8 1 5 14 Community criticizing GM 13 0 4 17 Community criticizing each other 488 0 1 489 Community supporting GM 6 2 0 8 Community supporting each other 44 4 2 50 Community informing each other 46 0 0 46 Total 619 11 12 642 Table 5. The amount and type of reactions among the community categorised per platform.

Discussions between consumers Facebook Instagram Twitter GM responding to a compliment in % 1.0 27.3 0 GM responding to a question in % 1.3 9.1 0 GM responding to a complaint in % 1.3 9.1 41.7 Community criticising GM in % 2.1 0 33.3 Community criticising each other in % 78.8 0 8.3 Community supporting GM in % 1.0 18.2 0 Community supporting each other in % 7.1 36.4 16.7 Community informing each other in % 7.1 0 0 Table 6. The type of reactions categorised per platform, in percentages.

Community responses on each other per platform

Facebook Instagram Twitter

Figure 22. Pie chart summarising the total reactions among the community per platform.

Community responses per category - Total

GM responding to a compliment GM responding to a question GM responding to a complaint Community criticizing GM Community criticizing each other Community supporting GM Community supporting each other Community informing each other

Figure 23. Pie chart summarising the type of reactions among the community, of all three platforms combined.

5. Results

5.1 General Mills to the consumers Looking back on the theory discussed based on the work of Van Dijck (2013), one can see that when analysing the CSR-communication of General Mills on social media and its responses, that this research has mainly analysed the techno-cultural construct of the actor-network theory in combination with the political-economy approach. For this section specifically, it has dived into the technology of the platforms, in terms of how the platform operates and what its function is. This has been discussed in section 2.1.6 on Social Media Ideologies. Furthermore, an analysis has been provided on the user- agency theory in terms of how often General Mills updates its social media accounts. This can be labelled as the explicit participation of General Mills on its social media platforms. Moreover, the research analyses the content of the platforms of General Mills.

From the analysis, one can also see that General Mills updates its social media on a regular basis. In total, on all the three platforms there were 792 posts or status-updates in the timeframe of this research. This shows that General Mills is an active user of social media, creating explicit participation for others to see. This can be stated on the fact that this research has been carried out on the basis of their explicit content. Furthermore, each of these posts or status-updates contained content in the sense of text, often together with photos, videos, and/or a hyperlink. As General Mills is using explicit participation and providing content for its readers, the company tries to create a Virtual Customer Environment, where (potential) customers are able to develop a relationship with General Mills and/or other customers.

The main aspects of language were discussed in section 2.1.5. The language that General Mills uses in its post were the same for all three platforms. When analysing the modes and codes of their posts, it seems that General Mills mainly communicates through visual language (as the posts contain text). In some cases, General Mills also added a video, which then also contained of an auditory message. In terms of their communicative space, General Mills shares these posts on social media, indicating that their posts are public. When focusing on the temporality of the posts, unless General Mills decides to remove posts, these posts will remain publicly visible as long as these three platforms will remain existing.

Interesting to see also from the analysis, is that General Mills uses the platforms differently. On Instagram they tend to share less on CSR and more on ‘employees’, whereas on Twitter they focus more on CSR and less on ‘employees’. This might be partly explainable due to the difference in audience and purposes of the platforms. On Twitter, much more B2B communication is generally

used, which indicates that General Mills adapts to this by sharing more informative content regarding its strategies. Some examples of a typical ‘Twitter-post’ are the following:

Figure 25. [A ‘typical’ Twitter post of General Mills]. (2018). Retrieved from https://twitter.com/GeneralMills. Screenshot by author.

Figure 24. [A ‘typical’ Twitter post of General Mills]. (2019). Retrieved from https://twitter.com/GeneralMills. Screenshot by author.

These types of posts aim to inform the consumers on their strategies and achievements. The tone of these types of posts are in most cases a mix between formal and informal, as General Mills uses a limited amount of subjective words and aims to inform the consumers.

