Advocacy Organizations’ Evaluation of Social Media Information for NGO Journalism

Abstract

This article contributes to the emergent literature on the use of social media at advocacy organizations. Much of this existing literature focuses on these organizations’ production of social media information; this article, however, explores the complementary and relatively unexamined consumption of social media information that can form part of advocacy work. By drawing parallels between journalism and advocacy, the article develops two theoretical models of how advocacy organizations evaluate social media information as part of this consumption. These models differ according to the information values at their cores and according to how these values are evaluated in practice; correspondingly, the models interact differently with social media’s affordances. The key information value for the evidence model is the veracity of the information’s metadata, and this is largely evaluated through a time-intensive verification process requiring corroboration and drawing on human expertise. In contrast, the key information value pertaining to the engagement model is participation, which is evaluated by measuring the volume of participants in the information’s production and transmission. The affordances of social media are often hindrances for the evidence model, because they can make metadata more difficult to verify. In contrast, the engagement model capitalizes on social media affordances, because these affordances facilitate participation as well as the evaluation of participation volume using digital analytics. In addition to shedding light on approaches to social media information evaluation at advocacy organizations, this article urges researchers and practitioners to be alive to related barriers to pluralism as they study and use these approaches.

Contemporary NGO–Journalist Relations: Reviewing and Evaluating an Emergent Area of Research

“…Scholars find that larger NGOs, like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, choose causes on the basis of their own organizational needs (e.g. relevant cultural frames and linguistic capacities) more than on severity or need (Bob ; see also McPherson ).…”

“…the degree to which different NGOs appear in the news). Furthermore, by suggesting that large NGOs inadvertently favor some groups and issues more than others (Bob ; McPherson ), it pushes concerns about pluralism across the entire journalist‐source continuum, from where NGOs get their information to more traditional concerns about how journalists “decide what's news” (Gans ).…”

“…To date, these questions have been addressed primarily by a small but growing number of researchers in the fields of communication and media studies (see, e.g. Powers 2014Powers , 2015aPowers , 2015bConrad 2015;Cottle and Nolan 2007;Dogra 2014;Fenton 2010;McPherson 2015;Nolan and Mikami 2012;Orgad 2013;Russell 2013;Waisbord 2011). In this essay, my aim is to review and evaluate this scholarship for a sociological audience.…”

Principales temas utilizados en la comunicación social de las ONG de inmigración en España a través de la red social Facebook

“…Llegar a grandes audiencias es importante para las marcas, así como para las instituciones públicas y las organizaciones no gubernamentales. Las ONG tienen que aprovechar esta oportunidad para llegar a una audiencia más amplia, por lo que las redes sociales se convierten en una herramienta importante para las ONG que desean aumentar el número de seguidores y el impacto de su comunicación (McPherson, 2015). Por lo tanto, Las redes sociales han marcado una nueva era en la gestión de las actividades de las ONG, un nuevo tipo de comunicación, un canal de interacción y diálogo para lograr una comunicación más fluida y dinámica.…”

Exploring Object-Centric and Scene-Centric CNN Features and Their Complementarity for Human Rights Violations Recognition in Images

“…A third source of digital images is social media, e.g. uploaded to Facebook, again with uncertainty regarding authenticity or source [3]. That sheer volume of images means that to manually sift through the images to verify if any abuse is taking place and then act on it, would be tedious and time-consuming work for humans.…”