Assessing the interplay between crowdfunding and sustainability in social media

This paper aims to assess the degree to which sustainability-oriented dimensions are integrated within the public discourse on crowdfunding in social media. Utilizing Social Media Analytics (SMA), we track discussions on crowdfunding in user-generated content published in social media. Based on an empirical material of 141,754 user-generated content, we identify 308 entries (0.21 percent) explicitly or implicitly relating to sustainability and 80 percent of these 308 entries came from professional actors. In this material, 37 sustainability-oriented campaigns are identified and 26 of them (70 percent) received one entry. Taken together, this paper adds to previous literature by assessing and describing the seemingly minor role played by social media with regards to the interplay between crowdfunding and sustainability.