Terms of engagement: Facebook and Twitter use among nonprofit human service organizations

This study uses Lovejoy and Saxton's (2012) hierarchy of engagement to analyze how nonprofit human service organizations use Facebook and Twitter to engage stakeholders. Their framework has not been applied to this nonprofit subgroup, and most previous scholarship on this topic focuses on just one platform. We also contribute by drawing on organizational theory to better understand variation in the modes of engagement organizations emphasize. Based on our analysis, we add new subcategories to the hierarchy of engagement. In addition, we find that compared to other nonprofit subgroups examined in previous research, the organizations in our sample placed a greater emphasis on using social media messages to ask stakeholders to take action. We report only modest variations in how organizations were using Facebook and Twitter. Finally, according to our results, resource dependence and stewardship theories help explain the modes of engagement organizations prioritize.     

Tweet, tweet, tweet: A content analysis of nonprofit organizations’ Twitter updates

Many of the relationship cultivation strategies and the dialogic principles assume symmetrical communication is taking place. However, significant amounts of information are shared in a one-way manner. Although they have fallen out of favor with many academics, the four models of public relations can provide significant insights into how organizations communicate. Using the models as the guiding framework, this brief study examines how nonprofit organizations from the Philanthropy 200 communicate on Twitter. The findings reveal that the organizations are more likely to use one-way models despite the potential for dialogue and community building on the social networking site.     

How do adults with intellectual disabilities use Facebook?

Social networking sites have potential to support social relationships and self-determination of people with intellectual disabilities. However, to date, this issue has received little research attention. To help address this need, we conducted an online research survey to reach adults with intellectual disabilities who use Facebook and to include their voices about their online experiences, challenges, and preferences. We used mixed methods for data collection and analysis. Results from 58 respondents indicated that they use Facebook much as non-disabled users do to connect with family members and real-world friends. At the same time, the respondents reported challenges such as privacy setting and literacy demands. We discuss these findings and how to make social networking sites more accessible for users with intellectual disabilities.     

Fostering democracy through social media: Evaluating diametrically opposed nonprofit advocacy organizations’ use of Facebook,Twitter, and YouTube

Nonprofit organizations contribute to a democratic society by allowing those with diverse opinions to assemble and voice these ideas. Social media has provided an extensive new marketplace in which such organizations can give voice to their ideas. Thus the purpose of this study was to explore and assess the use of social media (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube) for advocacy by nonprofit organizations with diametrically opposed points-of-view on two social issues, the pro-gun/gun control issue and the pro-choice/pro-life issue. Results of this study indicate that nonprofit advocacy organizations are using social media to ethically persuade people to their point of view, for the most part through use of one-way communication. Moreover, organizations are using the various social media for different purposes, providing thanks and recognition on Twitter, and soliciting feedback and other two-way communication with stakeholders on Facebook. Use of authority figures to communicate messages is generally reserved for YouTube.     

How nonprofit human service organizations manage their funding sources: key findings and policy implications

Major findings and policy implications on how nonprofit social service organizations manage their funding relations are summarized. Data from in-depth case studies of six medium-sized social service organizations with distinctive funding profiles yielded findings on the major contingencies associated with controlling fees, the volatility of donations, and the driving force of public funding relationships for funders (public and private), nonprofit managers, and the role of nonprofit organizations.     

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.     

Ethics in an Age of Information Seekers: A Survey of Licensed Healthcare Providers about Online Social Networking

The present study explores how licensed health care providers use social media. The researchers utilized a survey to explore 88 licensed psychologists, physicians, and social workers average numbers of Facebook© friends, social groups, and photo albums as well as attitudes toward possible regulation of online social networking by professional organizations. Statistically significant differences were found among groups regarding the degree to which they wanted guidance on ethically managing this new technology, with psychologists and social workers desiring more guidance than physicians. Overall, this study shows that the majority of the psychologists, physicians, and social workers who participated in this study now frequently use Facebook, often providing information on profiles that may include that which is not generally disclosed in a client–therapist relationship.     

Dialogic strategies and outcomes: An analysis of environmental advocacy groups’ Facebook profiles

Previous studies of advocacy groups’ Web sites suggest that the use of dialogic strategies could lead to greater dialogic communication. This study examined whether dialogic strategies utilized by environmental advocacy groups via their social networking profiles lead to greater dialogic engagement between organizations and visitors. This study offers the first examination of the relationship between the creation of an online space for dialogue and actual dialogic engagement by identifying and measuring six dialogic outcomes.     

