ABSTRACT
Social media is an ideal vehicle for critical public engagement. Although the campaigns selected here showcase integrated traditional, digital and social media, they provide useful insights into the role of social media in critical public engagement. The chapter therefore discusses an understanding of activist communication as an alternative form of citizen-driven public relations in which civilian publics critically engage with organizations to provoke and achieve social change. Social media offers an open space for alternative voices to challenge hegemonic discourses and contest organizational power. It examines the Lego-Shell cobranded partnership and the Tate-BP sponsorship partnership, the commercial relationships were established to create favorable associations for Shell and BP by linking them to popular, socially acceptable organizations in an attempt to gain legitimacy and to appropriate or borrow the social license of their partner. The Lego-Shell cobranded partnership and the Tate-BP sponsorship partnership, along with the divestment case, all take place within broader context of climate change concern.
