Friend or Faux: Exploring the perceived authenticity of corporate socio-political activism on Instagram through the lens of Black Lives Matter

With partisan and racial division growing, there has been a call for corporations to take a stance on social issues, such as racial justice, and many corporations have answered, leading to an influx of organizations publicizing their stance as a form of CSA (Coman et al., 2022). Corporate social advocacy (CSA), a concept that combines elements of corporate social responsibility, CEO activism, and corporate political advocacy, refers to an organization taking a public stance on social issues (Lim & Young, 2021). The prevalence of this phenomenon has led scholars to examine the use and impact of CSA initiatives (Li et al., 2020; Parcha et al., 2020; Lim & Young, 2021). This dissertation hopes to contribute to this research area by operationalizing CSA in digital spaces, while expanding our understanding of how corporations are communicating their CSA stances on Instagram, and how the public perceives the authenticity of those messages.