Social media and EU companies' engagement in circular economy: a LinkedIn approachSocial media and EU companies' engagement in circular economy: a LinkedIn approach Peer-Reviewed Journal Publication Δημοσίευση σε Περιοδικό με Κριτές 2023-12-222022enIn the Internet age, companies utilize social media platforms to increase their network, visibility, and profits. LinkedIn is one of the most popular such platforms, offering profile hosting and several basic services for free that both companies and customers make good use of. In this study, data-driven and qualitative approaches of assessing the topic of circular economy as a LinkedIn activity in the EU and UK are performed. Data were collected by LinkedIn registered companies with the keyword “circular economy”, extracting variables such as number of employees, date of foundation, company's activities, etc. Results indicate that 3727 EU company profiles are involved in circular economy activities. The majority of these companies operate in the UK, followed by the Netherlands and Italy. In total, there are >120 k employees in companies with circular economy activities in the EU, with Finland having the highest representation per half million population. With the extracted data, we provide a primary descriptive and statistical analysis for each country's engagement in circular economy, based on the business' sector activity. In addition, a presentation of circular economy companies per industrial sector and country is provided. The findings indicate that the examined companies give collective information regarding differentiations among the countries they operate in, but also shed light to the penetration of circular economy entrepreneurship in the EU. Monitoring the characteristics of the examined LinkedIn companies, as well as their descriptions and hashtags, essential insights on the progress and penetration of this ongoing economic transformation is provided. This approach offers significant perspectives for future country-specific in depth-analyses on this trending topic.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Sustainable Production and Consumption32802-816 Tsironis Georgios Daglis Theodoros Tsagarakis Konstantinos Τσαγκαρακης Κωνσταντινος Elsevier Circular economy Industry sectors R strategies Sustainability LinkedIn Text mining Web-based data