Are You Creating Socially Responsible Visual Communication? : An Exploratory Study of Fashion Companies’ External Social Responsibility on Instagram: A Marketer’s Perspective

Background: Following the development of digitalization and the emergence of social media a lot of attention has been drawn upon how these platforms are influencing the fashion industry and fashion marketing. As society is becoming more ethics and health conscious, fashion companies’ visual representations in social media are drawing more attention - who is represented and how are these representations portrayed. Previous research has shown that white and thin models are a recurrent over-representation in media, consumers through these see the ‘ideal’ or stereotypical body types or norms, and not an actual or full representation of society. The issue is, however, not that white or thin people are represented in media. The problem is how companies portray these representations and how the portrayals lead to the exclusion and misrepresentation of other groups in society. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the CSR practice of fashion companies regarding the body image representations in social media marketing communications, with specific focus on the marketer’s perspective. Methodology: For this study an exploratory cross-sectional case-study research design approach was applied. Four corporate cases of fashion companies were analyzed using data triangulation methods on the basis of content analysis and semi-structured interviews. First, case analysis of social media contents and interviews were conducted, followed by cross- sectional analysis to find out if fashion companies’ practiced social responsibility is aligned with the verbally expressed social responsibility. Findings: The findings of this study demonstrate that fashion companies consider external social responsibility as an important issue, however, a gap between the companies practiced social responsibility and verbally expressed social responsibility remains. The study shows that two of the companies’ practiced social responsibility on their Instagram channel is in alignment with their verbally expressed social responsibility, when it comes to representing diversity in terms of body size, ethnicity and skin color. However, when it comes to the representational conventions it was noted that all the companies are lacking in external responsibility due to the continuous signs of idealization and body-ism on all the companies’ Instagram channels. Conclusion: This study contributes to the research field regarding companies’ external social responsibility on Instagram. The findings provide companies and researchers with awareness of which representational conventions/key social aspects are currently lacking in corporate marketing activities and should become the focus for further improvement. Based on obtained results, a modified framework for image analysis and criteria for image/content creation are suggested. The framework and criteria can assist future researchers, help content creators and other practitioners to understand the complexity of external social responsibility and how to implement it in practice