What do Stakeholders Like on Facebook? Examining Public Reactions to Nonprofit Organizations’ Informational,Promotional, and Community-Building Messages

Although public relations scholarship has often discussed the possibilities of dialogue and engagement using social media, research has not truly explored this dynamic. Instead, research on social media platforms has focused on measuring the content and structure of organizational profiles. This study seeks to enhance the field's discussion about social media engagement by determining what organizational content individual stakeholders prefer on Facebook in terms of liking, commenting, and sharing. A content analysis of 1,000 updates from organizations on the Nonprofit Times 100 list indicates that, based on what they comment on and like, individuals prefer dialogic, as well as certain forms of mobilizational, messages; however, they are more likely to share one-way informational messages with their own networks. These findings are interpreted using practical and theoretical implications for the practice of public relations.     

Social media, societal culture and Israeli public relations practice

The aim of this study is to explore Israel's societal culture as an environment with which public relations practice has to align. It asks whether Israeli public relations practitioners use social media elements, how do they perceive these elements and what do they think about their future? A web-based survey revealed that Israeli practitioners generally are willing to use and gain experience with social media elements although this usage is still in its initial stage.     

How European PR practitioners handle digital and social media

The European Communication Monitor (ECM) 2010 showed that digital communication and social media have grown in importance in the media mix of European organizations. Both new media types are positively correlated to the perceived impact of public relations (PR) in the organization. Specifically social networks and online videos are considered the most important social media tools. Also European practitioners expect that the content of communication will become more important as and when the use of social media further increases. The consequence that everyone within the organization is able to spread information is perceived as the most problematic aspect of social media. A potential problem is that only about one third of the European organizations have implemented social media policies with communication consultancies leading the way. Communication consultants consider social media significantly more important than practitioners working in organizations.     

Using value modeling to evaluate social media messages: The case of Hurricane Irene

Emerging technologies, advances in social media, and new communication platforms have transformed how crisis communicators reach their audiences and partner agencies in a variety of situations. Not only do individuals and organizations communicate differently during a crisis, but they are also perceived very differently; social media platforms and messages add to the challenges involved in maintaining the overall reputation of brands and corporations. To better understand the new messaging system and its effects, the researchers analyzed social media crisis messages and messaging theory through various qualitative and quantitative value modeling techniques and generated a simple baseline model for what constitutes a “good” crisis message. Using data collected during Hurricane Irene, the researchers used this baseline model to rank effective and ineffective messages to determine whether the most followed/forwarded messages fit this model, and to identify a set of new best practices for crisis communicators and reputation management monitors using social media platforms.     

How public relations agencies in Greece respond to digital trends

The present study investigates the extent to which PR agencies in Greece incorporate new media platforms in their clients' campaigns. Moreover, PR consultants’ views about the benefits associated with social media usage in PR are also assessed. Based on a sample of 81 PR agencies, results indicate that integration of digital media in the clients’ communication campaigns is widespread. Popular online tactics used by Greek PR agencies are related to social media platforms (e.g., Facebook), websites and viral campaigns. Moreover, executives of the Greek PR firms have acknowledged the new roles of digital media in practicing public relations for their clients, conducting research and managing effectively corporate reputation.     

Anticipatory socialization in the use of social media in public relations: A content analysis of PRSA's Public Relations Tactics

This article examines one issue in how public relations students are socialized in their understanding of the value and power of social media in the practice of public relations. The public relations academic research about social media is explored, as well as the professional claims about the value of social media as a public relations tactic. The researchers conducted a content analysis of 1 year of Public Relations Tactics issues. The data are viewed through the theoretical frame of the socialization literature ( Jablin, 1987). The results suggest that claims of social media power far outweigh evidence of social media effectiveness as a communication tool. A disconnect exists between what authors of Public Relations Tactics pieces view as the potential for social media and the research findings about the effectiveness of social media. The final section of the article discusses the implications for public relations educators, professional associations, and practitioners as they consider social media tactics in public relations strategy.     

Understanding Nonprofit Advocacy in Non-Western Settings: A Framework and Empirical Evidence from Singapore

Research on nonprofit advocacy in non-Western settings is still rather limited. In this article, we address this limitation by examining the advocacy practices of nonprofit charitable organizations in Singapore, a non-liberal democratic city-state in Southeast Asia with a history of colonial rule. We ask the following questions: What are the key environmental and organizational factors that influence the scope and intensity of advocacy activities of nonprofit organizations? In particular, what is the effect of the political context on the advocacy strategies and tactics among these organizations? To answer these questions, we present a three-factor explanatory model of nonprofit advocacy incorporating cause, capacity, and context. The research methodology entails a survey of nonprofit executives from a random sample of Singapore human and social service organizations. Our findings shed light on how the various aspects of the political context—perceived opportunities and threats from government intervention and dependence on government funding—shape nonprofit advocacy in a non-Western setting.     

