COMMUNICATING CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA: AN ANALYSIS OF THE FACEBOOK PAGES OF CSR INDEX TOP 50 COMPANIES By JINGYI HUANG A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2012 1 © 2012 Jingyi Huang 2 To my beloved family 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First of all, I would like to thank my advisor and committee chair, Dr. Mary Ann Ferguson. Her course in corporate social responsibility and public relations ethics inspired me to choose this topic as my thesis. I deeply appreciate her for offering me valuable inspiration, knowledge and guidance, and for her dedicated efforts on reviewing my work in minute detail. I also want to thank my committee members, Dr. Sora Kim and Dr. Linda Hon. I am grateful to Dr. Kim for her valuable suggestions on my research questions, methodology and coding procedure. Without her profound knowledge and patience, I would never have completed my study. I would like to thank Dr. Linda Hon for her continuous support and inspirational guidance. I learned from her a true enthusiasm for research. Second, I would like to thank my amazing friends for their support and contribution to my study. Special thanks go to Jing Sun and Xiao Zhou. I am thankful to Jing Sun for being the second coder of my study. Without her help, I would never have completed all the coding in a limited time period. I want to thank Xiao Zhou for providing technical support and being there with me all along the way. I also want to thank my sweet friends, Angel Jang and Wanwei Tan, for their encouragement throughout my study. Most of all, I would like to thank my parents for their ever-lasting love, caring and support throughout my life. I love them forever. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .............................................................................................................. 4 LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................................... 7 ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... 9 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................. 11 2 LITERATURE REVIEW ...................................................................................................... 16 Corporate Social Responsibility ............................................................................................ 16 CSR Communication ............................................................................................................. 19 What and How to Communicate .................................................................................... 20 Where to Communicate .................................................................................................. 23 CSR Communication via Web 2.0......................................................................................... 26 Research Questions ................................................................................................................ 29 3 METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................................ 31 Sampling ................................................................................................................................ 31 Variables ................................................................................................................................ 32 Coding.................................................................................................................................... 33 Data Analysis ......................................................................................................................... 34 4 RESULTS .............................................................................................................................. 36 Descriptive Statistics of the Sample ...................................................................................... 36 RQ1: Dominant Corporate Communication Strategy............................................................ 37 RQ2: The Most Frequently Used Indicator of CSR Strategy ................................................ 38 RQ3: Industry Type and the Adoption of Indicators of CSR and CAb strategies ................. 40 RQ4: Interactivity Components ............................................................................................. 42 RQ5: Relationships between Communication Strategy and Fans’ Participation .................. 43 RQ6: Corporate Communication Strategies and the Tone of Fans’ Comments .................... 43 RQ7: Relationships between Interactivity Components and Fans’ Participation .................. 44 RQ8: Relationships between Companies’ Participation and Fans’ Participation .................. 46 5 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION ................................................................................... 58 Discussion .............................................................................................................................. 58 Implications ........................................................................................................................... 62 Limitations and Future Research ........................................................................................... 65 5 APPENDIX A CODER GUIDE .................................................................................................................... 68 B CODING SHEET .................................................................................................................. 73 LIST OF REFERENCES .............................................................................................................. 75 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ........................................................................................................ 81 6 LIST OF TABLES Table page 3-1 Indicators of CAb and CSR corporate communication strategy ........................................35 4-1 Percent of CAb, Hybrid and CSR messages as a total for each company .........................47 4-2 Percent of CAb, Hybrid and CSR messages as a total for each industry...........................48 4-3 Results of difference in proportion tests: CSR strategy adoption by consumer discretionary and other industries ......................................................................................49 4-4 Results of difference in proportion tests: CSR strategy adopted by consumer staples and other industries ............................................................................................................49 4-5 Results of difference in proportion tests: CSR strategy adoption by industrials and other industries ...................................................................................................................49 4-6 Six indicators of CSR strategy on cause-focused and corporate Facebook pages .............50 4-7 Six indictors of CAb and CSR corporate communication strategy on corporate Facebook pages ..................................................................................................................51 4-8 One-way ANOVA results: Levels of CSR and CAb strategy indicators usage by industry type.......................................................................................................................52 4-9 Homogeneous subsets of Scheffe post-hoc tests: Means of CSR strategy indicator usage by industry type .......................................................................................................52 4-10 Homogeneous subsets of Scheffe post-hoc tests: Means of CAb strategy indicator usage by industry type .......................................................................................................53 4-11 Six interactivity components on corporate FB pages and cause-focused FB pages and their difference of proportions tests results ........................................................................54 4-12 Results of difference in proportions tests: Positive, neutral and negative comments to messages employing CSR and CAb strategies ..................................................................55 4-13 Results of difference in proportions tests: Positive, neutral and negative comments to messages employing CSR and hybrid strategies ...............................................................55 4-14 Results of difference in proportions tests: Positive, neutral and negative comments to messages employing CAb and hybrid strategies ...............................................................55 4-15 Pearson correlations among frequencies of comment, like, share and six interactivity components ........................................................................................................................56 7 4-16 Pearson correlations among the frequencies of companies’ posting and responsive comments, the frequency of fans’ posting, and a total number of fans .............................57 4-17 Linear regression results for the frequency of fans' posting ..............................................57 8 Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts COMMUNICATING CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY