Social media on the route to circular economy transition from a dialogic perspective: evidence from the agri-food industry

Purpose This paper investigates circular economy communications and stakeholder dialogic engagement with circular economy posts published by European agri-food companies on Twitter from the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. It explores the use of social media as a dialogic tool to activate circular economy engagement in order to involve all supply-chain actors on the route to a circular transition. Design/methodology/approach A coding framework based on the reclassification of the Glossary of Circular Economy, according to a 4-R paradigm (reduce, reuse, recycle and recover), was developed for the analysis. All tweets published by a sample of European agri-food companies, starting from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic until data extraction, were collected, purified and analysed. Findings Agri-food companies showed a higher level of engagement through social media, even if mainly focused on “recycling” and “general circular economy” issues. In general, awareness among social network users of the need to be part of the circular economy transition emerged. Moreover, the highest percentage of posts published by the companies' Twitter accounts was informative rather than interactive. In addition, starting with the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, the circular economy has arisen as a central topic of debate and a driver for the rethinking process of the agri-food business community. Originality/value To the best of the authors' knowledge, this research represents the first study focused on circular economy engagement through social media from the company perspective in the agri-food industry.