Bridging the gap between social media marketing and corporate social responsibility communication

The dissertation seeks to address research questions regarding the connection between two research streams, Social Media Marketing and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Communication The literature about Social Media Marketing is young and ongoing, even if, as we will see, its roots trace back in Traditional and Relationship Marketing. On the other hand, the literature about the Corporate Social Responsibility Communication is still scant if compared to the overall CSR literature. To the best of our knowledge, there are still a lot of research gaps which deserve further investigation. In this dissertation, after having defined Social Media Marketing and understood its roots, we will investigate the figure who is using Social Media in order to communicate to stakeholders, the so called Social Media Manager. Then we will try to bridge the gap between Social Media Marketing and CSR Communication by analyzing, from a sensemaking perspective, the benefits and the challenges Social Media Managers face in making sense of CSR Communication. We will provide evidence through a case study and through the analysis of the communication strategies of the top 100 Europe FT firms on Twitter, one of the most used Social Media by firms. The five studies in this dissertation span different research contexts, methodologies, and theoretical angles. Yet, they collectively contribute to a better understanding in order to bridge the gap betweeen two research streams which, from a first sight, seem to be different but present some common points which deserve further explanation.