Global businesses are known to use their social media accounts for legitimisation aspirations and national market assimilation. Still, we lack empirical tools for identifying the kind of public corporate social responsibility communication (CSRC) that helps along positive branding and social relevance. This is particularly important information in view of whitewashing aspirations by the vice industries. This study develops a content analytical tool for assessing gambling companies’ social media strategies by comparing CSRC by state-owned and licenced gambling operators in Finland and Sweden. The diachronic comparative design allows us to point out how the companies advance along ambitions to communicate responsible gambling (RG), affiliate with public interests, shape the companies’ public role as societal benefactors and normalise gambling as an activity. The concepts of tactical and strategic CSRC help us to expose these communication strategies in view of national policy changes, state control and public opinion.
Aim: This is a first audit of how gambling operators in Finland and Sweden address citizens on social media. The study is able to pinpoint some differences between how gambling operators utilise social media in a state monopoly system (Finland) and in a license-based regulatory framework (Sweden). Methods: Curated social media posts from Finland- and Sweden-based accounts in national languages were collected from March 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. The data ( N = 13,241) consist of posts published on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. The posts were audited in terms of frequency of posting, content and user engagement. Results/Conclusions: Operators in both countries were, in general, active on their social media accounts, but there was a decline in number of posts between 2017 and 2020. A substantial number of the analysed posts did not visually portray gambling or games. In the Swedish license system, operators seem to present themselves more straightforwardly as gambling companies, whereas in the Finnish monopoly system the image was more tied to a social role of public good doing. Beneficiaries of gambling revenues became less visible in the Finnish data over time.
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