Samhällsdebatt i modebranschen

Sammanfattning: A growing trend among fashion companies in today’s society is to communicate their take on CSR, Corporate Social Responsibility. This trend stems from the consumers expressing demand that exceeds the products themselves. Due to this, CSR is becoming coherent in fashion companies’ business and business communication (Bartlett et al, 2011:6-12; Grafström et al, 2008:34-39).  The purpose of this study is to evaluate Acne Studios’ CSR efforts by examining their visual image communication, which is represented by their Instagram account. The study is built upon three questions of interest; (1) Which, if any, aspects of CSR has Acne Studios chosen to work with? (2) How does Acne Studios’ take on CSR reflect in their visual image communication on Instagram? (3) What is the message that Acne Studios is trying to convey with their visual image communication?   The theoretical framework of the study consists of: (1) Corporate Social Responsibility and; (2) Public Relations. Furthermore, three methods have been implemented: (1) a qualitative interview; (2) a quantitative content analysis; and (3) a qualitative semiotic analysis. The empirical material consists of an email interview with an employee at Acne Studios Headquarters and an analysis of the images from Acne Studios’ Instagram account.    The results from the interview reveal that the aspects of CSR that Acne Studios engage in are not conveyed in the company’s visual image communication on Instagram. The single CSR aspect that could be identified in both Acne Studios own image of their CSR efforts as well as in the company’s visual image communication on Instagram is that Acne Studios challenges the normative perspectives with regards to playing on masculinity/femininity. The study concludes that Acne Studios’ main message in their visual image communication on Instagram is to challenge normative perspectives in terms of gender roles.