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 2 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. 3 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