A.

Introduction

Corporations have become major players in our society in terms of consumption, waste,

and even the news we are exposed to. These major players have often been pressured to issue

statements of support and/or donate to social movements in the past decade or so, generally since

the increase in activity on social media platforms. Consumers will often boycott or support

certain corporations based on the portrayal of their political beliefs and of the beliefs of the CEO

or founders of the company. For example, the CEO of Chick-fil-a has been known to donate to

anti-LGBTQ+ groups and this is a hotly contested issue within the United States and whether

people should continue eating at the restaurant chain. The biggest factor that plays into

supporting a business, however, is its convenience to consumers. This area of study continues to

be relevant in our society because we are in an age of knowledge where the financial information

on people and businesses is readily available to the public, yet the general public tends to allow

their perspective to be swayed based on how businesses present themselves on social media. A

great example of this is when Gillette published a video promoting feminist ideals on YouTube

and received much backlash on social media. Many people promised to boycott the company, yet

the revenue of Gillette was not affected by the end of their next quarter. In addition, the corporate

hold on American life is a crucial thing to study as it will allow the general population to be

aware of how it came to be this way, the ethics behind it, and if we should be concerned about it.

I began this research project interested in why corporations are involved in social

activity. One of my favorite areas I learned about in history class was The Gilded Age. This era

was in the late 1880s and 1890s when corporations controlled a majority of public life because

monopolies had been formed to create the most profit. People would often sell their lives away to
these big companies, like the steelworkers who could not even strike to demand better wages and

better work environments because the company would simply bring in immigrants who would

work for even less. And I see a reflection of this happening right now in our society, over a

century later. The standard of living has gone up, but corporations have generally remained the

same, just more powerful than they ever were. Part of what sparked my interest in doing this

kind of historical analysis and the effect of social media on corporate activity was the historical

documentary we watched on the development of hip-hop in New York City. From there, I wanted

to do some cultural and sociological analysis on how it affects consumers and corporations alike.

In this essay, I want to investigate how corporations’ involvement in activist movements,

such as Black Lives Matter, affects the perspective consumers have on that corporation and

whether it is ethical for corporations to be politically affiliated in any way. I also want to research

the connection between neoliberalism and the development of this corporate social activity in the

form of statements of support and donations to social movements (both conservative and liberal),

and to discover whether these corporations are truly in support of those movements (i.e.

embodying the ideals of the movement) or not. This analysis should enable readers to have a

better understanding of how and why corporations are involved in our political lives.

B. Background/Review of the Literature

Currently, a large majority of research has been done on corporate activity within

government buildings (lobbying, PACs, etc.). The effects of this on government policy have been

shown to be minimal in terms of corporations passing laws that would positively affect their

revenue, like being able to deny paid paternity leave or preventing minimum wage from rising.
There are too many factors that play into whether or not these policies get passed and for as

many corporations there are lobbying for bills that would increase revenue, there are as many

organizations lobbying against the same bills. The research on corporate activity in regards to

social media and social movements appears to be much more limited and less readily available.

Some of the research that is available provides more technical information around the

topic of social media advocacy. A lot of the terms surrounding this topic have been defined for

me already. The most relevant term to my argument is something called “corporate social

advocacy.” This differs from corporate involvement in policy-making since corporate social

advocacy involves more ‘social’ aspects of advocacy, like posting statements of support on social

media and being involved in protests. The general consensus within many studies is that

corporate social advocacy has become more prevalent in our society, a large part of this being

due to pressure by consumers. The author from a good reference source says that online

corporate activity has developed from only being a branding and marketing tactic to being a

method for those corporations to add to the national political dialogue in the United States

(Gilkerson 2017). The development of this practice was left out, as the author seemed mainly

concerned with defining the concept and making readers aware of its prevalence in the social

media landscape of our current society.

To the piece about my focus on neoliberalism, I found a study done on neoliberalism in

the United Kingdom that demonstrates how neoliberalism is largely to blame for this

development of corporate involvement in social advocacy. The author mainly focuses on

corporate lobbying of the government in the UK and how the structures of neoliberalism, created

through think tanks and the like, have allowed capitalist agendas to be at the forefront of
government policymaking (Birch and Mykhnenko 2010). The authors use a historical and

sociopolitical means of analyzing what led to corporations being super involved in political

happenings in the UK, which is exactly how I would like to formulate my argument. The

development of corporate social advocacy did not happen overnight and it is important for

readers to understand what led most corporations doing this kind of advocacy via lobbying to

then transitioning to social advocacy via social media and sponsoring parades and protests. The

main difference between this book and my own is that the historical events to which the authors

refer to are not entirely specific; they do not attend to only one corporation. I think providing a

more narrow perspective on this issue will be more relatable and understandable.

