Thematic manipulation in Corporate Social Responsibility reporting: A multi-method analysis in the oil and gas sector

Abstract

Tone has been defined in several ways (Patelli & Pedrini, 2015). In a broader sense, tone is described as the affect or feeling of a communication (Henry, 2008). The main approach used to measure the tone of a text is based on the word’s frequency of a predetermined wordlist (Loughran & McDonald, 2015).

The tone of CSR disclosure is a very recent topic and needs further development (Albitar et al., 2023; Arena et al., 2015; Cho et al., 2010; Du & Yu, 2021; Fisher et al., 2020; García-Sánchez et al., 2019; Lu & Jagoda, 2023). Sociological theories are one of the most researched theoretical frameworks in the field of IM (Merkl-Davies & Brennan, 2011).