<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>In a climate of growing public concern and monitoring of business’s impact on the environment, corporations and industry groups have developed increasingly sophisticated strategies to manage their environmental reputation and to influence the outcome of environmental debates in the public sphere. In this article, we provide an exploratory overview of how the largest Swedish corporations selectively subsidise environmental news-making by supplying it with promotional materials disguised as journalistic copy. We analyse a year’s worth of public relations output from the largest 15 companies traded in the Stockholm exchange or owned by the Swedish state, in order to shed light on the environmental themes they cover, the techniques they adopt to maximise the likelihood of media coverage and the evidence they provide to support their claims. Our analysis shows that corporate voices make substantial use of environmental and ecological arguments in their strategic communication, but they provide little useful information about the company’s impact and do not usually foster forms of dialogic stakeholder engagement.</p>
</abstract>

In a climate of growing public concern and monitoring of business’s impact on the environment, corporations and industry groups have developed increasingly sophisticated strategies to manage their environmental reputation and to influence the outcome of environmental debates in the public sphere. In this article, we provide an exploratory overview of how the largest Swedish corporations selectively subsidise environmental news-making by supplying it with promotional materials disguised as journalistic copy. We analyse a year’s worth of public relations output from the largest 15 companies traded in the Stockholm exchange or owned by the Swedish state, in order to shed light on the environmental themes they cover, the techniques they adopt to maximise the likelihood of media coverage and the evidence they provide to support their claims. Our analysis shows that corporate voices make substantial use of environmental and ecological arguments in their strategic communication, but they provide little useful information about the company’s impact and do not usually foster forms of dialogic stakeholder engagement.

Talking Green in the Public Sphere: Press Releases, Corporate Voices and the Environment

Nordicom Review

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

In a climate of growing public concern and monitoring of business’s impact on the environment, corporations and industry groups have developed increasingly...

Economic growth	Organisational governance	Technical improvements	Certification/awards	Environmental and social campaigns	Other issues
Acquisition	Appointment	Process upgrade	Certification to product/process	Environmental campaign	Policy/regulation
Company product used	Partnership	Factory upgrade	Test passed	Information campaign	Legal case/ruling
Financial market	Voting stock changes	Product launch	Inclusion in index	CSR report	Policy advice
New plant		Resource use	Award to company	Exhibition	Anniversary
Operations stop/withdrawal				Financial report
Product sale				Meeting/Visit to the company
Service sale				Press conference
				Response to criticism
				Talk/conference
				Prize from company
				Research conducted/published
				Social campaign
				Charitable event
				Education
				Health initiative

Company	Press Releases	Words
ABB	25	15,705
AstraZeneca	8	5,605
Atlas Copco	10	3,785
ElectroLux	5	2,798
Ericsson	4	14,330
H&M	3	2,188
ICA	6	2,232
IKEA	12	3,934
Sandvik	1	3,193
SCA	7	3,608
Skanska	21	9,106
Stora Enso	7	5,824
Telia Sonera	5	3,506
Vattenfall	133	38,461
Volvo	28	10,940
Total	275	125,216

Talking Green in the Public Sphere: Press Releases, Corporate Voices and the Environment

Published Online: Mar 13, 2020

Page range: 125 - 140

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2014-0108

Keywords
corporate discourse, corporate social responsibility, environment, press releases, public relations, sustainability

© 2014 Alon Lischinsky et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Coded Groups of Newsworty Topics

Companies and their PR Output

Talking Green in the Public Sphere: Press Releases, Corporate Voices and the Environment

Published Online: Mar 13, 2020

Page range: 125 - 140

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2014-0108

Keywordscorporate discourse, corporate social responsibility, environment, press releases, public relations, sustainability

© 2014 Alon Lischinsky et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Coded Groups of Newsworty Topics

Companies and their PR Output

Keywords
corporate discourse, corporate social responsibility, environment, press releases, public relations, sustainability