Analysis of the use of Twitter as a tool for the management and communication of the CSR of leading European firms

Abstract

The management of corporate social responsibility (CSR) requires dialogue between the organisation and its stakeholders. Considering that, today, interaction among any members of society is becoming increasingly faster and easier due to the use of Web 2.0, this latter can be considered a suitable tool for CSR management. The main purpose of this paper is to analyse the use of online social networks by enterprises as a communication strategy tool in the field of CSR management. To this end, all the messages from the verified Twitter accounts of 50 leading European blue-chip companies (EuroStock 50) from the year they were activated until June 2016 (127,811) were analysed using automated and manual content analysis. The conclusions drawn by this study show that this social network is only used for informative purposes, no two-way collaborative communication strategy being found. This leads to the need to proactively make companies aware of the advantages of social networks as CSR management tools and drivers of a collaborative interaction with stakeholders that would allow a more sustainable and more inclusive performance of CSR principles in their activities.