The bean to bar journey: How chocolate companies educate their online audience about their CSR practices. A critical discourse analysis of the Instagram usage of chocolate brands.

In the chocolate industry, companies have been implementing Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR) practices as a communication strategy due to the public’s critique of the industry’s impact on their surroundings. Being criticized for deforestation, the usage of pesticides, as well as involvement with child labour and modern slavery has led to more pressure on chocolate companies to discuss their CSR practices with their customers, to show the change in the industry. This thesis has explored this topic by looking further into how different chocolate companies address their Corporate Social Responsibilities practices through their online presence on their websites and Instagram profiles. The companies chosen for this research are Tony’ Chocolonely and Divine Chocolate, whom both could be considered frontrunners when it comes to their involvement with CSR due to the reasons for their founding. Tony’s Chocolonely was founded to specifically bring a chocolate brand on the market that will lead by example when it comes to CSR, and Divine Chocolate was founded by Ghanaian farmers who aspired equal payment. The online corporate social reporting of these companies was analyzed through a qualitative content analysis, in which the data were categorized and then further analyzed acritical discourse analysis to give more contextual results and help explain the communication employed by chocolate companies. These results were put into perspective with a cross-national comparison between the UK and US Instagram profiles of both companies. This research showed how the companies mainly address their involvement in the voluntariness, social and environmental dimensions of CSR. The environmental dimension was mainly addressed by the companies through the categories of being organic and offering plant-based products. These categories correspond with main challenges for the chocolate industry; deforestation, pollution and the production of animal-based ingredients. The social dimension mainly addressed equal pay, modern slavery and child labour, which are also the main challenges of the industry being critiqued in the media. From this could be concluded that the companies try to educate their audience on how their CSR practices contribute to solving industry problems. Impressive crossnational results were that the UK profiles tended to focus more on the environmental dimension, while the US profiles tented to focus on the social dimension. The US profiles also made the posts more personal, by portraying employees from all across their supply chain and introducing them by their names. From this, it could be concluded that the CSR values for countries may differ since the UK profiles showed more interest in the environmental dimension of CSR while the US profiles focused more on the social dimension. In terms of future research, the findings triggered the discussion of topics that have not been addressed online; it could be interesting to gain the perspective of the company on why they have chosen to address the social and environmental dimension of CSR most extensively. Last, scholars could delve into the rhetorical strategies that chocolate manufacturers could apply in their online presence and test what would be the most effective way to use CSR as a selling point.