Abstract

Digital Transformation of Corporate Social Responsibility: Crowdfunding, Community Building, Brand Activism, and Public Campaigns

Aarav Gupta

Volume: 15 Issue: 3 2025

Abstract:

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has moved from a largely compliance-oriented, report-based practice toward a set of visible, digitally mediated formats that include online crowdfunding for social causes, digital community building, corporate social activism, and public social media campaigns. This paper reviews these evolving formats and examines how digital platforms have changed both the mechanics and the risks of CSR practice. It surveys research on digital CSR communication and disclosure quality, donation-based and charitable crowdfunding as a fundraising and engagement format, corporate and brand activism as an extension of traditional CSR, and social media as the primary channel for public CSR campaigns. A comparative analysis contrasts traditional, report-centric CSR with digital-era, engagement-centric CSR, and a further comparison distinguishes conventional CSR communication from brand activism across audience expectation, risk profile, and authenticity requirements. The paper concludes that digital CSR formats expand a firm's reach and engagement potential substantially, but also raise the stakes for authenticity, since digitally amplified stakeholders scrutinize and can rapidly challenge any perceived gap between a firm's stated values and its actual practice.

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