The Rhetorical Citizenship of Corporations in the Digital Age

Abstract

Purpose

The prime goal of this chapter is to discuss what the notion of rhetorical citizenship as a normative aspiration might entail for corporations.

Methodology/approach

The chapter draws on a pilot study of the Facebook pages of two banks. A rhetorical criticism of these pages was conducted.

Findings

We suggest that while corporations are assuredly entities very different from the individual citizens who hold civil, social, and political rights – which do not directly apply to corporations – rhetorical citizenship is nevertheless a suggestive and constructive metaphor for corporations to communicate by.

Research limitations/implications

Rhetorical citizenship for corporations must, we argue, be(come) rooted in organizational reality, and should involve a continued critical questioning as to what might constitute citizenly communication for corporations under any given circumstances. The chapter is, however, built on limited data from a pilot study and needs to be complemented.

Practical implications

We suggest from our pilot study that the active engagement of corporations in social media may currently be seen as one form of rhetorical citizenship that the public expects corporations to enact. Thus, we argue, corporations in general might as well attempt to do their best to act as rhetorical citizens.

Originality/value

The chapter highlights how communication is a set of practices in which social responsibility must be enacted. We find that this is not a prevalent perspective in the existing literature on CSR and communication.

Citation

Hoff-Clausen, E. and Ihlen, Ø. (2015), "The Rhetorical Citizenship of Corporations in the Digital Age", Corporate Social Responsibility in the Digital Age (Developments in Corporate Governance and Responsibility, Vol. 7), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 17-37. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2043-052320150000007003