Information, Community, and Action: How Nonprofit Organizations Use Social Media

TL;DR

This study examines how the largest US nonprofit organizations utilize Twitter, revealing three key functions—information, community, and action—and highlighting their strategic engagement improvements over traditional websites.

Contribution

It provides an empirical analysis of Twitter use by nonprofits, identifying key functions and demonstrating enhanced stakeholder engagement through social media.

Findings

Twitter is used mainly for information dissemination.

Nonprofits engage stakeholders more effectively via Twitter than traditional websites.

Microblogging fosters new paradigms of public engagement.

Abstract

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