Incorporating competition and comparisons into crisis communication: How competing organizations respond to industry crises

Crisis communication research typically focuses on how a single organization strategically responds to crises based on its own set of situational factors. However, it is common for multiple competing organizations to be involved in responding to the same crisis. By analyzing two industry crisis cases in China, this study provides insights into what we termed competitive crisis communication, which involves not only crisis response timing and strategies but also competition and comparisons among the different organizations involved in the same crisis. The analysis of organizational statements on social media reveals the extent of differences in crisis response strategies adopted by competing organizations. Findings from an analysis of online media coverage and public posts on social media further suggest that stakeholders’ comparisons of different organizations’ crisis responses can influence stakeholders’ emotions and reputational perceptions of the organizations. Finally, the competitive advantages for an organization to respond as the first mover or late mover in industry crisis communication are discussed.     

How do public organizations communicate their alliances on Facebook and how does the public react? A longitudinal analysis

Organizations have adopted social media to communicate their alliances to the public, that is, engage in representational networks. Yet a comprehensive examination of what is communicated in representational networks and how public reactions are associated with these networks is relatively scarce. This study builds on the Symbiotic Sustainability Model (SSM) to examine the content of messages passed in representational networks on social media and their related public reactions. Based on a panel analysis of one year of Facebook data generated by 605 public organizations in Taiwan, this study reveals that referencing certain topics such as economic and technological development and employing linguistic features demonstrating efficacy, formality, and empathetic concern in Facebook messages was associated with an increased diversity of alliance ties reported by public organizations. Moreover, the relationship between communicating diverse alliance ties and positive public reactions in the form of likes went both ways. Integrating automated topic modeling, linguistic analysis, and panel analysis, this study provides a process-based and communication-centered view of the mechanisms and disparities underlying organizations’ strategic network management on social media.     

Strengthening Resource Mobilization Chains: Developing the Social Media Competencies of Community and Voluntary Organizations in New Zealand

There is potential for nonprofit organizations to increase effectiveness by mobilizing social media to help achieve goals. However, the sector is only just becoming aware of the possibilities for social media and lags behind other sectors in its use. We report a New Zealand initiative to enhance the capability of nonprofit organizations through action research that has implications for nonprofit organizations elsewhere. Borrowing from resource mobilization theory, we introduce the concept of resource mobilization chains to explain the requirements for and obstacles to taking advantage of social media. A survey and two in-depth case studies found that nonprofit organizations demonstrated extremely limited familiarity with and use of social media. Participants were enthusiastic about the potential of mobilizing social media to achieve organizational goals, but struggled to take concrete steps to implement their aspirations. Lack of resources was a key obstacle identified in both survey and case study research.     

Social media and organizational visibility: A sample of Fortune 500 corporations

This study explores the factors that drive organizational social media visibility. Using a sample of Fortune 500 companies and influential non-profit organizations, findings reveal that mainstream media coverage significantly affects social media visibility whereas organizations’ social media use patterns have limited impact on overall organizational visibility. Implications for both the practice of public relations and further theorizing about social media studies are discussed.     

“Let's Talk About Race”: Exploring Racial Stereotypes Using Popular Culture in Social Studies Classrooms

Imagery and sounds from television, film, music, the Internet, and other media bombard American youth; dictating to them how they should act, think, or what they should believe. They often do not realize that they find much of their identity and belief systems in messages put forth to them by popular culture (Du Gay 1997; Hall 1997). Young people should think critically about their media choices and reflect on the degree that they shape their identity (Considine 2009; Youngbauer 2013). Even when it comes to the topic of race, the media has messages and values readily available for youth to adopt (Bresnahan and Carmen 2011). Based on the work of many popular musicians, African American identity is associated with violence, misogyny, materialism, and deviancy (Balkaran 1999; Ruffner-Ceaser 2012; West 1993). Other forms of popular culture, such as television and film, communicate the same negative messages. In what ways are black stereotypes perpetuated through popular culture? Can social studies classrooms facilitate conversations about race? This article explores how social studies educators can integrate popular culture into their curriculum to unpack racial stereotypes in American society, thereby helping students become more critically aware of the media they consume and how it impacts their lives and self-image.     

Social capital and nonprofit leaders

The concept of social capital seems to be a very compatible, useful, and important one for nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits must sustain and enhance the original social capital with which they were formed and broaden it into a variety of key areas. Nonprofits and their leaders must foster social capital in order to recruit and develop board members, raise philanthropic support, develop strategic partnerships, engage in advocacy, enhance community relations, and create a shared strategic vision and mission within the organization and its employees. Nonprofit executives have a pivotal role in carrying out these functions, but they do so through relationships and networks with others. These activities are time‐consuming and demanding, and they require planning. This article provides a focused literature analysis on the concept of social capital as it applies to nonprofit management and leadership. The author views the literature with respect to definitions of social capital and the way nonprofits generate and mobilize social capital in order to achieve organizational goals. The author also cites methods for measuring social capital.     

