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This study aims to investigate the adoption and diffusion of Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)-based sustainability reporting practices within the global financial services sector.

The approach draws on the sociological construct of social contagion theory (SCT) to explain the drivers of diffusion of GRI-based sustainability reporting. Based on a longitudinal study of GRI adoption over a period from 2000 to 2016, thematic content analysis of sustainability reports and media articles was used to refine information gathered that related to nature and spread of GRI-based sustainability practices within the global financial services sector.

This study finds that the early adopters of GRI-based sustainability reporting and the accompanying media attention influenced the institutional diffusion of GRI-based reporting in the financial services sector. This growth was isomorphic as companies copied best practice models to reduce uncertainty and maintain legitimacy.

This paper focuses on the institutional diffusion of sustainability reporting practices within the global financial sector. It explores the notion of social contagion as an institutional dynamic to understand the drivers for the adoption and diffusion of GRI-based sustainability reporting across national borders. In doing so, the study contributes to the accounting literature on diffusion of innovations in reporting practice, but also, more generally, to the field of diffusion of new ideas in organisations using the unique approach of SCT.

This paper aims to consider the vital role that the medium for communication plays in the sustainability reporting process and provides an agenda for advancing research in this area.

This is a theoretical paper that draws upon previous literature to highlight that the newer communication media extends the capabilities of traditional media and provides insights into future research directions.

This paper highlights that communication medium has a critical role in sustainability reporting and changes the dynamics of such reporting, leading to a change in the research approaches to study this phenomenon.

The paper has implications for practitioners in relation to the use of various communication media for sustainability reporting.

The paper highlights that modern information and communication technologies transform reporting into communication, thereby providing potential for enhancing the engagement of stakeholders with a corporation.

This paper suggests that the role of the communication medium is integral to the communication of sustainability issues to stakeholders and that future research needs to justify the choice of the medium used for sustainability reporting studies.

This paper aims to examine the use of social media for sustainability reporting by the largest Australia companies as a means of seeking legitimacy from stakeholders.

Qualitative content analysis was applied to examine social and environmental disclosures posted by Australian companies on three social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, and to observe stakeholder interaction in relation to the social and environmental postings.

The findings of this study indicate a limited use of social media by the top 50 Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) listed companies for sustainability reporting as only 46 per cent of the companies used Facebook, Twitter and/or LinkedIn. Nevertheless, those companies which actively used social media were able to seek legitimacy through information disclosure and dialogue with stakeholders. Social issues such as community support, employees, gender equality and diversity dominated the three social media platforms when compared to environmental issues and all disclosures had a positive tone. These disclosures in turn framed the dialogue with stakeholders, leading to use of social media platforms that companies preferred and enabling a close control over online discussions.

This study highlights that social media sustainability communication focuses on symbolic legitimacy strategies, leading to companies managing the impressions of their stakeholders and controlling the dialogue with them.

This study provides an understanding of the actual practice of social media sustainability communication and has implications for both organisations and their stakeholders.

This study provides in-depth insights into the use of social media to transform sustainability reporting, an issue that has limited coverage in prior literature and extends the application of legitimacy theory to social media communication.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between media reporting and violent extremism to explain the ethical and security issues emanating from it in Nigeria.

This paper draws on security and ethical literature, while a multimethod approach consisting of in-depth and focus group interviews was used. Content analysis was also relied upon from the interviews granted by media experts on terrorism, security and ethics.

Findings revealed that journalists are facing problems in areas of freedom of expression, framing, content selection and personal security. Again, this paper opines that elements of public awareness and issues of relevance also push the media to excessive reporting in which ethics and security must stand to play a restraining role.

The first limitation of this paper is the inability to interview some terrorists and know their reaction to mass media reporting on their activities because nobody is ready to own up that he is a terrorist and to point to an individual as a terrorist is a dangerous phenomenon. Again, not all reporters are ready for interviews because of the fact that they are not prepared for the academic exercise but rather for assignments that can yield fat money such as selling secret information to those who can buy them with huge amounts of money like the politicians.

