The impact of the Internet and social media on corporate crises created by radical activists : campaigns, participation, responses and newsworthiness

• Main Author: Grant, Julia Bettina
• Published: University of Nottingham 2016
• Subjects: 302.23
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.716830

The thesis is structured around two contrasting narratives of the impact of the internet and social media on corporate crises created by radical activists. Briefly, the 'advancing' narrative celebrates what has been enabled for society by the internet and social media, and suggests that the influence of offline media is diminished by online technologies. The 'inflated' narrative argues that this has been overstated, and argues that, rather than flatten-out hierarchies, the internet and social media perpetuate these. The thesis combines social, political, management and CSR literatures to detail the importance of these narratives vis a vis corporate crises created by radical activists. These then guide examination of three case studies of corporate crises created by Greenpeace targeting Shell (pre-digital crisis), Nestle and Procter & Gamble (digital age crises). The thesis contributes insights into radical activists' campaigns in the digital age and shows a new campaign process. The thesis finds that citizens' participation in radical activists' campaigns has evolved and advances a new term, slacktivist salience, to reflect how they take part and their influence in these campaigns. The thesis contributes to work examining corporate responses to these types of crises and empirically shows how corporations are recalibrating their responses to take into account the communications challenges precipitated by the digital age. The thesis supports predictions that offline media would come to regard these types of crises as not newsworthy, and shows that they regard them as less newsworthy than before the emergence of the internet and social media.