TRANSPARENCY ON FACEBOOK: CROSS-CULTURAL IMPLICATIONS WITH A FOCUS ON ENERGY COMPANIES

Social media have revolutionized corporate communication by allowing companies to improve on the traditional one-way output and actively monitor public expectations. Yet, the variety of potential stakeholders challenges corporations to reconcile sometimes conflicting cultural expectations. In fact, orientations of different stakeholders – such as social media users – about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) are not universal and vary according to the importance assigned to different dimensions (i.e. economic, legal, philanthropic). Emphasizing global CSR efforts tends to generate positive reactions across multiple contexts but the importance of local experiences cannot be forgotten. This article aims to contribute to the emerging research on transparency and CSR communication through social media by focusing on the energy industry, a sector that is subject to growing environmental pressures as well as public scrutiny. The article is built around two research questions: 1a: Do energy companies share information about transparency and CSR on social media? 1b: Are their strategies cultural-dependent or globalized? 2: How do social media users perceive these communication strategies? A ranking of 50 listed energy companies was produced by combining Italian, European and global energy companies. A qualitative content analysis was carried out on the Facebook posts published by the first 10 companies on this ranking between January 2021 and March 2023. The study will rely on two methodologies: 1) Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis to investigate how the companies have organized their cross-cultural communication in terms of transparency and CSR; 2) Netnography to study social media interactions and gain insights into how users have perceived the companies’ communication strategy