Engaging stakeholders through Twitter: How nonprofit organizations are getting more out of 140 characters or less

While it may seem difficult to communicate in a meaningful manner with 140 characters or less, Twitter users have found creative ways to get the most out of each Tweet by using different communication tools. This paper looks into how 73 nonprofit organizations use Twitter to engage stakeholders not only through their tweets, but also through other various communication methods. Specifically it looks into the organizations utilization of tweet frequency, following behavior, hyperlinks, hashtags, public messages, retweets, and multimedia files. After analyzing 4655 tweets, the study found that the nation's largest nonprofits are not using Twitter to maximize stakeholder involvement. Instead, they continue to use social media as a one-way communication channel as less than 20% of their total tweets demonstrate conversations and roughly 16% demonstrate indirect connections to specific users.     

Beyond social networking: Performing global Englishes in Facebook by college youth in Nepal1

Until recently, scholarship on online social networking has mostly focused on issues of social relationship, privacy, identity and literacy. Research on the interface between multilingualism, multimodality and online social networking from a discursive perspective is relatively limited. This ethno‐graphic study draws data from Facebook pages composed and hosted over two years by three economically and educationally privileged undergraduate students in Nepal and uses conceptual constructs of mediascape, convergence culture and global Englishes. The study investigates how the advent of social networking online in Facebook by college youth has influenced their use of the English language and other semiotic resources to index both their local and cosmopolitan identities. Findings suggest that these youth are using social networking to redefine the role of English in relation to their existing social relationships, innovatively mixing English and Nepali in order to construct their bilingual identities, and embedding English with other texts to recontextualize both local and global media content. The paper concludes with a summary of major findings which suggest that online social networking practices have significantly helped to bring about a cultural change among this particular social group in Nepal.      

Theorizing CSA’s impact on nonprofit stewardship: New challenges for ethical corporate partnerships and issue engagement

Corporate social advocacy (CSA) scholarship has helped public relations scholars and practitioners better understand business engagement in multiple contentious issue contexts (e.g., Dodd & Supa, 2014; Rim et al., 2020; Waymer & Logan, 2021). Nonprofit organizations, while often having similarly public platforms, significant resources, and the will to engage in polarizing issues outside of their core purpose or purview, have, to date, not been a part of this theoretical framework. This paper serves to theoretically link nonprofit organizations to polarizing issue discourse—while maintaining their distinct facets and relational/stakeholder needs—by developing Polarizing Issue Stewardship. This new construct shifts the perspective of nonprofit stewardship strategies, originally developed by Kelly (1998) to a contentious issue context. The new construct provides insights for both theory and praxis of nonprofit communication.     

Do rich teens get richer? Facebook use and the link between offline and online social capital among Palestinian youth in Israel

Studies have shown that using social networking sites contributes to social capital. This study investigated the association between specific features of Facebook and online social capital. Two contrasting hypothesis were tested. The first posits that the rich get richer, meaning that the creation of social capital online reflects the stock of offline resources already available. In contrast, the compensation hypothesis argues that disadvantaged ethnic minorities are more likely to use social media to compensate for their lack of social capital offline. We tested these two theories among a representative sample of Palestinian teenagers (N?=?567). While we found no gender differences in the use of Facebook’s features, our results highlight the positive correlation between the use of active and passive communication features and perceived social capital online. Moreover, the results support the rich-get-richer model; in that, even among this socially disadvantaged group, the youngsters who already had a store of social capital offline benefitted more from using Facebook.     

Predicting users’ privacy boundary management strategies on Facebook

This study examines the process by which Facebook users regulate their interpersonal privacy and information sharing. By tracing the influence of gender, Facebook usage, and privacy-protecting behaviors that are determined by knowledge and attitude, this research identifies a dynamic management process through which Facebook users maintain personal and interpersonal boundaries. Two distinct strategies are used – a privacy-setting control and a self-disclosure control. Based on data collected in a survey of 432 college students conducted in Hong Kong, our results suggest that different uses of Facebook activities (i.e., social interaction, social browsing, and entertainment) can be used to predict different boundary management strategies. Gender and privacy-related psychological factors (i.e., privacy literacy and concern about privacy) also showed significant effects. We concluded that the privacy setting options available on social networking sites such as Facebook were useful in providing users with a base point and a psychological sense of security, but they had little influence on the actual patterns of self-disclosure. To regulate their privacy boundaries, users were more likely to rely on frequently changing their privacy settings and on controlling their levels of self-disclosure.     