Instagram is used much more by younger consumers, which might lead to a different field of interest of the audience. In terms of the tone of these type of posts, General Mills tends to be much more informal, by using more subjective posts. Typical examples of such ‘Instagram- posts’ of General Mills are the following:

Figure 26. [A ‘typical’ Instagram post of General Mills]. Figure 27. [A ‘typical’ Instagram post of General Mills]. (2018). (2019). Retrieved from Retrieved from https://www.instagram.com/generalmills/. https://www.instagram.com/generalmills/. Screenshot by Screenshot by author. author. 53

These posts exemplify how General Mills uses subjective words to share content about its CSR motives. Furthermore, these types of posts are much more informal, and share less information on the CSR strategies of General Mills.

On Facebook, there is a more diverse social media-strategy, where General Mills focuses both on CSR as well as on other aspects. Furthermore, General Mills seems to be using a combination of the tone of Twitter and Instagram together. The company uses both emotional posts and informative posts, together with a tone that is more informal than on Twitter, yet not as much as on Instagram. The following two examples illustrate these statements:

Figure 28. [A ‘typical’ Facebook post of General Mills]. Figure 29. [A ‘typical’ Facebook post of General Mills]. (2018). Retrieved from (2018). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/GeneralMills/. Screenshot by https://www.facebook.com/GeneralMills/. Screenshot by author. author. These posts illustrate that Facebook uses some subjectivity in its posts, yet also tries to inform the consumers on its CSR strategies. This might be partially explainable, due to the fact that this platform is actively used by most generations. Whereas, Twitter and Instagram have a more specific audience.

General Mills seems to use mostly strategic action through its communication on social media. The company often uses subjective words insinuating on the emotions of the reader. Words such as ‘thrilled’ and ‘happy’ are often used in the posts of General Mills, which influences the perception of the reader. The previous paragraphs explain that there is, however, a difference between platforms. Facebook and Instagram show much more subjectivity than Twitter does. Furthermore, Twitter is used more formally, in comparison to Facebook and Instagram. Important to take into account when analysing the content and 54

language of the posts of General Mills, is that their interpretation depends on the context in which the post is read. If the reader is in the same state of mind as General Mills, these types of posts add to the positivity in the reactions. However, if this is not the case, they seem to add to the negativity in the comments. The fact that the posts are context-dependent partly explains why sometimes people responded much more negative on certain CSR-related posts than other times. This will be explained more later.

From these results, one can see that General Mills uses its social media platforms differently. Therefore, it may be assumed that General Mills is aware of the different audience present at the platforms. In general, this indicates that companies may use the platforms differently, in order to match the audience’s interests.

5.2 The consumers to General Mills This section looked mostly at the user-agency aspect of social media platforms and the content of the techno-cultural construct. Here, the explicit participation of users has been the main focus point of the analysis as well as the content of the reactions. As described in the previous section of ‘results’, General Mills seems to create a Virtual Customer Environment, where its (potential) customers are able to develop a relationship with General Mills and/or other stakeholders. From the analysis, one can see that General Mills has received 839 direct reactions on all three platforms from consumers. Most of these reactions are published on Facebook, and the least on Instagram.

As discussed in the theory, consumers can react to General Mills through interaction, participation, and involvement. Consumers and General Mills seem to establish interaction every time someone comments or reacts to a post. By doing so, a two-way channel is established from General Mills to consumer and vice versa. Whether participation and involvement are also present on the social media platforms, will be discussed in the next section of results. However, one can already see that General Mills has established a VCE.

The aspects of language of the posts of General Mills have been discussed previously. However, this analysis has not yet been done for the reactions on the post. The reactions towards the posts are visual in almost all cases, unless a video is added in the comment. In that case, an auditory message is also present in the modes and codes of the reactions. Furthermore, the reactions analysed are publicly readable, which indicates that the communicative space of the messages is public. The temporality of the posts also depends on

whether or not the comment is deleted by either the consumer him- or herself, General Mills or the owners of the platform.

The consumers’ reactions varied between a positive tone, negative tone or the reaction was unrelated. These positive or negative tones were then also differentiated in terms of whether or not it was related to the content of the initial post, or not. The tone of the reactions of consumers was in many instances informal and subjective. Consumers tend to react very up front towards General Mills, which is visible by their reactions. The reactions that are categorised as ‘negative’ tend be insulting or rude, as consumers seem to address a certain issue very strongly. Examples of such reactions are:

Figure 31. [An example of a negative reaction]. (2018). Retrieved Figure 30. [An example of a negative reaction]. (2018). from https://www.facebook.com/GeneralMills/. Screenshot by Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/GeneralMills/. author. Screenshot by author.

