Bridging Corporate Claims and Public Perception: Real-Time Validation of ESG Initiatives with Social-Media Analytics

Stakeholders increasingly question companies’ Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) claims, exposing a gap between self-reported metrics and public perception. We present a design-science artifact – a real-time ESG validation framework that mines social-media discourse to supply organizations with stakeholder feedback. The modular pipeline combines domain-adaptive topic modeling with transformer-based sentiment and emotion classification. A multi-industry case study (IT-consulting, food-and-beverage, tobacco) demonstrates that the system captures sector-specific ESG themes and detects sentiment shifts following announcements, controversies or initiatives. Social media emerges as a sensitive barometer: positivity dominates in sectors aligned with sustainability goals, while tobacco discourse remains negative. Event-based temporal analysis and crowdsourced annotation confirm the framework’s accuracy. The study advances information systems research by offering (1) a replicable tool operationalizing social media for ESG accountability, (2) design principles uniting socio-technical relevance and machine learning, and (3) a methodological basis for examining when public discourse legitimizes or penalizes symbolic disclosure.