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‘The cheese that tastes good and does good’: corporate social responsibility and national belonging in ICA’s Folke Cheese Initiative
Örebro University, School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences. Department of Media and Communication Studies.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-5051-7804
Örebro University, School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences. School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, Department of Media and Communication Studies, Örebro University, Sweden; School of Languages and Applied Linguistics, The Open University, Walton Hall, Kents Hill, UK.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-5554-4492
2026 (English)In: Visual Communication, ISSN 1470-3572, E-ISSN 1741-3214, article id 14703572261428591Article in journal (Refereed) Epub ahead of print
Abstract [en]

This article critically examines the Folke Cheese Initiative, a corporate social responsibility project launched by the Swedish supermarket retailer ICA in 2017 and linked to its hard cheese brand, Folke. Using an historical-archival approach to multimodal critical discourse analysis, the study traces the Initiative's evolution across product development, launch and promotion, call to action and impact, analysing social media campaigns, promotional videos, packaging and websites. The analysis demonstrates how ICA constructs Folke as a symbol of national identity, embedding banal nationalist cues, familiar landscapes and rural imagery, while linking consumption to collective responsibility and social good. While the Initiative foregrounds community engagement, sustainability and national cohesion, it offers limited solutions to structural social and economic inequalities. Folke, thus, exemplifies how food packaging - and its associated promotional materials - can function as strategic instruments, aligning with Swedish social-democratic values while extending corporate influence over local communities. By presenting everyday consumption as a contribution to society, ICA positions itself as a socially responsible actor, even as the long-term efficacy of the Initiative remains uncertain. Overall, this case contributes new insights into the temporal evolution of corporate social responsibility (CSR) discourse, the multimodal construction of product-based social responsibility and the national specificity of sustainability practices in the Swedish food retail sector.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Sage Publications, 2026. article id 14703572261428591
Keywords [en]
consumer culture, corporate social responsibility (CSR), Folke, historical-archival, multimodal critical discourse analysis, nationalism, sustainability, Sweden
National Category
Media and Communication Studies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-130548DOI: 10.1177/14703572261428591ISI: 001831024800001OAI: oai:DiVA.org:oru-130548DiVA, id: diva2:2090877
Available from: 2026-08-10 Created: 2026-08-10 Last updated: 2026-08-10Bibliographically approved

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Andersson, HelenO’Hagan, Lauren Alex

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