Civic Engagement through Social Media

Author(s):  
Sarah P. Maxwell ◽  
Julia L. Carboni

Civic engagement through social media is a strategy employed by nonprofits typically using one-way targeted information dissemination to stakeholder groups. Improving the quality of communities and ameliorating social problems sustain nonprofit foundation missions, suggesting that two-way dialogic communication inspiring action is preferable for effective civic engagement over one-way communication. Using Facebook content analyses for three types of foundations—community, corporate, and independent grant making foundations—the authors employ a Relationship Management Theory (RMT) approach to assess effective civic engagement. RMT emphasizes the organization's dynamic interactions with stakeholder publics (Ledingham, 2003). The authors code posts according to whether they ask stakeholders to act (e.g. - asking users to respond to a question or share information). Using a quantitative modeling approach, they determine whether posts requesting stakeholder action are more likely to result in stakeholder engagement with posts. They examine type of post- status updates, external links, and multimedia- to determine whether type of post is also related to civic engagement. Facebook data for 300 randomly sampled high asset-foundations were accessed using a social media analytics program. Overall, the authors find that private and corporate foundations are more likely to use social media on average. However, community foundations are more likely to use social media as a call to action. This study informs foundations and the larger nonprofit community on how to apply such techniques to their own organizations for continuous improvement in supporting their missions and civic engagement goals. This study is also germane to other types of nonprofit and public organizations seeking to increase stakeholder engagement with social media platforms.

2019 ◽  
pp. 1308-1323
Author(s):  
Sarah P. Maxwell ◽  
Julia L. Carboni

Civic engagement through social media is a strategy employed by nonprofits typically using one-way targeted information dissemination to stakeholder groups. Improving the quality of communities and ameliorating social problems sustain nonprofit foundation missions, suggesting that two-way dialogic communication inspiring action is preferable for effective civic engagement over one-way communication. Using Facebook content analyses for three types of foundations—community, corporate, and independent grant making foundations—the authors employ a Relationship Management Theory (RMT) approach to assess effective civic engagement. RMT emphasizes the organization's dynamic interactions with stakeholder publics (Ledingham, 2003). The authors code posts according to whether they ask stakeholders to act (e.g. - asking users to respond to a question or share information). Using a quantitative modeling approach, they determine whether posts requesting stakeholder action are more likely to result in stakeholder engagement with posts. They examine type of post- status updates, external links, and multimedia- to determine whether type of post is also related to civic engagement. Facebook data for 300 randomly sampled high asset-foundations were accessed using a social media analytics program. Overall, the authors find that private and corporate foundations are more likely to use social media on average. However, community foundations are more likely to use social media as a call to action. This study informs foundations and the larger nonprofit community on how to apply such techniques to their own organizations for continuous improvement in supporting their missions and civic engagement goals. This study is also germane to other types of nonprofit and public organizations seeking to increase stakeholder engagement with social media platforms.


Author(s):  
Sarah Maxwell ◽  
Julia Carboni

Nonprofit organizations often adopt social media such as Facebook to encourage stakeholders to engage in the organizational mission. Calls to action via social media tend to reach subscribers who “like” or follow the organization via one-way communication. Researching effective approaches to dialogic communication, which asks followers to engage rather than observe, the authors focus on relationship management theory (RMT). RMT stresses organizational-stakeholder dynamic interactions. Using a quantitative modeling approach, the authors examine Facebook posts made by three different types of foundations (community, corporate, and independent) to determine how foundations call for stakeholder engagement. To date, few studies focus directly on types of posts and the response, or lack of response, to organizational messages via social media. Civic engagement requires action on the part of the stakeholder to address social problems. Defining participation and engagement varies by field and types of interaction. This research contributes to literature examining the “digital citizen.”


2022 ◽  
pp. 446-462
Author(s):  
Sarah Maxwell ◽  
Julia Carboni

Nonprofit organizations often adopt social media such as Facebook to encourage stakeholders to engage in the organizational mission. Calls to action via social media tend to reach subscribers who “like” or follow the organization via one-way communication. Researching effective approaches to dialogic communication, which asks followers to engage rather than observe, the authors focus on relationship management theory (RMT). RMT stresses organizational-stakeholder dynamic interactions. Using a quantitative modeling approach, the authors examine Facebook posts made by three different types of foundations (community, corporate, and independent) to determine how foundations call for stakeholder engagement. To date, few studies focus directly on types of posts and the response, or lack of response, to organizational messages via social media. Civic engagement requires action on the part of the stakeholder to address social problems. Defining participation and engagement varies by field and types of interaction. This research contributes to literature examining the “digital citizen.”


2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariapina Trunfio ◽  
Maria Della Lucia

This article examines the underinvestigated topic of how destination marketing organizations (DMOs) engage stakeholders in destination management and marketing through leverage on off-line tools, official destination websites, and social media platforms. Building on a significant body of literature and advances in quantitative and qualitative research, we provide three methodological tools: two scales assessing DMO stakeholder engagement off-line and online and a social media index measuring tourist engagement. Our results confirm that in Italy regional DMOs are capitalizing on the digital platforms and off-line participatory tools to enhance stakeholder engagement in destinations’ decision making. Theoretical and managerial implications for destination management in the digital era are suggested.


