Evolution of Corporate Social Responsibility disclosure on Twitter: a study of ICT companies in the United States

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) disclosure is a powerful tool for legitimately manipulating stakeholder perceptions and creating a favorable corporate reputation (She and Michelon, 2019). While companies have traditionally used “monologic” reports to disseminate information about their CSR initiatives to the public, there is an growing expectation to engage stakeholders and transition towards more interactive, “dialogic” forms of CSR disclosure (Bellucci and Manetti, 2017; Brennan et al., 2013). To that end, social media is increasingly recognized as a CSR communication channel that reaches a multitude of stakeholders and enables stakeholder engagement and participation (Bonsón and Flores, 2011; Cade, 2018; Neu et al., 2019). Recently, large ICT companies (“big tech”) have been at the centre of attention due to the criticisms related to violating user privacy and decision-making freedom (Zuboff, 2015), precarious working conditions for its workers (Chai and Scully, 2019; Rosenblat and Stark, 2016) and accumulating excessive power vis-à-vis its stakeholders (West, 2019). As response to these criticisms, one would expect ICT companies to improve quantity of their CSR disclosure. This study analyzes the contents and temporal patterns of CSR disclosure on Twitter by the example of the ICT sector companies in the United States.