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.     

Structure and accountability a study of national nonprofit associations

In the 1990s, the integrity and performance of nonprofit organizations in the United States have come increasingly under attack, and there are new calls to hold nonprofit organizations more accountable for their behavior and performance. This article reports on a study of the organizational structures of national nonprofit associations and asks how these umbrella organizations can help to self-regulate the sector through appropriate checks and balances between the national organization and local affiliates. The authors identify a number of differences in how associations with alternative structures hold local affiliates and national organizations responsible for their performances, and they conclude that structure is an avenue of self-regulation for nonprofit organizations deserving further attention.     

Embedded Systems: The Case of HIV/AIDS Nonprofit Organizations in New York City

In this paper the notion of an embedded system is developed as an analytic model to examine how state–nonprofit relations develop and become differentiated, using the case of HIV/AIDS nonprofit organizations. Drawing on extensive fieldwork among three prominent HIV/AIDS nonprofit organizations in New York City, this paper shows how the kinds of relationships these nonprofit organizations are likely to form with state agencies are based on their embeddedness in the state–nonprofit system of relations. Three forms of embeddedness are distinguished according to the type and regularity of state–nonprofit contact—direct, outsider, and mediating. Importantly, it is shown how the configuration of relations within which an organization is embedded determines many of the organization's constraints and opportunities.     

Managing stakeholder relationships and nonprofit organization effectiveness

This research examined how nonprofit organizations manage their relationships with stakeholders and how these practices relate to perceived organization effectiveness. We conducted semistructured, open‐ended interviews with executive directors of nonprofit organizations (NPOs) to discover whom they see as their stakeholders, the types of expectations they encounter from stakeholders, and the practices they use in managing stakeholder relationships. The two nonprofits that were evaluated as most effective used a consistent, thematic rationale in dealing with stakeholder issues: one organization discussed its actions in terms of its mission and core values, the other based its actions in terms of building relationships and networks. Our study suggests that organizations that ground their external relations in issues that are recognized as good nonprofit management, and do so consistently across stakeholder groups, will tend to be rated as more effective by multiple, external evaluators.     

Does Facebook increase political participation? Evidence from a field experiment

During the last decade, much of political behaviour research has come to be concerned with the impact of the Internet, and more recently social networking sites such as Facebook, on political and civic participation. Although existing research generally finds a modestly positive relationship between social media use and offline and online participation, the majority of contributions rely on cross-sectional data, so the causal impact of social media use remains unclear. The present study examines how Facebook use influences reported political participation using an experiment. We recruited young Greek participants without a Facebook account and randomly assigned a subset to create and maintain a Facebook account for a year. In this paper we examine the effect of having a Facebook account on diverse modes of online and offline participation after six months. We find that maintaining a Facebook account had clearly negative consequences on reports of offline and online forms of political and civic participation.     

The Social-Entrepreneurship Advantage: An Experimental Study of Social Entrepreneurship and Perceptions of Nonprofit Effectiveness

A common assertion in the nonprofit literature is that nonprofit organizations can become more efficient, effective, and sustainable by embracing social entrepreneurship in their operational and strategic posture. In this article, we examine whether the mere label of social entrepreneurship results—with no actual organizational differences—in an increase in positive attributions associated with a nonprofit organization, an effect we call the social entrepreneurship bias. We experimentally test for the existence of a social entrepreneurship bias by examining how the label of social entrepreneurship alters how people judge a nonprofit’s effectiveness and decide how to allocate scarce donation funds.

     

How publics react to situational and renewing organizational responses across crises: Examining SCCT and DOR in social-mediated crises

The prevalence of social media among networked publics calls for more research regarding how organizations can conduct effective crisis communication on social networking sites. Based on the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) and the discourse of renewal (DOR) theory, this study examined how social media publics’ sentiments were affected by situational and renewing organizational responses in various clusters of crises. Twitter data of six crises representing three crisis clusters varying in the responsibility attribution (i.e., ambiguous, accidental, and preventable) were collected. We conducted a content analysis on organizations’ official tweets during crises (N = 59) and sentiment analysis on publics’ replies on Twitter (N = 4,340). The results showed that publics’ positive sentiments toward organizations were affected by organizational crisis responses that included instructing information, sympathy, systemic organizational learning, and effective organizational rhetoric. We recommend that crisis managers express sympathy toward publics as well as organizational learning that prevents a crisis from happening again.