Cho Article Summary

Corporations have long since realized that commercial profits should not be the only goal of their operations. Hence, they have engaged in social responsibility activities as well. But being a good corporate citizen should not go unnoticed, it should help improve the public image of corporations. With the advent of the Internet, social medial, especially Facebook, have become an effective channel for corporations to publicize their social responsibility efforts. However, as publics are typically skeptical about the social activities of large corporations, corporations more often communicate noncorporate social responsibility messages than corporate social responsibility messages. In their 2017 article Communicating Corporate Social Responsibility on Social Media: Strategies, Stakeholders, and Public Engagement on Corporate Facebook, Moonhee Cho et al discuss how even reputable corporations do not necessarily find their social actions approved by Facebook publics, and suggest the ways to turn this situation around.

Corporations have a long standing tradition of reporting their social responsibility activities to the public. Until fairly recently, they have mostly done it through their internal communication platforms. However, with the spread of social media, they started to seek more effective ways to interact with publics. The authors cite a study that analyzed the content of 46 corporate Facebook pages maintained by most admired companies according to Fortune, and found that corporations communicate noncorporate social responsibility messages more frequently than corporate social responsibility messages.

The three characteristics of social media –relationship building and maintenance with stakeholders, uncontrollable nature of social media, and easily searchable and accessible social media content – help reshape corporate identities. However, these identities are vulnerable to the public’s perceptions. As public is generally skeptical about social responsibilities of large corporations, they do not respond well to such activities being publicized on Facebook.

Therefore, in order not to risk their public image even further, corporations tend not to make their corporate social responsibility activities the subject of their interactions with Facebook publics. At the same time, Facebook’s engagement tools – like, share, and comment – help make communication more interactive. Therefore, according to the authors, large corporations must find a way to make their corporate social responsibility communication strategies more engaging to publics. The authors suggest that specialized Facebook accounts on corporate social responsibility activities may be the solution. However, the effectiveness of such accounts is yet to be tested.