There is a threat to life on both sides of the government and terrorists. Favoring one side in their report is an offense from another side. There is also a violation of their human rights in freedom of speech as a result of the political situation in Nigeria where the government is faced with insecurity that hinders media from freedom of the press to publish reports. Moreover, where the ethical issue is suppressed, it makes the government unpopular all over the world because of the lack of press freedom.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is novel as being the first of its kind where media experts are involved in research attempts on media reporting and violent extremism in relation to security and ethical issues in Nigeria.

This paper aims to investigate internet reporting and social media strategies by Australian firms. This study looks at the extent of internet reporting and considers firm characteristics associated with disclosing information on the internet. This research is timely as in the past decade, this paper has witnessed the rapid growth of technologies such as the internet and social media and their subsequent impact on business and the economy.

This paper constructs a disclosure index featuring a wide range of both financial and non-financial disclosures including social media strategy. This study then investigates the firm characteristics associated with the level of internet disclosure.

This paper finds that a firm’s internet reporting is associated with firm size, financial performance and analysts’ coverage but not associated with the percentage of independent board members. A firm’s social media strategy is associated with firm size and its environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) ranking.

The findings can help firms improve their internet reporting disclosures by providing a comprehensive list of disclosures that could benefit users of financial reports. It also helps standard setters and regulators understand some of the firm factors related to internet reporting and provide guidance for standard setters to consider in developing best practice internet reporting standards.

The research features the top 100 Australian companies’ internet disclosures in 2018 and also includes social media strategy. The results highlight that there is room for improvement with firms’ internet disclosure. By constructing a comprehensive index, this study provides guidance for standard setters to consider in developing best practice internet reporting standards.

Purpose: One of the objectives of this research was to identify whether “mad”, “bad” and “sad” frames, identified in modern news reporting in other Western nations, are also evident in historical newspapers in New Zealand, a nation geographically distant. Methodology/approach: Qualitative content analysis was used to analyze reporting of multiple-child murders in New Zealand between 1870 and 1930. Content was sourced from a digitized newspaper database and identified media frames were analyzed under the categories of “mad”, “bad” and “sad”. Findings: Historical New Zealand media constructed “mad,” “bad,” and “sad” frames for the killers, however, instead of being classified with a single frame many killers were portrayed using a combination of two or even three. In some cases, media ignored facts which could have provided an alternative portrayal of the killers. In other cases, no obvious frames were employed. Research limitations: This research does not include analysis of media frame building in modern news reporting. Originality/value: Media construction of frames for multiple-child killers in historical New Zealand news reporting has not been explored before.

The purpose of this paper is to show how a major public benefit entity in New Zealand uses formal accountability mechanisms and informal reporting to justify its existence. The paper is premised on the view that the accountability relationship for public benefit entities is broader and more complex than the traditional shareholder‐manager relationship in the private sector.

This longitudinal single case study of the Department of Conservation (DOC) spans the period from its establishment in 1987 to June 2006. It involves the detailed examination of the narrative disclosures contained in the annual reports, including the Statement of Service Performance, over the period of the study. A number of controversial items that appeared in the printed media between 1 April 1987 and 30 June 2006 were traced through the annual reports to establish whether DOC used impression management techniques in its annual reports to gain, maintain and repair its organisational legitimacy.

The analysis found that the annual report of a public benefit entity could play an important legitimising role. Using legitimacy theory, it is argued that assertive and defensive impression management techniques were used by DOC to gain, maintain and repair its organisational legitimacy in the light of extensive negative media publicity.

This is one of the first studies to examine the relationship between narrative disclosures in annual reports and legitimacy in the public sector. The paper provides a valuable contribution to researchers and practitioners as it extends the understanding of how public benefit entities can make use of the narrative portions of the annual report when pursuing organisational legitimacy.

This paper aims to examine changes of non-financial voluntary reporting practices over time in response to episodes of employee-related distress. It investigates employee-related disclosures by the four largest electronic manufacturing services firms in China between 2008 and 2013 during a series of employment-related incidents, to investigate how the firms re-legitimate their reputation in response to the media coverage on those incidents.

