Managing corporate social responsibility stakeholders in the age of social media

Digital ubiquity and penetration across private, corporate, and public spheres have expanded contemporary notions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and by extension, transformed the nature of stakeholder relationship management. The advent of social media, in particular, has blurred traditional boundaries between stakeholders and publics, making it difficult to define who counts and acts as a CSR stakeholder at any point in time. This chapter explores the intersections of these developments and advances a network-centered approach for strategic stakeholder relationship management in the digital age. It suggests that assessing CSR stakeholder salience based on network-level dynamics (i.e., the relations and connections between stakeholders) rather than those at the dyadic level (i.e., attributes within a corporate– CSR stakeholder relationship) can help organizations to better identify and prioritize critical CSR stakeholder concerns in the new media environment. We discuss the benefits and potential challenges associated with this framework and identify directions for future research.