Decoupling Sustainability Reporting and Social Media Communication After a Sustainability Scandal: Strategic Silence, Selective Disclosure and Legitimacy Stabilisation

ABSTRACT

This study examines how corporate sustainability disclosure evolves across a legitimacy‐threatening event by analysing the interaction between formal sustainability reporting and social media communication. Using a qualitative, longitudinal, event‐centred single‐case design, the study investigates a major Italian organic meat producer over the 2021–2024 period through formal sustainability reporting, Facebook content and stakeholder interactions, regulatory and contextual documents and selected economic indicators. Findings reveal a marked divergence across corporate‐controlled disclosure channels. Formal sustainability reporting remained active and progressively expanded, whereas sustainability‐related Facebook communication sharply contracted after the scandal despite continued overall platform activity. Stakeholder interactions shifted from predominantly routine and positive before the scandal to markedly critical during it, before progressively normalising in 2024. The study contributes to the literature by conceptualising strategic silence as topic‐specific avoidance within active communication, identifying multi‐channel communication fragmentation and showing how post‐scandal dynamics may involve delayed and selective acknowledgement alongside legitimacy stabilisation without comprehensive legitimacy repair.