This is a relevant result, as it seems that consumers tend to be critical about the posts General Mills’ publishes, and they formulate these critics in an informal and a subjective manner. The positive reactions tend to be subjective and informal as well, as consumers are likely to show emotion in these types of reactions. Examples of such reactions are:

Figure 32. [An example of a positive reaction]. (2018). Figure 33. [An example of a positive reaction]. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/GeneralMills/. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/GeneralMills/. Screenshot by author. Screenshot by author. Yet, the impact of positive reactions is different as opposed to the negative reactions, as consumers seem to be less critical about the content of the post of General Mills. This may indicate that some consumers are easier influenced by social media posts of corporations, than others are.

The interpretation of the CSR-related posts of General Mills is likely to be dependent on the context in which the post is read by its consumers. What is meant with this context- dependency, is that the reaction of consumers depends on the topic of General Mill’s posts, and the consumer as an individual (background, mood, interests, geographical location, etc.). These types of reactions that are context-dependent, influence the types of reactions 56

published underneath the posts, which may influence other consumers. When consumers are suspecting General Mills to communicate about their CSR to hide other activities that they are doing, they might give adverse reactions to these types of posts. For consumers, sharing negative comments might leave room for General Mills to respond or improve these specific complaints. Furthermore, consumers can inform each other on these negative aspects, which might lead to a more diversified viewpoint of General Mills for consumers. For General Mills, these negative reactions might lead to a weaker VCE resulting in a loss in (potential) customers and/or sales.

The analysis between the different platforms showed that Twitter was the main platform where people responded critically towards the CSR-related posts of General Mills. Facebook also showed some negative reactions, however, most were still positive towards General Mills. On Instagram, a limited amount of negative comments was placed underneath their CSR-related posts. Again, this might be explainable due to the difference in audience between the platforms. Twitter seems to be more critical, as it mainly used for B2B communication. This is less so the case for Facebook and Instagram.

In general, intrinsic motivation for CSR is received well by consumers. However, when consumers suspect the company to have extrinsic motivations for its CSR, they become more sceptical of the company. This also has to do with the use of strategic action used by General Mills in their posts. Consumers tend to responded very negative towards CSR-related posts, when they suspect General Mills of ‘green-washing’ and/or unethical behaviour.

5.3 The consumers towards each other How the community reacts towards each other on the social media platforms, is very dependent on the type of platform. From the analysis, one can see the consumers react the most on each other on Facebook. There is little interaction between consumers on the other two platforms: Instagram and Twitter.

On Facebook, there seems to be a level of participation, when General Mills reacts to comment or other consumers react on each other. This can either be when General Mills responds to a compliment, question or complaint, or when consumers react to each other by informing each other on certain matters. In other cases, there seems to be involvement, when consumers or General Mills reacts emotionally towards a certain post and/or comment. A central topic of discussion among the community, is the disagreement on their belief of the

intrinsic or extrinsic motivation of General Mills. An example of involvement is presented below:

Figure 34. [An example of ‘involvement’]. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/GeneralMills/. Screenshot by author.

This discussion illustrates how emotions influence the reactions that consumers have on each other. It is clear from this example that emotions can run high, and consumers may even leave the initial topic of discussion. The example presented here gives a good representation of most of the discussions held among consumers. This shows that the citizen-to-citizen relationship developed on social media, may have different outcomes than one may aspect. From the theory, the citizen-to-citizen relationship would indicate benefits for the consumers, however this research indicates that this might lead to discussion and anger among the community. These outcomes suggest that the concepts of involvement and the citizen-to- citizen relationship work counterproductive when combined on social media.

6. Conclusions and Discussion

6.1 Conclusions The main aim of this paper was to provide an answer to the question ‘How does the use of different social media platforms for the communication of CSR impact the relationship between companies and consumers?’. This question will be answered according to the three sub-questions provided in this paper. After answering the three sub-questions, the main question of this paper will be answered.

