Exploring the empowering and paradoxical relationship between social media and CSR activism ☆ D. Eric Boyd a, ⁎, Benjamin Michael McGarry b , Theresa B. Clarke a a College of Business, James Madison University, United States b AmeriCorps, United States abstract article info Article history: Received 18 April 2014 Received in revised form 10 November 2015 Accepted 15 November 2015 Available online xxxx This research explores the extent to which social media empowers consumers’ CSR activism. Analysis of in-depth interviews with consumers reveals that they experience both high and low empowerment from a behavioral, affective, and cognitive perspective. The study also revealed the presence of two paradoxes that influence the level of empowerment. The first is a social judgment paradox whereby a consumer experiences being both social judge and socially judged. The second paradox is an efficiency/inefficiency paradox reflecting the impact of social media on the time and effort required for performing CSR activism. The research findings extend and counter current theoretical thinking and managerial practice related to CSR activism in social media and they provide the basis for a typology of CSR activists in social media that provides directions for future research. © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Empowerment Social media Corporate social responsibility CSR activism Social media is linked with increased individual empowerment in many areas. One of these areas is individuals' experiences as consumers. Consumers are described as having “more information, choices, and purchase points—and thus a greater impact” as a result of social media (Savitz,, 2012, p. 26). An area of consumer behavior where social media is increasingly being adopted is consumer activism related to corporate social respon- sibility (e.g., Albinsson & Perera, 2013). Corporate social responsibility (CSR) reflects the voluntary integration of social concerns and practices into the everyday operations of a company (Öberseder, Schlegelmilch, & Murphy, 2013). It is argued that, by “democratizing” consumer activism, social media empowers consumers to pursue the role of a CSR activist (Handelman, 2013). However, there is little empirical research documenting the empowering impact of social media on the CSR activism of individual consumers. Instead, the small but growing body of research examining social media and CSR focuses on the use of social media by firms in communicating their CSR efforts (Du & Vieira, 2012; Fieseler & Fleck, 2013; Lee, Oh, and Kim, 2013; Lee, Van Dolen, and Kolk, 2013). At a con- sumer level, research primarily focuses on how social media empowers consumers to act together as a group (e.g. Hoffman & Hutter, 2012; Leudicke, Thompson, & Gisler, 2010). The research reported in this paper focuses on consumers at the individual level. Thus, hereafter when referring to a “consumer” in this research, it is within the context of consumers acting individually and independently of other consumers, not within a group such as a protesting situation. Three questions guide the research. First, the research examines whether social media empowers all aspects of CSR activist behavior. Handelman (2013) identifies pontification, moralizing, and obfuscating as three behaviors undertaken by CSR activists. Research to-date has not identified the specific types of behavior that are empowered by social media, leaving researchers' and managers' with little knowledge re- garding the types of behavior empowered by social media. The second research question considers whether social media's empowering effect extends into non-behavioral areas. The psychology literature describes empowerment not only with respect to behavior. It also discusses empowerment with respect to emotional experiences (affect) and information processing (cognition) strategies (e.g., Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003). The absence of research considering social media's empowering impact from these perspectives suggests that our knowledge is incomplete. The paper also considers whether paradoxes for CSR activists emerge in social media contexts. Mick and Fournier (1998) describe a technology paradox as a situation whereby consumers use of technolo- gy results in unexpected and opposing effects. Research to-date portrays social media as a positive force enabling consumer activism (Handelman, 2013; Kozinets & Handelman, 2004) but also suggests the potential for a negative impact of social media when it discusses the use of social media to “vanquish” (Handelman, 2013, p. 392) and “convert others” (Kozinets & Handelman, 2004, p. 702). This research explores whether paradoxes occur for consumer CSR activists in a social media context. Journal of Business Research xxx (2015) xxx–xxx ☆ The authors thank two anonymous reviewers, Christine Roeder and Debora Thompson for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: boydde@jmu.edu (D.E. Boyd), benmcgarry13@gmail.com (B.M. McGarry), clarketb@jmu.edu (T.B. Clarke). JBR-08730; No of Pages 8 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2015.11.009 0148-2963/© 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Business Research Please cite this article as: Boyd, D.E., et al., Exploring the empowering and paradoxical relationship between social media and CSR activism, Journal of Business Research (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2015.11.009