| Summary: | A reception analysis on Skellefteå Krafts external communication on CSR and sustainable development and in what ways students decode the message. As an effect of today's climate changes and global issues, one of the most important subjects for companies to communicate to consumers and stakeholders is corporate social responsibility (CSR). The purpose of this paper is to investigate in what ways the concept of responsibility in relation to corporate social responsibility and sustainable development infuse meaning in the external communication by the company Skellefteå Kraft. The paper also examines the way three respondent groups of students relate to this message. The theoretical frame stretches from different views on CSR- communication to green brand strategy and sustainable development. The critic on CSR-communication includes the concept of greenwashing. The study also relies on theories within semiotic analysis, reception analysis and Stuart Halls encoding decoding model. Using the method visual semiotic analysis made it possible to reveal what Stuart Hall calls the preferred reading of the company's external communication. To be able to analyze the way students relate to the message qualitative interviews was used. Tools within reception analyze was applied on the material from the interviews. Both the visual semiotic analysis and the analyze of the interviews showed that the external communication did not include the economic side of CSR as much as the social- and environmental aspect. This was to be expected since the campaigns are focused on customers and other stakeholders. The main result was that the respondents in large made a hegemonic read of both the advertising films and the campaign site. They lay focus primarily on the caption and less on the image itself. The respondents could mainly distinguish the communication of social responsibility. This may be because both campaigns focus primarily on the human being and different life styles. When it comes to environmental responsibility the analysis show that Skellefteå Kraft uses ecological arguments in their external communication about energy and electrician, but they do not demonstrate the extraction which does in fact have some negative effects on nature. If Skellefteå Kraft had been more willing to demonstrate the extraction process they probably would have been described as honest and their ecological arguments would have been more comprehensible. This would also be proof that the company has little to hide when it comes to environmental responsibility. The advertising film as well as the campaign site communicates joyfulness and naturally produced electricity.
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