Source-linked AI summary
Information, Community, and Action: How Nonprofit Organizations Use Social Media
Kristen Lovejoy, Gregory D. Saxton
TL;DR
The paper addresses a need for data and analytical frameworks for understanding how organizations use new media. It proposes an Information-Community-Action classification scheme and finds that informational uses predominate while organizations also use dialogue and community-building practices.
Problem
There is a pressing need for relevant data and analytical frameworks for understanding organizational use of new media, while websites have not been used strategically and interactively.
Method
The paper proposes an “Information-Community-Action” micro-blogging message classification scheme and organizes organizational microblogging functions into three major categories.
Results
Informational uses of Twitter predominate, while the overwhelming majority of organizations use dialogue, community-building, and promotion, although dialogue is rarely predominant.
Takeaways & Limitations
The findings support using analytical frameworks to understand organizational new-media use, including communication beyond predominantly informational updates.
Takeaways & Limitations
The authors note that communication frameworks in this area have yet to be developed.
Abstract
from arXiv · showhide
The rapid diffusion of "microblogging" services such as Twitter is ushering in a new era of possibilities for organizations to communicate with and engage their core stakeholders and the general public. To enhance understanding of the communicative functions microblogging serves for organizations, this study examines the Twitter utilization practices of the 100 largest nonprofit organizations in the United States. The analysis reveals there are three key functions of microblogging updates-"information," "community," and "action." Though the informational use of microblogging is extensive, nonprofit organizations are better at using Twitter to strategically engage their stakeholders via dialogic and community-building practices than they have been with traditional websites. The adoption of social media appears to have engendered new paradigms of public engagement. Keywords: microblogging; Twitter; social media; stakeholder relations; organizational communication; organization-public relations; nonprofit organizations
New Media as an Organizational Communication and Stakeholder Engagement Vehicle
Research on nonprofit websites found that organizations had not used them as strategic, interactive stakeholder-engagement tools. This study frames social media as a newer setting for examining organizational communication, dialogue, and public engagement.
- Prior studies identified information-sharing and dialogic relationship-building as two primary organizational uses of new media.
- Nonprofit websites were found insufficient as strategic, interactive tools for organizational communication and stakeholder engagement.
- Organizational-level research on social-media use remained sparse, leaving unclear how organizations communicate with stakeholders and the general public.
- The study asks which functions organizational microblogging serves and how organizations vary in their reliance on those functions.
Method
The study analyzes Twitter use among the 100 largest U.S. charitable organizations through tweet-level coding and organizational-level comparisons. It develops an organizational microblogging-function scheme from nonprofit Twitter data.
- Sampling: The sample comprised the 100 largest non-educational U.S. nonprofit organizations, selected by revenue, with at least 10% of revenue from donations.
- Data collection: 73 of the 100 organizations had Twitter accounts, yielding a database of 4,655 tweets collected from November 8 to December 7, 2009.
- Coding: The researchers developed an original scheme for classifying organizational social-media messages by communicative function.
- Coding: 2,437 tweets from the first two study weeks were coded into 12 categories, assigning each tweet its primary purpose.
- Reliability: Cohen’s kappa was .91, indicating high inter-coder reliability after coding rules were refined.
Results
The analysis groups organizational tweets into three functions: Information, Community, and Action. Information predominates, but organizations also use Twitter for dialogue, community-building, and promotion, with substantial variation in emphasis.
- Three major microblogging functions emerged: Information, Community, and Action.
- Information: 59% of messages were informational, consisting primarily of one-way information exchange without an explicit secondary agenda.
- Community: 26% of tweets served dialogic and community-building functions, including interactive conversations, network creation, and acknowledgement messages.
- Action: 15.6% of messages served the action function, which seeks donations, attendance, purchases, advocacy, or other follower activity.
- Organizational types: The 59 active organizations clustered into Information Sources, Community Builders, and Promoters & Mobilizers according to their reliance on the three functions.
- Organizational types: 47 organizations were primarily Information Sources, eight Community Builders, and four Promoters & Mobilizers.
- Discussion and conclusions: Although dialogue was rarely predominant, the overwhelming majority of organizations used dialogue, community-building, and promotion.
Discussion and Conclusions
The study proposes an Information-Community-Action framework for analyzing nonprofit microblogging and finds that informational use predominates, while dialogue, community-building, and mobilization are widespread. Twitter can support stakeholder engagement beyond information-heavy websites, but the study calls for broader samples and research on follower responses.
- Contribution: The study analyzes nonprofit Twitter use through an Information-Community-Action classification scheme and an organizational-level typology.The framework distinguishes Information, Community, and Action functions and classifies organizations as Information Sources, Community Builders, or Promoters & Mobilizers.
- Findings: Informational uses of Twitter predominate, with relatively few organizations primarily classified as Community Builders or Promoters & Mobilizers.The authors identify most organizations as primarily informational, while the latter two organizational types are relatively uncommon.
- Findings: Though dialogue is rarely predominant, the overwhelming majority of organizations use dialogue, community-building, promotion, and mobilization in their microblogging.The findings suggest information may remain a base function while dialogue is one essential component rather than the sole central form of organizational communication.
- Findings: Roughly 16% of messages were promotional and mobilizational, while a quarter were community-building.These findings motivate incorporating an action dimension alongside information and dialogue in research on organizational communication.
- Limitations and future research: The study is limited by its focus on the largest nonprofit organizations and by examining organizations’ messages rather than follower responses and interactions.Future research is proposed using random or smaller samples and examining responses, following, tweet frequency, replies, retweets, and direct messages.
- Implications: Twitter was more interactive than nonprofits’ websites alone, but many organizations used it mainly as an extension of information-heavy websites.The authors argue that being present on Twitter is insufficient without using the medium to fully engage stakeholders.
About the Authors
The authors are scholars whose research focuses on social media, nonprofit organizations, organizational communication, and related stakeholder and public-relations topics.
- Kristen Lovejoy is a Ph.D. student at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, researching social media marketing, nonprofit organizations, and Galileo studies.
- Gregory D. Saxton is an Assistant Professor of Communication at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, studying organization-public relations, technology, management, and new media.