Engaging Polarized Publics in Corporate Social Advocacy

This chapter critically examines how two perspectives on CSA propose employing dialogic communication to address challenges from active publics holding opposing views on contentious social issues. It focuses on the symbolic management and deliberative-agonistic democracy perspectives and explains their theoretical assumptions, premises, and limitations. After discussing the shortcomings of reactive strategies in response to conservative backlash within the symbolic management perspective, it contrasts Habermas’s deliberative democracy and Mouffe’s agonistic pluralism, which propose shared yet divergent approaches to implementing dialogic communication. To connect theory with practice, the chapter illustrates how high-profile companies responded to mounting pressure from conservative activism. This chapter advocates for institutionalizing agonistic dialogue as a sustainable approach to dealing with the ideological tensions inherent in CSA.