Unveiling sustainable business discourses on social media: A comprehensive Instagram-based investigation of corporate sustainability communication – Insights from three studies
Over the past decade, there has been a significant interest in corporate sustainability communication from scholars and business leaders, spurred by the growing demand from diverse stakeholders for businesses to adopt sustainable practices. Communication plays a central role in corporate sustainability as it enables 1) stakeholders to assess the sustainability quality of organizations and 2) businesses to bolster their reputation. However, sustainability communication (SC) is complex and can be perceived as inauthentic and trigger skepticism, particularly in social media. We present three studies examining textual and visual SC on Instagram (IG). Our findings reveal significant differences in how industries prioritize and communicate sustainability on IG and demonstrate that in the context of social media SC, two popular sayings partially ring true: a picture is (or it can be) worth a thousand words, yet actions (or the evidence thereof seem to) speak louder than words.
Event Title
The 24th Annual Conference of the Swiss Association of Communication and Media Research (SACM)