Цифровизация экологического образа российских и французских энергетических компаний: использование социальных сетей для выстраивания «зеленого» образа

Building a green image has become an essential element of doing business online. In the face of the digital revolution, when corporations can successfully manage their online reputation and social media presence, they can expand its growth and opportunity set. With an authentic and representative digital presence, any company’s business can play to its strengths and capitalize on effective public relations.1
Each year, energy companies are starting to pay more and more attention to the environmental issues. They are developing their own concepts of environmental safety following the goals of sustainable development, monitoring environmental protection, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and many more. In this paper, the author will focus on the social media strategies of the Russian and French companies, their methods and style, and based on the data collected, a comparative analysis which will allow the author to determine which strategy can serve as a model of building a strong green image through social media will be conducted.
The main reason companies are increasing their presence on social media is that it is an excellent place for people to learn about renewable energy and particular company’s policy towards environmental safety and sustainability. It is also a great way to show the vision of a particular energy company of their perception of the concept of environmental safety and its ways of improving the current environmental situation. And thereby promote their brand by showing their environmentally friendly policy.
Social media thrives on community, interaction and creating conversations around relevant and interesting topics. Energy companies definitely use this as their advantage, first and foremost by launching campaigns that will generate a buzz that extends far beyond their current customer base attaching unique hashtags to campaigns, because campaign hashtags regularly become viral – generating even more exposure and leads. In a digital era online platforms enable corporation to adopt marketing techniques and strategies which are tailored, efficient and personable – making for truly targeted campaigns that generate conversations, interests and leads for their business.2
1 Aula, P. (2010) Social media, reputation risk and ambient publicity management, Strategy and Leadership, vol.38(6), p. 43
2 Ibid. P. 48
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The thesis is dealing with a narrow and specific topic that covers 2 countries’ major energy corporations’ social media strategies – Russian and French which both are one of the major players in the energy sector. The practical significance of the study is that a successful model of image building strategy is going to be identified among these 2 strategies with specification of the main methods that it uses. It can be helpful in further studying of the issue, both for the countries in question and other countries that have major players in the energy sector. Using the model identified in this research, other countries can apply these methods in their practices and achieve great results.
The scientific novelty of the research results lies in the development of theoretical provisions, the development of methodology and applied tools for using digital transformation in order to build a green image through social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, identifying the main methods that can be used throughout image-building processes of the corporations.
The analysis will be directed towards emphasising the main features that those companies’ social media strategies have. The main points to be paid attention to would be the methods used, the types of the publications, their frequency, focus, engagement rates and the CEOs’ social media publications.
On the one side, there will be Gazprom Neft, Lukoil and Rosatom analysed, and on the other – Total Energies, ENGIE and EDF Group. The author have chosen three largest energy companies in both countries and in order to ensure greater objectivity while identifying, analyzing and comparing the main methods and features of these two groups of companies and in each of the group, there were chosen two types of the corporations – oil and gas energy corporations and atomic energy ones. Based on comparative analysis, it will be possible for the author to determine if their strategies are similar or completely different therefore allowing the author to distinguish the most successful strategy based on the social media indicators.
On social media, these corporations tell the audience about their key projects that help digitalize the energy sector using environmentally friendly ways and show their audience that they are modern but at the same time environment-concerned. Therefore, on the basis of digitalization, they implement green propaganda aimed at creating their green image as well as initiating image-making processes of the corporations.
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All of the mentioned above prove that the environmental security plays an important role in the energy companies’ policy making as well as image-building strategies. But how and why these companies are using the Internet platforms in order to create a green image? That is the research question of the thesis. In order to see what methods the corporations use and how they are changing their policy in order to meet the needs of consumers and the environment at the same time, the author analyses social media of the corporations in question.
Relevance of the topic is coming from the constant increase in the use of social media by international corporations caused by the digitalization processes. Energy companies are concerned with their public images more than ever before, especially pertaining to the environmental impact of their operations. More and more corporations utilise social media in order to build an environmentally friendly or green image and therefore promote their brand. The main goal that they pursue is to get more consumers of their goods and the only way to do that is to show their activities that are done in accordance with the audience’s vision of the ‘green’ corporation by different methods that are being specified in the chapters of the thesis.
Object of the thesis is the process of building a green image by the energy corporations using social media.
Subject of the research is social media strategies of the major Russian and French energy corporations.
The aim of the work is to determine key features of the Russian as well as the French energy companies and make a conclusion on which strategy is more successful and why by revealing key differences and similarities between the Russian and French energy companies’ social media strategies of building a green image using comparative analysis which would eventually make it possible to identify the distinctive features of the most successful model.
The objectives of the research are:
1. to examine the social media policy of the companies and the CEOs;
2. to reveal the main methods of building a green image;
3. to measure the engagement of the audience;
4. to classify social media publications;
5. to determine key differences and similarities between the Russian and French energy
companies’s policies on social media.
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Literature and sources analysis. The degree of scientific elaboration of the problem is determined by the novelty of the emergence of the analysis of social media and its direct influence on the building of a green image. At the same time, digital transformation of society is well studied by the domestic as well as abroad researchers.
Literature. The interest of a general methodological and theoretical nature for the author’s understanding of the problem under study was the fundamental works of the following authors: Storsul, T., & Fagerjord, A.3, Mayer-Schonberger and Cukier4, Kwet M.5, Beniger, J.6, Jensen K.B.7, Pool, I. de S.8, Wartick, S.L9. On the basis of their study, the author’s theoretical and methodological concept for conducting the thesis was formed.