FRIEND OR FAUX: EXPLORING THE PERCEIVED AUTHENTICITY OF CORPORATE SOCIO-POLITICAL ACTIVISM ON INSTAGRAM THROUGH THE LENS OF BLACK LIVES MATTER

Corporations are increasingly using social media platforms to vocalize social stances as part of their CSA initiatives (Parcha & Kingsley-Westerman, 2020). Research has also shown that social media can mediate and maximize the positive effects of CSA in creating acceptance of a brand’s social identity (Park & Jiang, 2020). Scholars have also noted that using social media to engage in CSA can strengthen existing organization-public relationships, while also cultivating new relationships (Gaither et al., 2018; Brubaker & Wilson, 2018). Most of the research exploring CSA activities online have not addressed how platform affordances could affect how those activities are delivered, or how they are perceived. This dissertation employed a qualitative content analysis of Instagram posts from Fortune 500 companies that used #BLM, #BlackLivesMatter, or Black Lives Matter between January 2019 and December 2021, and an electronic experiment using a between-subjects, posttest-only experimental design with a control group to examine the effects of Instagram post types on perceived authenticity of CSPA activities using Black Lives Matter among 532 participants. The findings of this mixed methods study provide further evidence that corporations engaging in CSPA can help build and maintain relationships with their external and internal publics (Park & Jiang, 2020). However, these results also provide evidence of how this form of signaling can pose a threat to authenticity, and damage relationships, due to it being seen as performative and inauthentic, especially among individuals who don’t have positive attitudes toward the issue or CSPA in general (Leong, 2021; Gaither, Austin, & Collins, 2018). The evidence, based on existing CSPA messages and posting trends on Instagram, shows that corporations are not advocating for racial justice from a responsible party perspective, as CRR would suggest (Logan, 2019), but instead they are attempting to capitalize off of these popularized movements in order to appear socially conscious for their financial and social benefit. Findings suggest that corporations have not taken the steps recommended by previous scholars (Alhouti & Johnson, 2021) to increase perceived authenticity of their CSPA activities on Instagram, which could minimize the reputation- and relationship- management benefits of engaging in CSPA.