Communicating Corporate Social Responsibility in social media: Sense-making processes evolving with the development of virtual Communities of Practice

Authors

  • Gianvito D'Aprile Grifo multimedia S.r.l.
  • Margherita Racano Doxa Pharma S.r.l., Milano (IT)
  • Susanna Annese Department of Sciences of Education, Psychology, Communication, University of Bari Aldo Moro (IT)
  • Katherine McLay School of Education, The University of Queensland, Australia

Keywords:

Corporate Social Responsibility, Communities of Practice, social media, sense-making, mixed-methods

Abstract

By integrating Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Community of Practice (CoP) frameworks, this paper explores how CSR sense-making processes evolved in virtual CoPs on Facebook between enterprises (production vs. service) and stakeholders. Two different corporate Facebook pages were selected and the textual posts (N = 288) produced by communication management and stakeholders were analyzed. A mixed-methods approach to analysis was adopted. Posts were first qualitatively assessed using a coding scheme, and then quantitatively analyzed for the relationships between the dimensions of CSR and CoP. The results indicate that these communities continuously negotiated CSR on Facebook; in particular, CSR sense-making partially co-evolved with the development of CoPs. Further, the CSR dimensions were elicited differently in the two types of communities.

Author Biography

Gianvito D'Aprile, Grifo multimedia S.r.l.

PMI - core business: e-learning

Incarico: Ricercatore

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Published

2016-08-24

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Articles