6.1.1 How have social media impacted social discourse on corporate policies? Social media has been analysed using the combination of the actor-network theory and the political economy approach, set by Van Dijck (2013). The most dominant actors that have been analysed in this research are technology, content, and user agents, consisting of consumers of social media and corporations using social media. These factors have been analysed by looking at the explicit participation, which is visible on each of the social media platforms.

The shift from traditional media to social media has led to a change in relationships between consumer and corporation and the relationship among consumers. These changes can be seen from a one-way channel from corporation to consumer, to a two-way channel in which the communication can go from corporation to consumer and vice versa. Furthermore, the citizen-to-citizen relationship has been strengthened, due to the establishment of communities on social media.

The development of social media has led to changes in corporate communication. The ‘modes and codes’, ‘communicative space’, and ‘temporality’ have changed of the communication. Also, the context-dependency of the reader has changed due to the difference in the offline and online world. Corporations benefit most from establishing a VCE on social media, which is a new phenomenon relative to traditional media. These VCEs are best established, when corporations develop a two-way channel through which is communicated. Furthermore, corporations need to establish more than mere interaction. Participation and involvement are crucial for companies to develop a strong VCE.

6.1.2 How is the development of social media and the development of CSR interrelated? Corporate Social Responsibility has been defined as ‘the way in which business consistently creates shared value in society through economic development, good governance, stakeholder responsiveness and environmental improvement’ (Visser, 2011). This business- 59

strategy has become increasingly important, as many corporations have adapted some form of CSR. Consumers expect corporations to be involved in CSR as well, due to the increase of awareness in corporate responsibility. Therefore, corporations implement CSR communication, to be able to meet consumer’s expectations.

The communication of CSR is increasingly done so on social media, as this type of media has become an important tool to communicate on for corporations. The risks of communicating CSR on social media are, among others, the adverse reaction of consumers due to the suspecting of unethical behaviour. This can develop when consumers suspect the company of having extrinsic motivations of its CSR, rather than intrinsic motivations. Furthermore, corporations can adapt to two different types of CSR communications: strategic action and/or communicative action (Habermas, 1984). Strategic action is more often used to persuade consumers about the motivations for CSR, whereas communicative action is more often used to inform consumers about the CSR. Strategic action is therefore more often used through a one-way channel of communication, whereas communicative action allows for a two-way channel between corporation and consumer.

6.1.3.1 What is the content of the posts on the different platforms? The case study research looked at General Mills’ social media accounts. The accounts analysed were Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. This section provided the content of the posts of General Mills, based on four categories: CSR, products, employees, and others. General Mills publishes posts on all three platforms regularly, however the research indicates that the content of these posts differ per platform. On Instagram they tend to share less on CSR and more on ‘employees’, whereas on Twitter they focus more on CSR and less on ‘employees’. The reason of this difference, could be because of the difference in audience.

General Mills uses Twitter to communicate more formally to its consumers. The content of the posts is often about its strategies and it contains little subjective words, and topics. Instagram is used by younger consumers, which may indicate a different field of interest. General Mills uses subjective words and communicates more informally. There is a more diverse social media strategy on Facebook, where General Mills uses some informality and subjectivity, however still aims to inform consumers on its strategies and activities. In general, General Mills uses more strategic action in its communication of social media.

6.1.3.2 What are consumers’ reactions to CSR-related posts on these platforms? This section analysed the reactions of the consumers on its CSR-related posts. The reactions of consumers were mostly informal and subjective in terms of tone. Furthermore, numerous reactions were negative towards the CSR-related posts, which indicates that consumers tend to be critical about such posts.

The interpretation of the CSR-related posts of General Mills is likely to be dependent on the context in which the post is read by its consumers. This might result in reactions that General Mills can respond to, and/or informs other consumers.

The analysis between the different platforms showed that Twitter was the main platform where people responded critically towards the CSR-related posts of General Mills. Facebook also showed negative reactions, however, most were still positive towards General Mills. On Instagram, a limited amount of negative comments was placed underneath their CSR-related posts. This also might have to do with the type of audience that is active on the platforms. Also here, intrinsic motivation seems to be received better by consumers than extrinsic motivations.

