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regard to the subject, most mentions were found in social and business media outlets, followed by non-profit organizations, finance, and corporate media.
Many articles strived to differentiate investing from charity, using expressions like “efficiency and financial return are expected from the investments".
The study also identified the top sources in terms of coverage and activity. It turned out that although many major media outlets (RBC, Komsomolskaya Pravda, TASS, and others) published articles on impact investing, only Forbes.ru covered the topic on a regular basis.
The Towards Impact Investments program can be viewed as an illustrative example of how an impact investing program is promoted in traditional media. As it turned out, the program's wide media coverage was achieved by using the expertise of its participants. The news stories mentioned the names of renowned experts and were regularly commented on by the program's organizers and guest speakers. The significant segment of the media field was formed by event coverage that encouraged dialog (debates, conferences, online discussions, etc.) and allowed the program's experts to show their willingness to share their experience and answer questions. To attract attention, the articles used a lot of expressions with educational connotations, such as “will teach you how to attract investments,” "offer educational opportunities,” and “will learn how to make money.” The articles also aimed to create a stable positive image of impact investing. To achieve this purpose, they regularly mentioned the key objectives of the program and the issues it addressed, or, in other words, repeatedly summarized its key ideas. The focus of the information flow was directed towards the provinces, with 77 % of the materials being published in local media outlets. In other words, the Towards Impact Investments program's promotion strategy was different from the general pattern of focusing on federal media.
THE TERM «IMPACT» ON SOCIAL MEDIA
The social media situation is similar to the one observed in traditional media, with the word "impact” being mentioned in a lot of posts. In the period from April, 2020 to April, 2021, the term received 73.7 thousand mentions, with an average of 5.7 thousand mentions a month. More than half of them were made by different authors, and the total number of unique authors was 46.3 thousand. The total number of engaged users was 3.9 million.
However, only in some cases the term "impact” was used in connection with social entrepreneurship and system changes. Most posts (54 %) were related to esports and video games. Similar to traditional media, they used the term "impact” in the meaning of "contribution to the game” or "weapon efficiency.” The high percentage of mentions was also explained by the popularity of the Genshin Impact video game. The term received far less mentions in science-related social media posts (9 %), where it was used in the same meaning as in traditional media. The term "impact' in relation to social entrepreneurship was encountered only in the economy sector (5 %).
Most views were received by the posts about the Impact Fest 2021 meetup. The word "impact” was often used as part of the economy-related expressions, such as "impact economy (502 mentions), "impact entrepreneurship” (258 mentions), "impact business” (150 mentions), etc.
Since any user can post their message on social media, there are even fewer restrictions on usage contexts than in traditional media. The term "impact” often appears in social media posts as a semantic borrowing from the English language and can have a number of different meanings synonymous to "influence,” "benefit,” or "effect.” For example, "the question of how to minimize the impact on the child's psyche should be addressed to professional psychologists,” "it has the minimum impact,” or "scooters are an impact for people who love to travel around big cities…”
Therefore, the term "impact” is used on social media by different segments of the audience, which are either indirectly connected to each other or not connected at all. In the context of most topics, it is used without any reference to the current news and events. Synonymous mentions of the word "impact” are encountered often, and it is frequently used in everyday speech. Basically, the word can be used in any context. The exception is the sphere of economy where the bursts of interest to the term "impact” coincide with major industry events. Business-related posts include the announcements of events and programs, articles on social entrepreneurship, posts announcing the start of new projects and initiatives, and job offerings. Impact Fest 2021 was the biggest event that took place during the period under review.
THE TERM “IMPACT INVESTING" ON SOCIAL MEDIA
The mentions of the term "impact investing” on social media are thematically consistent and unambiguous in their meaning, as is the case with traditional media. The main representation patterns are similar to those observed in traditional media.
The "responsible financing” semantic category is represented most widely on social media, with corporate social responsibility being acknowledged as the main advantage of impact investing compared to traditional investing. Additionally, impact investing is positioned as "the approach of the future.” This creates an image of impact investing as a promising and developing approach that will be an integral part of the future world of finance. The emphasis is also placed on its financial benefits. This aspect is revealed in analytical posts, expert comments, educational content, and other messages directed at potential investors, where it is important to emphasize the financial attractiveness of impact investing. Considerable attention is also given to breaking the stereotypical perception of impact investing as a compromise between profitability and social transformation, with the main message being that impact investing is not charity.
An average social media post covers 2.7 thousand users, and the overall potential coverage of all social media posts within the period under review is 10.8 million users. Facebook[2] is the main platform for discussing impact investing on social media, accounting for 45 % of all posts. Twitter covers a wide audience with a minimum number of posts due to impact investing being mentioned by major
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