CSR Communications 2.0: A Social Network Analysis of Twitter

A recent study by Cone Communications found that 63 percent of consumers say they don’t know where to find information about a company’s CSR efforts and results. The same study found that 86 percent of consumers are more likely to trust a company that reports its corporate social responsibility (CSR) results. Meanwhile, 40 percent of consumers say they won’t purchase a company’s products or services if CSR results are not communicated, yet more than half don’t understand the impact they are having when buying a product from a company that says it is socially responsible.

The stakes are high for companies to address the gap between consumer demand for CSR reporting and the lack of CSR knowledge. Increasingly, stakeholders are holding corporations accountable for their social and environmental impact, subjecting them to greater scrutiny and expecting greater engagement. Ineffective CSR communications can translate to reduced consumer purchases, while robust communications can build brand trust. Given the impact of Web 2.0 in a dramatically changed media landscape, are online social network applications addressing the CSR communications gap?

A popular social network platform, Twitter significantly lowers the barriers to interacting with stakeholders, both in terms of listening and pushing out information. My goal with this research is to understand role that Twitter plays in the online CSR communications ecosystem. Anchoring on Interbrand’s 2012 list of Best Global Green Brands, which evaluates the world’s top brands on the basis of their performance as well as the public’s perception, I will use social network analysis to map the ego networks of companies that use a dedicated Twitter handle to communicate their CSR activities. By analyzing Twitter’s efficacy as a tool for CSR communications, I hope to draw insights around when and how it is valuable.

Research Question:
Is Twitter an effective tool for CSR communications? (For instance, does it help companies interact with folks they wouldn’t otherwise reach, and does that dialogue involve mission-critical topics?)

Questions & Methodology:
A social network approach can help determine the structural embeddedness of a company’s Twitter account, which can in turn be used to infer whether the tool is effective for CSR communications. While Twitter itself doesn’t necessarily capture social networks or build social relationships, it does act as a carrier for other meaningful information amongst a self-selected network of nodes. Using NodeXL and UCINET, I plan to analyze RT and follower networks as well as the #CSR hashtag network to in order to answer questions such as:
–       What does a company’s follower network look like? Of the obvious stakeholders, who is represented, and who missing?
–       Does the company have a two-way relationships with its followers?
–       Does a company’s Twitter account help it penetrate customer or advocacy groups?
–       Does Twitter help a company become a betweenness hub, or does a company remain on the periphery of a discussion about its CSR practices?
–       Does a company’s Twitter account help it broker conversations about its social and environmental impact?  Where are the structural holes?
–       And finally, with regards to the #CSR hashtag network, which users have the greatest influence (Eigenvector centrality)? Are they engaging with the company in question? Is the engagement supportive or critical? Do connect groups that wouldn’t otherwise be connected?

Hypothesis:
Yes, Twitter is an effective tool for CSR communications, but only under specific conditions. The conditions will be the interesting part—I assume that content issues including consistency and clarity of CSR message have a role to play, but I’m especially curious about network issues, including whether the #CSR hashtag increases visibility and influence, whether the difference between two-way and one-way follower relationships affects embeddedness, and whether Twitter really is connecting stakeholders to companies.