Framing and Counterframing the Issue of Corporate Social Responsibility: The Communication Strategies of Nikebiz.com

Abstract

This article reports on the communication strategies that sports shoe giant Nike used to successfully protect its corporate social responsibility (CSR) reputation during the late 1990s. The article opens with a brief discussion of CSR and its critical importance to transnationals such as Nike. The opening also includes four research questions guiding this study. The article then discusses why frame analysis offers such a potentially rich approach to analyzing public relations controversies like this one. The Analysis section of the article examines how an anti-Nike coalition initially succeeded in imposing negative frames on two CSR issues and how this framing generated highly negative media coverage. The remainder of this section provides a detailed commentary on eight Web texts from Nikebiz. com and how the framing strategy behind these texts enabled the company ultimately to defend, even to enhance its CSR reputation.