Communicating on social issues when meaning is no longer shared

For most of the past two decades, corporate and nonprofit communications rested on a quiet assumption: even when audiences disagreed with an organization’s position, they were still interpreting events through something like a shared frame of reference.

That assumption no longer holds.

Today, the same organizational move—issuing a statement, funding a cause, changing a policy, or saying nothing at all—can be read simultaneously as principled leadership, cynical opportunism, ideological extremism, or moral failure.

This isn’t polarization as we typically understand it, but a deeper shift in how meaning itself is produced, attributed, and contested in public life. And it’s fundamentally changed the conditions under which organizations communicate about social issues.

Social issues as identity signals

Confidence in institutions, whether that’s business, government or media, continues to slide (Edelman, 2025). At the same time, expectations have expanded. Employees, consumers, donors, and communities increasingly look to organizations not just for products or services, but for signals about values, priorities, and social alignment.

The result is a paradox: organizations are expected to act, but trusted less when they do. Communications are no longer judged primarily on clarity or accuracy; they’re judged on perceived intent. Audiences aren’t asking what an organization did; they’re asking why, for whom, and what it reveals about who the organization really is.

In this environment, social-issue messages function less like arguments and more like identity markers (Korschun et al., 2024). Statements are treated as evidence of in-group or out-group alignment. Silence is rarely read as neutrality; it’s more often interpreted as avoidance, complicity, or quiet endorsement.

This helps explain why attempts to “add nuance” so often fall flat. Once an issue becomes a question of values rather than facts, more information doesn’t resolve disagreement. It gets filtered through preexisting narratives and loyalties instead of evaluated on its own terms.

Context collapse and the end of message containment

Digital platforms collapse multiple audiences—employees, customers, regulators, activists, critics—into a single, highly visible arena (Kligler-Vilenchik et al., 2020). Messages crafted for one group are instantly reinterpreted by others with very different assumptions and incentives.

An internal policy update can be reframed as ideological signaling. A donor-facing values statement can be cast as partisan advocacy. Meaning is no longer controlled by the sender; it’s negotiated, contested, and amplified by audiences with unequal power and competing frames.

Backlash has also changed shape and isn’t confined to online outrage or reputational discomfort. Social-issue controversies increasingly escalate into coordinated boycotts, shareholder action, legal pressure, and, in some cases, threats to staff or facilities (Revolt, 2023).

At that point, communication stops being a brand question and becomes an operational and governance issue.

Divergent meaning in practice

The McDonald's case is instructive. When the company faced boycotts across Muslim-majority countries over perceived support for Israel (the movement started in late 2023 and continued into 2024,) they responded with a structural explanation: we're a franchise system, the Israeli franchisee doesn't speak for corporate, this isn't our policy.

Legally accurate? Yes. Persuasive? Not remotely. For audiences making a moral interpretation, corporate structure was beside the point. The global McDonald’s brand itself carried symbolic meaning that overwhelmed distinctions about franchise governance. When issues become deeply value-laden, symbolic signals override institutional nuance every time.

Costco, by contrast, took a different tack when facing political pressure around DEI programs. While other retailers softened language or quietly scaled back, the company emphasized continuity, positioning DEI as an extension of long-standing values and operating principles. By anchoring to historical identity rather than current debate, they created more stable ground. The criticism didn't disappear, but the meaning was harder to destabilize.

Then there's Starbucks and the Gaza statements. When its workers' union expressed solidarity with Palestinians, the public largely treated those statements as coming from Starbucks itself, despite the company's attempts to clarify the separation. The distinction between corporate leadership and union speech was clear on paper, but meaningless in practice. In a networked environment, responsibility gets assigned by visibility and association, not organizational charts.

Across all three cases, the pattern is consistent: when issues are value-laden, audiences prioritize symbolism over structure, and coherence over tactical messaging (DesJardine et al., 2023; Korschun et al., 2024).

Why silence rarely de-escalates

Confronted with these risks, many organizations try to retreat. They say less, avoid explicit language, or default to “sticking to the mission.” The theory is simple: lower visibility equals lower risk.

The evidence suggests otherwise. Public opinion is divided but highly engaged (Edelman, 2025; Revolt, 2023). In one U.S. survey, 58% of respondents said brands should speak out on social issues they care about, while 42% said brands should stay out entirely (Revolt, 2023). Expectations persist, especially when issues intersect with an organization’s workforce, operations, or stated values.

In that context, silence is still a signal. It communicates priorities, risk tolerance, and moral boundaries whether the organization intends it to or not. Silence doesn’t stop interpretation; it just outsources it to people with their own agendas.

How organizations are adapting, and where they stall

Many organizations have responded by going quieter. Facing backlash against ESG, sustainability, and purpose initiatives, they have adopted what Revolt calls "quiet advocacy": funding programs without public messaging, using sanitized language, moving activity behind closed doors (Revolt, 2023).

These tactics can reduce short-term exposure, but they don’t solve the underlying problem. Stakeholders continue to scrutinize political donations, supply chains, labor practices, and governance decisions. In that environment, the absence of communication is often read as evasive rather than neutral.

When communication is treated as episodic damage control instead of part of a broader narrative system, interpretive risk remains.

Toward a more durable model

The research points toward something less reactive: building for coherence instead of chasing consensus.

First, legitimacy matters more than visibility. Organizations are granted more interpretive latitude when engagement clearly connects to their operations, workforce, or mission. Peripheral activism carries higher credibility risk, no matter how carefully worded.

Second, audience asymmetries have to be acknowledged. Strategies should be designed around the most hostile plausible interpretation, not the most charitable one. That means anticipating who will reinterpret a message, how, and why.

Third, framing is risk management. Language choices shape how quickly issues polarize, and those effects are measurable. Framing decisions are strategic, not cosmetic.

Fourth, consistency is non-negotiable. In a world of permanent scrutiny, stakeholders routinely check whether messaging aligns with governance, political activity, labor practices, and historical behaviour. Misalignment is one of the fastest paths to backlash.

Finally, organizations need to plan for escalation, not consensus. Divergent interpretations aren’t a failure case; they’re the baseline. Effective organizations prepare in advance for pressure, response thresholds, and internal alignment, including employee safety.

From statements to narrative infrastructure

The core challenge today isn’t finding the right words. It’s operating in an environment where meaning is unstable, contested, and politically charged.

Social-issue communication can no longer be reduced to statements or moments. It requires narrative infrastructure: sustained alignment between values, actions, governance, and communication over time.

Organizations that treat social issues as episodic messaging problems should expect recurring volatility. Those that invest in coherence across what they say, what they do, and what they enable, are better positioned to navigate a landscape where meaning is no longer shared, only negotiated.

References

DesJardine, M. R., Shi, W., & Marti, E. (2023). Corporate social activism and shareholder value: The role of moral legitimacy. Journal of Management Studies, 60(5), 1234–1262.

Edelman. (2025). 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer. Edelman.

Kligler-Vilenchik, N., et al. (2020). Political expression, context collapse, and civic meaning-making in digital environments. Media and Communication, 8(4), 1–14.

Korschun, D., Aggarwal, A., Rafieian, H., & Swain, S. (2024). Corporate sociopolitical activism and stakeholder interpretation. Journal of Business Ethics, 189, 1–23.

Revolt. (2023). Poking the bear: How brands can manage social issue backlash. Revolt Research.

Tandoc, E. C., Lim, Z. W., & Ling, R. (2021). Defining “fake news”: A typology of scholarly definitions. Digital Journalism, 9(1), 1–20.