NGO ‘Screen-Being’ and Stakeholder Engagement: A ‘Wicked Problem’?

Abstract

Ample survey research and content analysis has established that NGO internet presence is qualitatively weak and characterized by the dominance of asymmetrical communication. We argue that the emergent communicative and social paradigm of on-line interaction forms what could be defined as a wicked problem. NGOs, seen as a ‘sender’ of information, may well face a crisis of accountability determined by the very nature of the media; whereas the NGOs’ ‘information receivers’ often are deprived of the very possibility of stakeholder relatedness. In the internet-based/on-screen ‘universe’, information and electronic flow are assumed to be continual, which supersedes the entity logic crucial to NGO accountability and legitimacy. In designing their social media presence, NGOs may, therefore, face an impossible challenge.Informed by Stéphane Vial’s analysis of the nature of on-line interactive media, we evaluate these conundrums. Then, inspired by Lucas Introna and Fernando Ilharco, we question the dialogic potential to ‘screen-being’. While the shift from an ‘actor-centric’ to ‘flow-oriented’ paradigm of ‘screen-being’ is inherent to digital communication, it destabilizes the entity-grounded accountability of NGO legitimacy. Hence, we end with explicating the risks to dialogic relatedness of ‘sceen being’ for NGOs. By so doing, we challenge the oft vocalized perspective that NGOs ‘just’ have to increase their digital communications in order to improve their relations with various stakeholders.