| Abstract [eng] |
As stakeholders’ interest in sustainability increases and globalization has a significant impact on ESG activities, more and more organizations are inclined to disclose ESG-related information. However, companies' ESG information is no longer presented solely in sustainability reports. Social media is growing in popularity as a sustainability disclosure channel among consumers. Regulatory organizations pay great attention to the information disclosed in sustainability reports, as the new ESRS requirements aim to ensure the structure, quality, completeness and comparability of the information provided. Meanwhile, ESG information disclosed on social media is completely unregulated by any requirements. Which raises the question of how and what information companies disclose in sustainability reports and social media, and how it differs as stakeholders use both channels to obtain data. Research object: ESG information in sustainability reports and on „Twitter“. The aim of research: to investigate the disclosure of ESG information in social media and sustainability reports. The chosen qualitative method of content analysis helped to compare the ESG information disclosed by companies between two different information channels. The study was conducted based on the sustainability reports of the 8 largest European companies by revenue for 2021-2022 and almost 2000 tweets. The results of the conducted research revealed that companies provide more detailed and contextual information in sustainability reports, while in social media the information is presented as a fact, of limited detail and general nature. However, the ESG information disclosed in the sustainability reports only partially meets the requirements of the ESRS, as the organizations do not properly provide double materiality and all the required completeness disclosure indicators. The analysis showed that companies do not provide information about the company's payment practices, salaries of employees and managers, and the independence of the committee in accordance with ESRS requirements, and when providing data, they disclose it in a variety of ways and with different measurement units. It was also found out that management information is rarely presented in social media compared to sustainability reports, as companies only disclose data on changes in managers in this channel. Additionally, companies use indicators as an ESG disclosure tool in their sustainability reports, but rarely use indicators as a reporting tool in social media. The results of the study revealed that organizations mostly disclose positive information in social media and sustainability reports, while negative information is not disclosed in social media. |