Author(s):  
Misiani Zachary ◽  
Lun Yin ◽  
Mwai Zacharia ◽  
Xiaohan Zhang ◽  
Yanyan Zheng ◽  
...  

Today, traditional media is still a significant part of disseminating weather and climate information, still they have not been able to reach out to all users of the target audience alone. On the other hand, social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc. are used as a tool of communicating weather and climate information to various users in a well-organized manner like never before. Using a scientific research methodology of case study, the research was designed to explore how the Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD) is using Twitter and Facebook accounts for weather and climate information dissemination to various users.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richmond Takyi Hinneh ◽  
Alex Barimah Owusu

Abstract BackgroundIn an era of the global pandemic and social media dominance, trying to control the narrative on COVID-19 has been a challenging task for most governments particularly with news about the disease on various social media platforms. There have even been instances where people have sent false information about the number of confirmed cases, precautionary measures, drugs that boost the immune system which can threaten the lives of some users who are accessing this false information and misconceptions.Method This study analyzed spatial differences in Twitter misinformation on COVID-19 across 16 regions of Ghana by scraping 1,167 tweets from Twitter using API access. A total of 514 tweets were analyzed. The data were categorized into three namely; accurate information, misinformation, and other information. ResultsThe study results show that 72% of the tweets were accurate, 14% were misinformation and 14% represented other information. Among the regions, Greater Accra had the highest number of accurate information (45 tweets), and the Upper West Region recording the highest number of misinformation (12 tweets).ConclusionSpatial monitoring and management of information dissemination are useful for target setting and achievement of direct results in terms of diffusing misinformation and propagating accurate information. We, therefore, recommend official usage of Twitter for COVID-19 information dissemination as this usage will help offset possible misinformation from unformed individuals.


2022 ◽  
pp. 385-410
Author(s):  
Časlav Kalinić ◽  
Miroslav D. Vujičić

The rise of social media allowed greater people participation online. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok enable visitors to share their thoughts, opinions, photos, locations. All those interactions create a vast amount of data. Social media analytics, as a way of application of big data, can provide excellent insights and create new information for stakeholders involved in the management and development of cultural tourism destinations. This chapter advocates for the employment of the big data concept through social media analytics that can contribute to the management of visitors in cultural tourism destinations. In this chapter, the authors highlight the principles of big data and review the most influential social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. On that basis, they disclose opportunities for the management and marketing of cultural tourism destinations.


2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 57-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vikas Kumar ◽  
Pooja Nanda

With the amplification of social media platforms, the importance of social media analytics has exponentially increased for many brands and organizations across the world. Tracking and analyzing the social media data has been contributing as a success parameter for such organizations, however, the data is being poorly harnessed. Therefore, the ethical implications of social media analytics need to be identified and explored for both the organizations and targeted users of social media data. The present work is an exploratory study to identify the various techno-ethical concerns of social media engagement, as well as social media analytics. The impact of these concerns on the individuals, organizations, and society as a whole are discussed. Ethical engagement for the most common social media platforms has been outlined with a number of specific examples to understand the prominent techno-ethical concerns. Both the individual and organizational perspectives have been taken into account to identify the implications of social media analytics.


First Monday ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Pang ◽  
Yue Ting Woo

The use of instant messaging platforms such as WhatsApp for civic and political purposes has been observed and reported to be growing faster than other social media platforms especially in recent years. Using empirical research on WhatsApp studies published from 2009 to 2019 as its corpus of data, this article systematically reviews them to provide more robust conclusions about WhatsApp and its relationship with political and/or civic engagement. This paper seeks to answer three central questions related to WhatsApp and engagement: 1) What are the motivations in using WhatsApp and how do they manifest in the use of WhatsApp as a communication tool? 2) What is the role of WhatsApp in civic and political engagement? 3) How do researchers study the use of WhatsApp in civic and political engagement? The review finds that across empirical studies, while WhatsApp is used by activists and organisational networks for mobilisation and coordinating actions, it is also used by users who draw on the affordances of the medium for informal and ‘de-politicised’ conversations. The findings contribute to the theorising of social media-mediated movements and activism and highlight methodological gaps of ongoing research on WhatsApp.


Author(s):  
Ashish Kumar Rathore ◽  
Dayashankar Maurya ◽  
Amit Kumar Srivastava

Social media has been used widely for communicating information, awareness, and promote public policies by government agencies. However, limited attention has been paid to the use of social media in improving the design of public policies. This paper explores to what extent citizens' responses/opinions expressed on social media platforms contribute to policy design.  The paper analyzes discussion about the 'Ayushman Bharat' scheme on Twitter through social media analytics techniques (e.g., content analytics) and then traces the change in policy design over two years.  To validate findings from Twitter data, and assess the evolution in policy design, we conducted in-depth interviews with experts and extensive document analysis. The paper reveals that consistently similar issues were raised by the experts in the past as well as by the citizens in the current scheme. However, over the period, the policy design has not changed significantly. Therefore, despite a strong social media presence, its optimum use to improve policy effectiveness is yet to be achieved. The paper contributes by exploring the role social media can play in the public policy process and policy design in developing countries' contexts and identifies gaps in existing social media strategies of public agencies.


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