Did the BP Oil Spill Stoke Interest in CSR?

I often wonder whether acts of corporate irresponsibility like the BP oil spill meaningfully stoke interest in CSR.  If pageviews for this blog are any indication, the answer to this question is a definitive yes.  To illustrate, in the month of May, my post on an infographic of the BP oil spill generated 365 pageviews and my post on efforts to quantify the effect of the spill generated 239 hits, figures exceeding visits to any individual post on other CSR topics.  Clearly, the data shows that people are more interested in current events than in more theoretical discussions about corporate social responsibility.

But did the BP disaster increase general interest in the topic of CSR?  Data from Google insights offers a definitive no.  Embedded are two charts to underscore the point.  The first displays the radical spike in searches for the keyword BP over the past few months, while the second shows a mild dip in interest in keywords like corporate social responsibility and sustainability over a similar timeframe (I would have shown them in the same chart, but interest in BP dwarfed concern for CSR and sustainability to such an extent that the a graph comparing the two appeared meaningless).  It is worth noting that this dip is consistent with trends observed in a video about climate-change related buzzwords which I discussed in a previous post.  In short, while disasters may elicit spikes in search patterns, general searches for topics like CSR and sustainability are surprisingly seasonal in nature, with declines typically occurring as we head into the lazy summer months.

And what does all this mean for a CSR blogger like me?  If I know that you want more than anything to read about trending topics like the BP oil spill, should I focus as many posts as possible on this one, single topic?  Or should I instead even-handedly publish blog pieces about a broad range of subjects, knowing very well that more abstract pieces about topics like CSR conferences, human rights, and product responsibility will only be read by a few of you?  While the former might be tempting (what blogger doesn't want to attract a bigger audience?), one could very well argue that journalistic integrity requires me to cover a full range of themes irrespective of my expected readership.  After all, who is to say that a blog post generating fewer hits is having less of an impact?

Photo credit: Noah Scalin