Guess, AndyCoene, Mia V.2025-08-052025-08-052025-04-03https://theses-dissertations.princeton.edu/handle/88435/dsp01sn00b222mCompanies’ involvement with American politics has become a central issue in the media. This thesis aims to address the political intricacies behind why companies get involved with public policy and how consumers react to this involvement. Thus, the main question in this thesis is: why/how do companies get involved with public policy and how does it affect American consumers? Scholarship around this topic has thoroughly examined factors like “corporate political activity” and “corporate social responsibility,” as well as “partisan brand signals,” “political consumerism,” and “agenda setting” to answer these questions. Scholars have found that companies have an increased awareness of the rapport they can build with their customers and stakeholders by being socially and politically responsible. Although, this comes with complex convergences of political actors’ agendas and company agendas. The issue of influential companies’ involvement with politics is a contemporary issue that every American has to reconcile. I form my argument by scraping data from 25 corporate X accounts to analyze the trend of corporate political posting in the media. I pair this trend with surveys on American sentiment towards company involvement with public policy and conduct case studies on Bud Light and Amazon to fully understand how consumers and companies are affected by corporate political involvement. I find a recent downward trend of political posting and of American sentiment towards company involvement with public policy. The implications of my findings are that the relationship between corporate political activity/corporate social responsibility and consumer sentiment is cyclical and thermostatic. This means companies, consumers, and political actors should be able to predict what CPA and CSR will look like in the years to come.en-USPrinceton University Senior Theses