A light shade of green: German stock index listed companies’ inclusion of sustainability communication on X and Instagram

Our study examines the sustainability communication of German stock index-listed (DAX) companies on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram. We examine the frequency and content of sustainability-related posts and seek to answer two main questions: The frequency and topics of sustainability communication among the 40 DAX companies (RQ1), and any patterns or differences based on their proximity to consumers (RQ2). We analyzed all tweets and Instagram posts of these companies from their inception to November 2022 (NX = 642,897, NInstagram = 66,867), using a combination of machine learning classifiers to identify sustainability-related content and topic modeling to identify sustainability-related topics. Our findings highlight a significant pent-up demand in the prioritization of sustainability in the public communications of DAX-listed companies on social media.