RESEARCH ARTICLE Fashion industry's environmental policy: Social media and corporate website as vehicles for communicating corporate social responsibility Carmen Quiles-Soler | Alba-María Martínez-Sala | Juan Monserrat-Gauchi Department of Communication and Social Psychology, School of Economics and Business Sciences, University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain Correspondence Juan Monserrat-Gauchi, Department of Communication and Social Psychology, School of Economics and Business Sciences, University of Alicante, Carretera San Vicente del Raspeig s/n, 03690, San Vicente del Raspeig – Alicante, Spain. Email: juan.monserrat@ua.es Abstract Society requires companies to adopt ethical and responsible behavior with regard to environmental policies in order to achieve sustainable development. One of the most controversial sectors in terms of sustainable production is the fashion industry. This study analyzes the extent to which seven of the biggest fashion brands in Spain and around the world communicate their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies (specifically, those related to sustainability). To this end, we identify the social media platforms used the most by the target audiences for these brands, and apply an exploratory, descriptive methodology to a content analysis of communication about their CSR policies, both formal (corporate websites) and informal (social media). The objective is to identify whether these companies communicate their sustainable activities and practices in the context of their CSR. Our findings confirm that the brands analyzed have integrated sustainability and environmental protection initia- tives into their CSR policies. However, although they do communicate this on their corporate websites, they rarely do so on social media. We thus conclude that the seven fashion brands analyzed could make better use of social media to raise aware- ness and educate customers about environmental sustainability. KEYWORDS communication, CSR, social media, stakeholder engagement, sustainability, sustainable development, sustainable fashion 1 | INTRODUCTION This study analyzes the use that businesses in the fashion industry make of the social media platforms Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and of their corporate websites, to disseminate information about their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies. Specifically, our research focuses on their commitment to sustainability in the manufacturing and distribution processes of the products they offer. The aim of the study is to determine whether these types of poli- cies are adopted by the companies and communicated, on the one hand, in the CSR Reports published on their website and, on the other, on their social media accounts. To this end, we identify the social media platforms that are used the most by young people (the main target audience of fashion brands) and analyze information related to CSR, environmental sustainability, and fashion consumption posted by the companies on those platforms (Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram). Corporations are aware of the importance to their customers or stakeholders of responsible corporate action (Villagra & L opez, 2013; Sánchez de la Nieta et al., 2015). The adoption of CSR measures can Received: 23 February 2022 Revised: 8 June 2022 Accepted: 24 June 2022 DOI: 10.1002/csr.2347 This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2022 The Authors. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Corp Soc Responsib Environ Manag. 2022;1–12. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/csr 1