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Greening the Platforms or Organisational Bullshit? A Typology of Empty and Misleading Environmental Communication by Global Platform Companies
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A3 Kirjan tai muun kokoomateoksen osa
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In this chapter, we identify and analyse how ‘organisational bullshit’, defined as empty, misleading or meaningless talk that is disconnected from organisational practices and realities, manifests in the corporate environmental communications of global platform companies. Our data include corporate sustainability reports from platform companies based in the United States, Europe, China and Russia. Building on theories of bullshit discourse in organisations, we reveal four types of organisational bullshit found in these reports: abstraction, distraction, reputation borrowing and stating the obvious, which were surprisingly similar across the four regions covered. These types stress how platform companies discursively obscure the climate impact of platform companies while promoting and exaggerating specific environmental activities and their significance. Some of the bullshit types are especially fitting for digital platform companies; as mediators of environmental communication and activism, they have unique opportunities for distraction and reputation borrowing. We argue that organisational bullshitting surrounding environmental sustainability distracts stakeholders from the actual problems and remedies but also propagates narratives of greener futures achieved with the help of the platform companies.
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Frig, M, Dovbysh, O & Laaksonen, S-M 2026, Greening the Platforms or Organisational Bullshit? A Typology of Empty and Misleading Environmental Communication by Global Platform Companies. in Platforms and the Planet. Big Tech, Digital Platforms and Environmental Responsibility. . Emerald. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83662-172-020261011