A series of employee-related incidents that occurred in 2010-2012 is selected as the focus of this study, with total coverage of employee-related disclosures between 2008 and 2013. These incidents are directly linked to three of the four sample companies: Foxconn, Pegatron and Compal Electronics. Employee-related disclosures in corporate social responsibility (CSR) stand-alone reports are coded by a set of specifically designed instructions, and newspaper articles about employee-related incidents are coded for sentiment. Results are interpreted through two theoretical lenses: the media agenda setting theory and the legitimacy theory.

Newspapers reported the employee-related incidents in a way detrimental to the legitimacy of firms that directly involved in the selected industry. In the process of legitimation, firms switch between disclosing more employee-related information and reducing disclosures. The self-expectation on organizational legitimacy also affects how CSR reporting is used in legitimation. The employee-related disclosure analysed is closer to symbolic legitimation than substantive legitimation.

This study contributes to reporting practice by showing that employee-related disclosure is largely vacuous and to a greater extent is used as symbolic legitimation. The quality of disclosure requires significant improvement. This study contributes to the literature by using the legitimacy theory to interpret employee-related disclosure in China, addressing inadequate research efforts in the context of social and human rights dimensions of CSR reporting.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the Chinese media’s performance on reporting the issue of waste incineration power plants. The authors analyze the role of media in supervising relevant agencies and meeting the public need for related information.

This paper provides a content analysis of media reports toward waste incineration projects that follow the anti-incinerator event that occurred in Panyu district of Guangzhou city in 2009. The sample of this paper is based on 469 news reports that were released on the state-level search engine “ChinaSo.com” from January 2010 to June 2016.

Chinese media did not continue to focus on waste incineration issues after the anti-incinerator event in the Panyu district and there were only a few news reports about this topic. News reports of the information disclosure category accounts for the largest proportion but lack a depth of explanation. The proportion of news reports of media supervision and popular science information categories is relatively small.

This paper is a pilot study of the media’s reporting characteristics on waste incineration issues. There are some shortcomings in terms of sample selection and analysis, more in-depth assessment will be implemented and improved upon the future research. This study highlights the importance of media reports before or after relevant events in examining the media’s social function. Besides, this study provides a new analytical idea for assessing the functions of the media on social public issues through media reports and the conclusions of this study have certain practical significance for the media to improve report behaviors.

This paper selects media reports on waste incineration power plant after the anti-incinerator event in Panyu district as media industry could pay much attention to relevant topics before the beginning of conflict events and continue tracking reports even after the events subside. This paper points out that Chinese media might increase sustained attention to waste incineration issues, strengthen the depth of interpretation, increase the supervision of relevant agencies, and enhance the relevance of the news reports to the public.

This paper aims to explore the extent to which global reporting initiative (GRI) standards reflect the material concerns of stakeholders in developing countries, with particular reference to Latin America.

The main dataset was a sample of 120 media articles that discussed corporate conduct related to COVID-19 from both developing (Chile, Mexico and Peru) and developed (Australia, UK and the USA) countries. Concerns evident from those articles were compared and then mapped to applicable GRI standards to identify relevant disclosures and gaps. Findings were triangulated by drawing on two additional datasets: Latin American GRI-related academic literature (in Spanish) and submissions to GRI standards.

Media analysis reveals significant differences between developing and developed country concerns, as well as gaps in GRI disclosure requirements in relation to customers, labour standards and corporate interactions with non-government organisations and governments. Analysis of Latin American literature corroborates the concerns raised in media articles regarding employment. Additionally, it points out country-specific issues and calls for increased reporting of corruption. Analysis of the GRI standards development process reveals marked underrepresentation of developing countries, which may contribute to the observed deficiencies in the GRI standards.

This paper contributes to the (surprisingly rare) research concerning the quality of GRI standards and responds to calls for greater attention to developing countries in the SEA literature by showing that GRI standards may not fully meet the needs of users in the developing country context of Latin America. The paper also contributes to practice via specific recommendations for improvement to GRI standards and the standard-setting process and provides a summary of the key findings from Spanish-language Latin American literature.