In addition, some research has been done on how corporate social advocacy affects

people’s perspectives on controversial topics in the United States. Their findings demonstrated

that a corporation’s statements on certain topics do in fact affect how the public perceives that

topic and that there has been a blurring of lines between the economic and political aspects of

our lives, as well as the public and private sectors. (Parcha and Westerman 2020). They ask

whether or not this is a good thing, but cannot conclusively answer it with the data they compiled

in their study. It is interesting to note that many of the previous background studies similar to this

one only involve the benefit that corporate social advocacy has on the business itself and how it

can bring in revenue. In fact, when one looks up ‘corporate social advocacy’ in a regular Google

search, there are pages upon pages on how corporations can develop their social advocacy skills

and the benefits of doing so. The issue of ethics is left out of the question in a large majority of

cases. I appreciated in this particular research study that the researchers were more concerned

with discovering how it affects the public, rather than the company. They also mentioned at the
end of their study the question of what this means for our democratic society and how

corporations will begin defining it in the future. The methods in which they chose to find their

results involved direct interaction with consumers. While I do not plan to have this direct

interaction at the moment, I think that this particular research study aligns most closely with my

own research project and provides a good framework from which I can begin my own analysis of

Walmart. In my research project, I am less interested in the financial aspect of corporate social

advocacy and responsibility, and am more interested in discovering whether or not corporations

actually reflect the values they pronounce on social media and how that affects the way

consumers interact with them.

The question I’d really like to focus on is precisely the one mentioned above. I would like

to use a sociohistorical perspective to provide insight on how corporate social activity has

affected our society in the past and, with increasing pressure to become more socially

responsible, how we can theorize what it might mean for the future of our nation. I would like to

include some ethical components to this study as well in order to capture the philosophical side

of corporate involvement in social advocacy. While we are in the age of social media and endless

knowledge, more and more nuance will be able to occur and corporations might be able to affect

public opinion in ways we have never seen before.

C. Method and Design (1-2 pages)

My main idea about how to answer the questions I am examining is to do a

sociohistorical analysis in order to answer how the development of our neoliberalism society

affected corporate social advocacy. To do this, I want to select one corporation, either Walmart or
Chick-fil-a, and provide a complete history of the company and its involvement in social

movements. Walmart has been in the news a multitude of times for its unethical business

practices and for its involvement in charitable activity, so these events will be good examples for

the question I am trying to answer. Then, I can interpret these events based on social concepts

like the labor movement, neoliberalism, and the technological boom of the 21st century. After

this analysis, I would like to do an ethical study on the events that relate to corporate social

advocacy. This will round out the research project to provide alternative perspectives on whether

corporations should be allowed to be involved, if we can hold corporations to the same standard

we do to the leaders of social movements, and how information can be skewed in its

dissemination. I believe that this is the best way in which to study this topic because it is so

broad that it could become incredibly convoluted if I chose to study a larger group of

corporations (i.e. Kelloggs is in control of four separate companies) and I would be unable to get

my point across. Walmart is a big brand name in the United States and is relevant to consumers

across all states, so it is not a localized perspective. Walmart is also a good representative of how

many corporations are run in the United States and so the study on it will be applicable to many

others in the future. In addition, I think that this method answers a lot of questions very

thoroughly and will provide readers with a good contextual understanding of how and why we

got to where we are today. I am unable to do interviews or surveys because I believe those would

result in skewed information, so it is best for me to use primary sources from reputable archives

and apply objective concepts to them in this research project.

 Bibliography

Works Cited

Birch, Kean and Vlad Mykhnenko. 2010. The Rise and Fall of Neoliberalism; The Collapse of

an Economic Order? Zed Books Ltd.

Gilkerson, Nathan. 2017. "Posting, Sharing, and Tweeting a Brand’s Politics: Social Media and

the Recent Evolution of Online Corporate Activism." Social Media: A Reference

Handbook, by Kelli S. Burns, ABC-CLIO, 149-155. Contemporary World Issues.

link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX7267600015/GVRL?u=umd_umbc&sid=bookmark-GVRL&x

id=94066292. Accessed 26 Sept. 2021.

Parcha, J. M., & Kingsley Westerman, C. Y. (2020). How Corporate Social Advocacy Affects

Attitude Change Toward Controversial Social Issues. Management Communication

Quarterly, 34(3), 350–383. https://doi.org/10.1177/0893318920912196

Works Referenced

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www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62004-2004Jun22.html.

Repko, Melissa. 2021. “Walmart Donates $14 Million as Part of Broader Pledge to Advance

Racial Equity.” CNBC,

www.cnbc.com/2021/02/01/walmart-donates-14-million-dollars-as-part-of-pledge-to-adva

nce-racial-equity.html.
Weber, James, and Jeffrey Gladstone. “Rethinking the Corporate Financial-Social Performance

Relationship: Examining the Complex, Multistakeholder Notion of Corporate Social

Performance.” Business and Society Review, 119(3), 297–336. doi:10.1111/basr.12035.