Social media as stakeholder engagement tool: CSR communication failure in the oil and gas sector

Abstract

AbstractThis article explores to what extent oil and gas companies use social media to engage with stakeholders on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategies. Drawing from the analysis of oil and gas megaproject facing the local community's protects, the research aims to highlight the level of stakeholder interaction on CSR's actions disclosed by social media. The study considers the Trans Adriatic Pipeline experience and the degree of interactions between the company and its stakeholders. According to Carroll's pyramid, the contents of Tweets were analyzed with the assistance of the statistics software program “TwitteR” and classified by their content. The analysis of the engagement practices on Twitter reveals that legitimization is influenced by the CSR contents proposed by the firms and the phase of megaproject development. Results suggest that social media communication does not always respond to stakeholder claims that should be periodically monitored through adequate stakeholder engagement tools.