The relationship between humanitarian NGO communication and user engagement on Twitter

Abstract

One of the few actors whose mission is to provide support and advocacy for refugee communities with limited access to information and services are humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs). This study examines the narratives produced by the leading humanitarian NGOs on one of the most popular social media platforms today—namely, Twitter. The study investigates which narratives are most popular among global NGOs and whether the way they frame the refugee issue is related to Twitter engagement. The findings contribute to scholarship on online communication and user engagement, and also inform humanitarian NGO practices and policy discussions regarding media and migration.

Investigation of the Gender-Specific Discourse about Online Learning during COVID-19 on Twitter Using Sentiment Analysis, Subjectivity Analysis, and Toxicity Analysis

“…Due to this ubiquitousness of Twitter, studying the multimodal components of informa tion-seeking and sharing behavior has been of keen interest to scientists from different disciplines, as can be seen from recent works in this field that focused on the analysis of Tweets about various emerging technologies [21,22], global affairs [23,24], humanitarian issues [25,26], societal problems [27,28], and virus outbreaks [29,30]. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, there have been several research works conducted in this field (Section 2) where researchers analyzed different components and characteristics of the Tweets to interpret the varying degrees of public perceptions, attitudes, views, opinions, and responses towards this pandemic.…”

Taming Global Citizenship Education Within Twitter’s Attention Economy

“…In this context, it is difficult to tease apart organisational strategy from the Twitter platform itself, as informal education about global issues and citizenship response over social media becomes bound up in organisational branding and competition online both for space in advocacy conversations and for audience attention. Social media indeed provides space for organisations to frame and reframe issues, engage in lobbying and promote action by publics or governments (Dimitrova et al, 2022). We can see, for example, diverse peripheral clusters dedicated to specific topics such as countering violent extremism or fostering pluralism, along with the plurality of global issues linked within the dense, central core.…”

“…Many GCE organisations rely on Twitter as a communicative platform—a space for border crossing, democratic communication, public education and indeed global citizenship—but this platform and others have the potential to change quickly or be completely swept away. Further, while social media offers opportunities for informal education, it also presents organisations with significant tensions between ‘doing good’ and ‘looking good’ (Enghel & Noske-Turner, 2018; cited in Dimitrova et al, 2022) online—a tension that already exists for NGO’s within a neoliberal landscape.…”