Unpacking Stakeholder Engagement through Social Media for Sustainable Business Practices
Sintia Farach Dhiba (a), Dianne Frisko Koan (b*)

(a,b) Universitas Surabaya
* dianne[at]staff.ubaya.ac.id

Abstract

This study aims to understand the role of social media as a communication tool in stakeholder engagement of company social responsibility (CSR). Three countries, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia, which are ranked as the most active users of social media in Southeast Asia, were analysed in this research. This study uses the nethnography approach and collects data from the social media of the top ten companies with highest Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) score from CSRHub of each country. Content analysis is applied to extract the information posted on the official Facebook accounts of thirty companies. In total, this study collected 2,079 posts from the Facebook account of each company within three months using Facepager tools to see the information and communication that occurred among companies and their stakeholders. This study highlights that many stakeholders convey their sustainability concerns through the company^s social media accounts in the country with the most active social media users. This study found that 47% of companies utilize social media as a channel for doing stakeholder engagement in their sustainability report. Contrarily, the posting activities on their social media accounts display minimum interactive communication between firm and stakeholders. Furthermore, this study revealed that companies that not report social media as stakeholder engagement channel shows higher level of interaction.

Keywords: Accounting in Social Media, Social Media, Stakeholder Engagement, Sustainability Report

Topic: Sustainability accounting