La CSR e i social media: una risposta italiana allo scetticismo degli stakeholder. Un’indagine sulla comunicazione online attuata da alcune delle principali aziende italiane quotate nel FTSE MIB

The present research aims to study the evolution of CSR communication due to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), the web 2.0 (Murugesan, 2007; O’reilly, 2007, 2009), and social media (Boyd and Ellison, 2007; Knobel and Lankshear, 2008; Romm-Livermore and Setzekorn, 2008; Livingstone and Brake, 2010). The study is divided in two sections, the first one (Theoretical Framework) dedicated to the theoretical analysis of CSR evolution due to the spread of high technologies and social media, the second one (Methodology and empirical analysis) dedicated to social media CSR communication empirical analysis. This research has been based on the theoretical assumption according to which globalization and the spread of social media has influenced the value creation process. In fact, it is not based on the traditional economical value, but on social (Austin et al., 2005; Brenneke e Spitzeck, 2009) or shared value (Porter and Kramer, 2006; 2011). The concepts of Shared value and sustainable development influenced the changing of the whole productive objects that are finally oriented to a wide social value through which it is possible to preserve environmental, social and human resources (De Woot, 2005). Recently, the term Corporate Social Responsibility has been an unrestricted and dogmatic use, in fact scholars, citizens or even media use it to gain a better comprehension of corporate governance or even environmental sensitiveness (Jackson, 2001; Göbbels, 2002). According to these statements, we have conducted a literature review on CSR, according to which there isn’t a shared and universally accepted CSR definition, but a lot of different definitions that refer to different analysis perspectives (Votaw and Sethi, 1973). We have also analysed the so called marketing “new frontiers” and in particular the Social Media Marketing, based on different activities such as online communication, audience researches and the network analysis Wasserman and Faust, 1996; Scott, 2000; Carrington et al., 2005). The empirical analysis concerned CSR social media communication of the first ten companies ranked in Lundquist CSR online award for 2011. It has been analysed characteristics, potential, themes, attitude and feedbacks posted on two of the main social media: Facebook and Twitter. These social media are used by almost all sample and they also provide relevant data, while the others often publish the same content present on Facebook and Twitter. The analysis contribute to gain a better definition of the “Italian response” to stakeholder scepticism around CSR communication, which is based on the stakeholder engagement that encourage: a direct relationship with audience, the spread of active listening and cooperative and co-creative projects. The present research could be enforced by future analysis on social media CSR communication and on the efficient feedback and evaluation instruments. [edited by Author]