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Discussing classic and cutting-edge research in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its communication practices, this book critically examines key issues and debates of corporate social responsibility communication in global contexts.

This book conceptualizes CSR communication as a reflective practice anchored in organizational values, identity, and purpose, yet responsive to continually shifting societal expectations. It draws on current case studies to explain why reflective CSR communication has never been more crucial to help organizations articulate their evolving roles in society. Organized into three sections – core concepts, a framework for reflective practice, and applications in areas such as employee relations, crisis communication, and the rapidly developing terrain of artificial intelligence – it highlights how organizations can tell their CSR stories authentically to create ethical brand identities that can continue to resonate with their stakeholders.

The book will be of interest to advanced students, educators, researchers, and practitioners pursuing advanced credentials who are interested in the intersections of CSR and strategic communication, public relations, corporate communication, and communication management.

Social media is an indispensable component of strategic communication and public life in China, positioning it as a central arena for crisis communication research. As social-mediated crisis communication (SMCC) scholarship expands, questions arise not only about what has been studied, but how methodological choices shape theory development. This study conducts a mixed-method review of 105 articles published between 2009 and 2025 in 15 SSCI-indexed journals spanning communication, public relations, risk and crisis management, and new media studies. By integrating manual coding, structural topic modeling (STM), and network analysis, the study demonstrates how mixed-method computational reviews can function as a theory-building device. Rather than cataloging topics, this approach maps the alignment between research topics, theoretical frameworks, and contextual dimensions, revealing under-theorized areas and methodological lock-ins. It identifies 13 research topics, highlights government-focused research as central, notes uneven use of framing theory and SCCT, and recognizes economic factors as an emerging contextual dimension. Overall, this study not only contributes methodological and theoretical insights to crisis communication scholarship by foregrounding China’s distinctive digital, institutional, and sociopolitical environment but also illuminates the theoretical and thematic blind spots generated by Western-influenced research agendas in engaging with the complex realities of non-Western societies.

Public understanding is essential to advancing energy transitions. Yet less is known about how energy transition is understood and communicated at the local level in Global South contexts, what barriers emerge in communication practices, and how local actors respond to these constraints. To address these questions, this study focuses on local climate communicators who are actively engaged in frontline energy transition communication. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 28 local climate advocates from 14 Global South countries, the findings show that energy transition is rarely understood as a technocratic pathway toward decarbonization. Instead, it is commonly framed around survival needs, local control, justice concerns, and gendered energy labor. In practice, energy transition communication is shaped by four challenges: linguistic and cognitive barriers; technological breakdowns and project discontinuities that erode trust; deeply embedded cultural meanings associated with energy use; and the systemic exclusion of women from communication and decision-making processes. In response to these constraints, local advocates develop a set of context-specific communication practices, including the use of local languages and visual tools, narrative storytelling, participatory dialogue, the mobilization of trusted community communicators, and the integration of communication with visible and tangible energy actions. While these practices emerge under comparable structural constraints, the meanings and communicative pathways of energy transition diverge across socio-cultural contexts. This study demonstrates how energy transition is continuously negotiated and reconstituted through concerns of survival, trust, and participation, thereby offering empirically grounded insights from the Global South to energy transition and energy communication research.