Multi-method analysis of transparency in social media practices: Survey,interviews and content analysis

With the decline of public trust in corporate America, organizations must consider ways to improve their relationships with key publics. One of the best strategies to build trust is through engaging in transparent communication (Rawlins, 2009). The increase in the popularity of social media has brought both challenges and opportunities for organizational transparency. This study used multiple methods to explore whether public relations professionals believe they are using social media to communicate transparently, to investigate how social media can be used to improve transparency along with its benefits and challenges, and to identify how transparency is used in social media campaigns.     

The Influence of Ethical Reasoning on Leader Effectiveness

In making decisions about ethical issues for their organizations, effective nonprofit executives differ substantially from ineffective nonprofit executives according to the study reported here.     

Promoting online media relations: Public relations departments’ use of Internet in the UAE

This paper discusses the use of Internet by public relations departments in the United Arab Emirates, to reach their key publics online and to gather information and monitor data to perform their tasks and to promote and develop their relations with the news media. Findings of the study show that all 24 organizations have a homepage, but only two thirds of them are posting their publications on the net, and only one third are using electronic newspapers to monitor their coverage in the media and to gather news, data and information of importance for the various tasks they perform. Only three organizations out of 24 have an online newsroom, and only two have a virtual tour about the organization. None of the surveyed organizations’ Web site has a film or videos. Organizations in the United Arab Emirates still have a lot to do to take advantage fully and rationally of what interactive communication, Internet and online publications are offering for a better performance and more effective public relations.     

Portrait of the Social Entrepreneur: Statistical Evidence from a US Panel

Social entrepreneurship is an increasingly important concept in the study of voluntary and nonprofit organizations. In spite of the growing recognition of this concept, little is known about what individual characteristics might describe or explain who in society is likely to be (or become) a social entrepreneur. This preliminary study empirically addresses this question using data from a United States online panel. Our results suggest that social entrepreneurs are likely to be female, non-white, younger, and college-educated individuals with some business experience and who live in big cities. Social entrepreneurs also tend to have more social capital, as measured by their activity in clubs and organizations other than work, and they are more likely to be happy, interested in politics, extroverted, giving (to charity), and liberal ideologically. Although exploratory, these findings help describe the social entrepreneur and suggest ways in which this important actor in civil society can be better identified, understood, and perhaps cultivated.     

How organizations framed the 2009 H1N1 pandemic via social and traditional media: Implications for U.S. health communicators

Through a quantitative content analysis, this study reveals how 13 organizations differently framed the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic crisis via their traditional (n = 211) and social media (n = 534) responses. When framing the crisis as a disaster, a health crisis, or a general health issue organizations relied more on traditional than social media. However, they tended to use social media as much as traditional media when framing the pandemic as a general crisis. In addition, organizations relied more on traditional media to address emotions than on social media. Together, the study's findings provide applied and theoretical insights for scholars and crisis managers.     

Donor engagement through Twitter

This research examines how non-profit organizations can build and strengthen relationships with donors using the social media tool Twitter. Strong relationships are what lead to donor engagement in a non-profit cause, and the participatory culture that grows online as a result of using Twitter can help to initiate and build relationships with online donors. In this research, tweets were collected from two non-profit organizations, Care2 and United Way Toronto, and one for-profit corporation, Ford Motor Company. The textual construction of the tweets was analyzed using discourse analysis and a rhetorical framework as methodologies. Two main communication theories – the Social-Judgement Theory and the Social Networking Theory – emerged from the analyzed data and were driving forces behind the results. When applied to the data, it was evident that both these theories supported and illustrated ways to build and strengthen relationships using the social media tool, Twitter.     

A mission beyond journalism: advocacy and media practices of award giving in China

Chinese media organizations do not yet have an established and widely adopted journalistic paradigm. Thus, some journalists believe they should go beyond journalism's conventional roles and participate directly in social advocacy. They practice not only advocacy journalism but also social advocacy by hosting public forums, organizing journalism training camps, and giving various awards to social activists, cultural elites, celebrities, business people, and fellow journalists. This research explores the award-giving practices of several influential Chinese media organizations. It contends that a complex array of forces and factors interact to shape the award-giving practices of contemporary Chinese media. In contemporary China, the marketized and mission-burdened media tend to use the award-giving practice as a means to build their brand image and fulfill their social mission (i.e. advocacy of values). Award giving is also intended to help media organizations network with like-minded representatives of civil society. This analysis thus demonstrates that award-giving practices help build mutual recognition between the media and a specific group of social elites in China and lead to the formation of an alliance of “the weak” when confronting the authoritarian state machine.