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Drawing on symbolic interaction theory (SIT), this study aims to identify what makes corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication more favorable to customers in the chain restaurants context. Specifically, this study examines the direct relationships between the interactivity of CSR communication, brand trust and brand sincerity. In addition, the mediating role of brand trust (i.e. separate dimensions of brand reliability and intentions) and the moderated mediating role of self-congruity are explored.

A total of 418 US consumers with past experiences of participating in CSR campaigns organized by chain restaurants on social media were recruited using the online survey method of nonprobability sampling through Amazon Mechanical Turk in December 2021.

The results of this study revealed that the interactivity of CSR communication on social media affects brand sincerity; brand reliability and brand intentions mediate the positive effect of interactivity of CSR communication on brand sincerity; and customer’s self-congruity moderated the positive mediation effect via brand reliability.

Chain restaurant marketers need to understand the important role of interactivity as a key element of CSR communication on social media to help develop brand trust and brand sincerity in chain restaurants.

This study expands on SIT to support the symbolic benefits of interactive CSR communication on social media.

This study aims at investigating the differential impact of different CSR communication strategies on consumers' brand trust and consequent attitudes and behaviors in the credence goods market.

An experimental laboratory study was conducted to collect data from graduate students (n = 414) from two Chinese universities. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized model.

The results show that a dialogical communication strategy, compared to a monological communication strategy, is significantly more effective in increasing consumers' brand trust for credence goods as well as their willingness-to-buy and positive word-of-mouth. The results also confirm the mediating effect of CSR knowledge and the moderating effect of broad-scope trust on the relationship between CSR communication strategies and brand trust.

This study implies that in order to promote consumer trust and supportive behaviors toward brands, managers of companies in credence goods market should consider the increased use of various dialogical CSR communication strategies.

The study is one of the first to verify the impact of dialogical vs monological CSR communication strategies on consumers of credence goods.

This study aims to analyse CSR communication in the Latin American Integrated Market companies using Facebook, by studying disclosure and its determinants along with the legitimacy and interactivity of CSR posts.

A content analysis of Facebook posts and an index were developed to establish disclosure levels explained by regression modelling. In addition, an analysis of Facebook posts, reactions and comments was carried out.

Content analysis shows that most of the posts correspond to the categories of society and environment. Regression modelling shows there is a strong association between corporate and board characteristics and disclosure levels. In spite of the dialogic character of Facebook, interactivity levels of messages are low, although high levels of legitimacy are observed in posts by consumer and financial companies.

This study examines companies included in the Latin American Integrated Market. The generalisation of the results is limited to this context.

Understanding CSR communication may enable companies to relate more effectively with their stakeholders and possibly change their practices as a result of the feedback provided.

This study offers an important contribution to the literature on CSR communication by performing an analysis of information disclosure on Facebook and its explanatory factors. Another contribution of this study is its examination of the legitimacy and interactivity of CSR information disclosure in Latin America, a relatively understudied region.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how Fortune 100 companies are using Facebook (FB) in terms of employing corporate ability (CA), corporate social responsibility (CSR), and hybrid communication strategies, meeting different stakeholders’ expectations, and incorporating interactivity components into social media.

A quantitative content analysis was used to examine a total of 1,486 corporate FB postings.

–Fortune 100 companies predominantly employed a CA strategy over a CSR strategy or a hybrid strategy. They prioritize customers’ needs over other stakeholders’ (e.g. stockholders and community members) on FB. FB fans are more likely to post “like” when companies personalize their FB messages. Seeking specific action-oriented participation on FB increased the frequencies of “like” and “comment,” whereas using the generic terms like “try” or “learn” decreased such frequencies. Finally, the frequencies of fans posting “like” and “comment” are affected by how often companies responded to fans’ postings and not influenced by how often companies feed new FB updates to fans.

This study provides a benchmark case of how corporations are using a mainstream social media outlet to engage different stakeholders. It helps to assess the current status of public relations communication strategies on the mainstream social networking site. Companies can increase public engagement and response on social media through more personalized messages and techniques to encourage active participation and dialogue.

With the popularity of social media platforms, firms have now tangible means not only to reach out to their stakeholders, but also to closely monitor those interactions. Yet, there are limited methodological advances on how to measure a firm’s stakeholder networks, and the level of engagement firms have with these networks. Drawn upon the customer engagement and stakeholder theory literature, this study aims to propose an approach to calculate a firm’s stakeholder network engagement (SNE) index.

After deriving the SNE index formula mathematically, this study illustrates how the SNE index functions using eight firms’ online corporate social responsibility (CSR) networks across four diverse industries.

This study proposes and illustrates a new approach of capturing the SNE in a stakeholder network for use by academic and practical researchers.

Researchers can use the SNE index to assess engagement in stakeholder networks in various contexts.

Managers can use the SNE index to assess, benchmark and improve the nature and quality of their CSR strategies to derive greater return on their CSR investments.

Building on the stakeholder, communication and network analysis literatures, this study conceptualises SNE in four theoretical dimensions, namely, diffusion, accessibility, interactivity and influence. Then, an index that measures SNE is mathematically derived and empirically illustrated.

