From Corporate Activism to “Dark PR:” CorporateDiscourses and Their Influence on Public Opinion in theDigital Society

From Corporate Activism to “Dark PR:” Corporate Discourses and Their In- fluence on Public Opinion in the Digital Society Traditionally the best-practice corporate communications strategy has been for companies to remain neutral with respect to social and political issues. Milton Friedman’s well-known 1970 article, A Friedman doctrine: The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits, famously prescribed that businesses should refrain from promoting social causes, and even condemns the practice writing: “The use of the cloak of social responsibility, and the nonsense spoken in its name by influential and prestigious businessmen, does clearly harm the foundations of a free society”. While Friedman’s recommendations were never more than superficially adhered to by large corporations, as seen from sugar, automobile, and fossil fuel PR over the last half century (Ennis, 2023), there has been a marked shift since the early 2000s to more outwardly take social stands (Bakan, 2020a, Bakan, 2020b). Today, corporations are active voices in the digital environment, promoting political discourse that supports their bottom line in new ways. They have begun to adopt certain positions, sometimes controversial and polarizing (Villagra et al., 2021). Their discourse aims to influence public opinion, ultimately affecting beliefs on issues related to health and the environment, in ways that are often overtly political. Thus, the term “corporate activism” has gained weight as a way of describing corporate strategies towards social debates. Wilcox (2019) points out that the main objective of corporate activism “is to participate in the marketplace of ideas and to enunciate the company’s values through policies and actions with which various segments of the public may disagree”. This activism manifests itself through practices such as corporate advertising as a way to express a position on a controversial issue, or through the public participation of different top-level figures such as CEOs, among others. 6 TRIPODOS 2025 | 57 LETICIA RODRÍGUEZ FERNÁNDEZ, GRANT ENNIS On many occasions corporate activism is transparently disingenuous, such as cases when they frame issues in ways that distract from the negative externalities of their business models, and away from political solutions. Recently, the scale of these practices has grown enormously with the rapid increase of digital media, and in tandem, digital propaganda models (Rodríguez-Fernández, 2021). Some media and authors have begun to denounce such actions under the term “dark PR”, which would allude to deliberate disinformation promoted by companies (Ennis, 2023; Rodríguez-Fernández, 2023). This concept would also encompass practices against competitors and political opponents in order to affect their reputation. Interestingly, it is also worth reflecting on the practices that companies will have to develop in order to protect themselves from disinformation. For example, the sugar industry has used disinformation to blame the meat (fat) industry for ill-health (Taubes and Kearns, 2012), and the fossil fuel industry has attacked the wind industry by blaming them for the death of whales (Atkin and Thomas, 2022). These are only a few of many examples of these kinds of blame-shifting (Ennis, 2023). These tactics can only be expected to expand exponentially in the context of the digital conversation, and corporations themselves will be interested in implementing effective tactics and tools to defend themselves. Properly used, verification by companies could contribute to reducing rumours about their own sector of activity, helping other companies in their area of activity. However, if misused, corporate activism, or dark PR, can be a tool to discredit citizen activism and critical voices that denounce malpractice. Further research into this line of inquiry is direly needed, and issue 57 of Tripodos aims to fill that gap. The studies featured in this issue review new approaches, methodologies, and considerations related to the study of dark PR and that will be of significant interest to researchers and lay readers alike. In an interesting study by researchers at OTH Regensburg, Carina Leonhard and Katherine Guertler break from the standard practice of looking at greenwashing in advertising aimed at the general public, to analyse how corporations greenwash their own boards, shareholders, and the communities of practice. They do this through a careful review of a mining and commodity trading company’s climate report, and derived novel and interesting findings that will be valuable for future researchers in this space. Taking another novel approach to studying greenwashing, Célia Belim and Raphaël Baptista Marques of the University of Lisbon analysed not corporate dark PR, but a campaign against it. They evaluated the Portuguese activist campaign: “Greenwashing: Don’t paint yourselves green! Tell things as they are” by DECO PROteste. Through discourse and rhetorical analysis of campaign materials, as well as focus group discussions with university students, they identified a number of areas where future campaigns can be improved. Francisco Segado-Boj (Complutense University of Madrid) and José Manuel Noguera-Vivo (Catholic University of Murcia) explore the field of study related to Mobile Instant Messaging (MIM) applications (i.e. WhatsApp, Telegram, etc.) as vehicles for information, and disinformation dissemination. They find that research into the use of these applications as delivery vehicles for news is 7 TRIPODOS 2025 | 57 FROM CORPORATE ACTIVISM TO “DARK PR:” CORPORATE DISCOURSES AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON PUBLIC OPINION… disturbingly sparse, and note, with an urgency underscored by the increasing global scale of dark PR, that significantly more research is needed. Corporations can also be the target of disinformation campaigns and be affected by attacks that seek to damage their images and reputations. Eze Ugochukwu Zacky (University of Nigeria, Nsukka) and Chinwendu Judith Zacky- Eze (University of Nigeria, Nsukka) analysed communication strategies and tactics for organisational resilience through ten case studies of multinational corporations and political organisations. Their analysis provides insight into the ways in which organisations can defend against disinformation. Their enlightening findings revealed several critical insights into how organisations can improve their resilience against disinformation, including how immediate public announcements, as well as close-collaboration with fact-checkers, can be effective communication strategies to mitigate the spread of disinformation and reduce reputational damage. Andrea Castro-Martínez and José Luis Torres Martín of the University of Malaga analysed the negative influence tactics, or dark PR, used to discredit citizen activism denouncing gentrification, rising housing prices and the loss of local heritage in the city of Malaga in Spain. They found that mainstream media gave greater prominence to institutions and politicians than to citizen organisers, significantly downplaying their demands.