A semantic analysis of social innovation and corporate social responsibility in the Spanish digital press

Abstract

Social innovation and corporate social responsibility (CSR) have been the subject of much research in recent decades. However, these terms are also widely used outside academia, including in the mass media. This paper presents semantic analysis of how these two concepts are portrayed in the generalist digital press. The aim is to detect the attributes linked to social innovation and CSR and verify whether they are consistent with those found in the scientific literature. The results show that social innovation and CSR are linked to the terms “company,” “novelty,” and “institution,” as well as “pandemic” due to the study timeframe (2017–2022). Separate co-occurrence analyses of the terms “social,” “communication,” “innovation,” “policies,” “strategies,” and “practices” show that “company,” “development,” and “institutions” are relevant terms in all cases. The analyses reveal their prevalence in the generalist press. The presence of these terms is discussed in reference to the theoretical framework provided by the scientific literature. This semantic analysis empirically shows that the generalist press portrays social innovation and CSR in a way that is coherent with the portrayal in the academic literature. Moreover, no negative words are found to be associated with these concepts.