Bettina Grant

Room: B22 SB
Tel: +44 (0) 115 8467750
Email: lixbg9@nottingham.ac.uk

Current Status: Registered
Year of Registration: 2011
Expected Completion Date: /09/2014

Primary Funding Source:
ICCSR Scholarship

Research Topic:
Exploring the Role of the Internet and Social Media in Conflict-Dynamics between Business and Society

Research Details:
Corporations face pressures from society to improve and/or change their environmental, social and economic practices and the emergence of the internet marked a turning point in conflict-dynamics between business and society old corporate power bases have been undermined by the ability of society to use the internet and social media tools to police corporate practice, share/access biased information, publish content direct to society, and attack corporations in a sphere which, in liberal democracies, is more or less uncensored, unedited, and uncontrolled. Social media is used by activists (individual citizens and organised groups) to spread online content across the globe in seconds, via hand held, portable and desktop devices, and stream offline attacks to online platforms. This form of activism promotes a one dimensional agenda (i.e. anti-corporate), against which corporations have struggled to defend themselves, because of the 'David and Goliath' nature of the dynamic, and a corporate inability to control all or any of the parameters, or all or any of the participants who may enter the channel. In my research I will be exploring these conflict-dynamics between corporations and society, and be seeking to generate understanding of the ways in which corporations elect to manage societal pressure in this new digital age of activism

Research Supervisor/s: Jeremy Moon and Glen Whelan

Division: Management