Nongovermental Organizations and Digital Transformations: An Investigation on Northern Cypriot Women’s Civil Society Organizations

Abstract

It is an undeniable fact that social media has become an important tool in the communication practices of the institutions and organizations serving in almost every field today. Although traditional media is more dominant in the context of communication strategies and communication processes of civil society organizations, the emphasis of social media on civil society organizations has been highlighted recently. In addition to the benefits of multichannel structure in the content production, consumption and reproduction processes of social media, it has been shown with examples that have positive results in terms of the visibility of civil society organizations. All these developments have opened up new debates in the sub-topic of non-governmental organizations transformed by social media, which is an important part of the communication of civil society organizations with stakeholders. In the light of this information, social media usage practices of non-governmental organizations were examined in two stages. In this context, in the first phase of the study, the visibility of officially registered female non-governmental organizations in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus on social media channels (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) has been revealed. In the second phase of the study, 3 (three) months content analysis was conducted between January 1st , 2019 and March 31st , 2019 for the official Facebook account of the Mesarya Women Initiative, a leading active example of womenactive movements and civil society organizations in Northern Cyprus. In this way, it is aimed to describe social media practices through these shares. The limited number of studies conducted for non-governmental organizations in terms of Northern Cyprus and the lack of studies with women's civil society organizations reveal the specificity of this study and its contribution to the literature.