6.1.3.3 What are consumers’ reactions towards each other on these platforms? This section looks at how the community responds to each other. The community responds most actively on each other on Facebook, whereas this is very little done so on Twitter and Instagram. Participation is reached, when General Mills responds to a consumer’s reaction. Involvement is reached, whenever the community reacts emotionally towards a certain post and/or comment. Most of the reactions analysed here, can be categorised as involvement. A central topic of discussion among the community, is the disagreement on their belief of the intrinsic or extrinsic motivation of General Mills. The citizen-to-citizen relationship in this instance, leads to more anger and discussions among the community. These outcomes suggest that the concepts of involvement and the citizen-to-citizen relationship work counterproductive, when combined on social media.

6.1.3.4 How does the use of different social media platforms for the communication of CSR impact the relationship between companies and consumers? From this, one can see that the communication of CSR on different social media platforms can have different individual values for the consumers and corporations. From a corporate perspective, communicating CSR related content on Facebook leads to strong engagement and therefore the establishment of a strong VCE. Yet, consumers tend to remain critical when

it comes to the motivation of such strategies and remains sceptical towards the intentions of a company. Posting on CSR-related content on Twitter leads to mostly negative reactions from consumers, indicating that Twitter has a different audience that might need a different social media strategy and implementation of the company. On Instagram however, consumers seem to respond much less on CSR-related content, yet when they do it tends to be positive. This might indicate that there is room for a beneficial VCE for the company.

From a consumer perspective, the communication of CSR-related content leads to different responses. From this research, one can see that consumers benefit most from the communication on CSR on Facebook. This is mainly due to the fact that here, the community tends to share more of their views on this platform and interact more often with each other. This results in a more critical and sceptical interpretation of corporate messages. Therefore, consumers may be more aware of the motivation of companies. On Twitter, consumers tend to be more critical already, so the users of this platform are already more sceptical towards the CSR-strategies of companies. On Instagram, however, consumers tend to be easier persuaded by the intentions of the company, as they rarely respond critically towards General Mills or each other. Here, consumers would benefit from a stronger VCE to create more awareness towards the company’s intention.

Overall, the impact of the CSR communication on social media leads to a significant impact on the on corporations and consumers. For corporations, different social media platforms require different social media strategies: (1) On Facebook, corporations need to be aware of the strong VCE and need to make sure that they prevent consumers from turning sceptical by translating to internal motivation, (2) on Twitter, corporations need to be aware of the sceptical point of view from consumers and therefore communicate less on CSR, or focus on translating internal motivation, and (3) on Instagram, corporations are able to communicate more on CSR, as consumers tend to be less sceptical and react more positively towards posts which contain CSR-related content. However, for consumers, the communication of CSR results in a different impact: (1) on Facebook, there is strong VCE, which results in a broad range of perspectives, leading to more awareness for consumers, (2) on Twitter, consumers have established a sceptical point of view, which indicates there is awareness among the community, and (3) on Instagram, there is a weak VCE, which leads to less scepticism from consumers, therefore consumers would benefit from a stronger VCE.

6.2 Discussion This research has analysed CSR communication on SNS using digital ethnography. During the section ‘method’, it has been mentioned that using this type of strategy is context- dependent of the researcher. In this case, the research has used digital ethnography to focus on one specific company and its social media accounts, to see whether or not it is already possible to see the implications based on one case study. Indeed, numerous interesting results between the platforms have been found, and also for different consumers and corporations. However, as these results are dependent upon how this research has interpreted the posts and comments, if someone else was to do this research, different results might come out. Therefore, this research should be done by more researchers, in order to state its significance.

Furthermore, if this research was to be carried out again, it would be beneficial to look at more than one company. This research has focused on one company to dive into the details of CSR communication on SNS. However, it would be interesting to see whether the results based on this company would also be in line with the results based on another company. In that case, it might be able to conclude stronger statements.

In general, there is little research done on both the implications of social media and CSR communication. As already stated during this paper, numerous corporations use social media to promote CSR. Therefore, it is surprising that there is so little research done on this phenomenon. Consequently, there is room for more critical research to better understand the implications CSR communication on social media.

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