The focus of this paper is on developing a rationale for the use of transmedia storytelling in corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication. Transmedia storytelling involves telling stories across multiple platforms by multiple people that are still united by a central theme. The purpose of this paper is to develop a rationale for the application of transmedia storytelling for CSR communication and illustrate how Procter & Gamble’s “Thank You Mom” campaign demonstrates how transmedia storytelling can be found in the current CSR communication.

The first part of the story is theoretical development. The idea of transmedia storytelling is developed then translated into how it can be used in CSR communication. The key ideas are that the engagement with messages created by transmedia storytelling is the idea for capturing emotions in CSR messages and avoiding the backlash created by some CSR messages, such as advertising. Transmedia storytelling provides a lens for understanding and guiding the use of various social media channels in the distribution of CSR communication. A case study is they conducted to illustrate how P&G used transmedia storytelling in its “Thank You Mom” campaign. Qualitative content analysis is used to identify the plot lines in the stories and the overall storyworld that is being developed thereby illustrating how the concepts for transmedia storytelling can be applied to the case.

The results illustrate how transmedia storytelling can be applied to CSR communication and the potential benefits of this application. The primary yields are theory development for CSR communication and the insights from the case study.

The extant literature on strategic communication in general and CSR communication specially have shown only a passing interest in transmedia storytelling. This paper provides a very detailed rationale for applying transmedia storytelling to CSR communication and illustrates the utility of this approach with a case study. A detailed application of transmedia storytelling to CSR communication is new and can help advance both theory and practice.

Symmetric communication and relationship building are core principles of public relations, which have been highlighted for CSR communication. The purpose of this paper is to develop three different communication strategies for CSR communication in Twitter, of which each contributes differently to the ideals of symmetric communication and relationship building. The framework is then applied to analyze how companies use the micro-blogging service Twitter for CSR communication.

Social network analysis is used to identify the 30 most central corporate accounts in a CSR Twitter network.

From the social network analysis 40,000 tweets are extracted and manually coded. Anova is applied to investigate differences in the weighting of CSR topics between the different strategies.

So far not much is known about how social media, such as Twitter, contribute to the core principles of public relations, if companies use social media to foster symmetric communication and relationship management, or which CSR topics they address.

The chapter examines the employment of unique social media concepts (e.g., dialogue, engagement, mobilization, authenticity, influence, and transparency) for CSR communication among top companies in Latin America. A quantitative content analysis of 1,000 tweets from corporate official accounts of the top 25 largest firms in the Latin Trade ranking was performed. Tweets were randomly selected if contained hashtags or keywords related to CSR concepts (CSR, sustainability, citizenship, society, environment, etc.). Transparency was the social media concept most employed on CSR-related messages on Twitter. However, most of the companies did not include any of the social media features analyzed. The results of this chapter are consistent with previous studies that social media is used as another traditional informational channel. This work only analyzed tweets sent by Latin American companies, it did not take into consideration responses to messages (replies or retweets of the followers of each company). Future studies can examine stakeholders’ response regarding CSR communication for in-depth analysis of the use of social media by Latin American companies. Organizations and companies can benefit from the results of this work in order to craft effective content on social media that includes features and strategies that can resonance to different groups of stakeholders. CSR social media communication studies that focused on Latin America are scarce. Our study is pioneer in analyzing the usage of social media concepts for CSR communication in Latin America.

Corporations communicate CSR policies through a variety of methods, and the goal of the study is to explore young adult consumers’ communication preferences and the implications for managers to effectively communicate CSR to boost their corporate brand image and reputation. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Set within the context of the UK supermarket industry, the study adopts a qualitative research approach and a purposeful sampling method, collecting data from 30 young adult consumers in the south-east of the UK. The data collection method used was online bulletin board focus groups, face-to-face focus groups, face-to-face interviews and an online questionnaire. Research propositions are developed, evaluated and synthesized into a conceptual framework.

The findings show that interactive CSR communication functions as an effective method of improving consumers’ emotional brand value, knowledge and memory of supermarket CSR. The findings have the potential to induce a more positive perception by young adults of supermarket CSR corporate brand image and reputation.

The implications for theory development are in the under-researched area of interactive CSR communication.

The research provides practical strategic recommendations regarding effective communications to help guide managers in their planning and execution of their CSR endeavours.

The research provides new empirical insights into theory and knowledge of interactive CSR communication and how supermarkets can communicate CSR in a manner, which is appealing and engaging for young adult consumers, therefore more likely to strengthen their perception of a supermarket corporate brand image and reputation.

Corporations are under increasing pressure to communicate their position and policies with regards to corporate social responsibility (CSR), informing consumers about the corporations’ good intentions and actions to appear trustworthy. Corporations have been asked to engage in dialogue with their consumers. However, academic literature still lacks empirical research that examines how consumers react to asymmetric versus symmetric communication strategies.

The present paper closes this gap and evaluates how consumers react to different CSR communication approaches on social media, specifically on Twitter. The study is based on a sample of 507 respondents in the UK, representing a well-educated population of social media users. The sample was divided into two sub-samples, one receiving a set of tweets with an asymmetric CSR communication approach (N = 242) and the other one with a symmetric CSR communication approach (N = 265).

The main finding of this study is that an asymmetric communication approach performs generally better than a symmetric communication approach. However, consumers’ involvement and their own personal information processing mechanisms also play a significant role when evaluating the trustworthiness of corporations.

The paper provides insights into how corporations should communicate with consumers on Twitter and what characteristics they should take into consideration to achieve consumer trust.