Corporate sustainability communication and engagement through social networking sites. Empirical research on the use of Facebook

The purpose of this study is to explore the current usage of SNSs in corporate sustainability commitment, more specifically, to assess how corporations are communicating corporate sustainability and engage stakeholders with sustainability issues through Social Networking Sites. To achieve the aim of the study, an empirical research of Facebook usage in corporate sustainability communication and engagement was performed. 20 leading corporate sustainability performers in 20 different industrial sectors were selected as targets for the empirical research. All the wall posts on these 20 companies’ official Facebook Page during the last two years are reviewed and sustainability related content are recorded in the data collecting phase. Then, a content analysis methodology was used for the empirical research. The content analysis includes a deep analysis of companies’ behavioral patterns and an analysis of interaction characteristics. The main findings include following aspects: 1) the landscape of current usage of Facebook for corporate sustainability commitment; 2) the main functions that SNSs platform provide to support corporate sustainability commitment; 3) the benefits that SNSs offers for sustainability communication or engagement; 4) the opportunities to effectively use SNS for sustainability communication and engagement.