Understanding the information diffusion of tweets of a non-profit organization that targets female audiences: an examination of Women Who Code's tweets

Abstract

PurposeThere is a growing interest in the way non-profit organizations can use Twitter strategically to communicate their message, but little attention has been paid to the way content categories and features may facilitate retweets of messages of a non-profit organization that targets women as its audience. Based on stakeholder theory, this study aims to fill this gap by analyzing Women Who Code (WWC)'s tweets to examine whether there are any differences in the number of retweets with respect to the content categories (information, community or action) and features (hashtags, emojis, photos, videos and URLs) in its Twitter communications.Design/methodology/approachWWC's original tweets that were posted during a one-year period from February 20, 2018 to February 20, 2019 were collected using a Twitter analytics tool. The content categories for each tweet were coded, and the number of hashtags and emojis used and the inclusion of photos, videos and URLs were noted. A negative binomial regression model was used to address the research questions.FindingsThe findings showed that with respect to the content categories, community and action-based tweets were retweeted less frequently than informational tweets. With respect to the content features, the results showed that using emojis or URLs in a tweet affected retweets positively, while including hashtags or a video affected them negatively. Further, using photos or images in a tweet had no significant effect on retweets.Originality/valueThese findings contribute to our understanding of non-profit organizations' use of Twitter and provide practical implications for the way non-profit organizations that target female audiences interested in technology can disseminate their messages more strategically.

Predicting the popularity of tweets by analyzing public opinion and emotions in different stages of Covid-19 pandemic

“… Marino & lo Presti, (2018) examined the content of tweets of European Commissioners and proposed a retweetability rate to measure citizen engagement based on the content on social media in response to certain events. Chung et al, (2020) collected the tweets from Women Who Code (WWC) over a one-year period to examine whether certain content and features such as hashtags and photos resulted in differences in retweet volume. Rao et al, (2020) studied the alarming vs. reassuring retweet distribution pattern related to Covid-19.…”

Personality of nonprofit organizations’ Instagram accounts and its relationship with their photos’ characteristics at content and pixel levels

“…Results in literature have suggested that NPOs use SNSs mainly for spreading information (Gao, 2016;Zhou and Pan, 2016;Qu, 2020). While some studies have shown the difference in SNS messages by culture (Waters and Lo, 2012) and emergency situations (Olson et al, 2019), a larger body of literature had reached a similar conclusion that one-way delivery of information was the dominant reason that NPOs use SNSs (Chung et al, 2020).…”

How do nonprofit organizations (NPOs) effectively engage with the public on social media? Examining the effects of interactivity and emotion on Twitter

“…Social media platforms (e.g. Facebook and Twitter) have become an increasingly prominent space for nonprofits to facilitate two-way communication with the public via interactive and dialogic features (Brubaker and Wilson, 2018;Cho et al, 2014;Chung et al, 2020;Wang and Yang, 2020). Recent statistics show that more than half of those who engaged with NPOs on social media ended up supporting the organizations in some way, and 18% of donors worldwide used Facebook fundraising tools to make donations (Nonprofit Source, 2018).…”

“…Furthermore, social media has great potential to amplify the social impact of nonprofits by facilitating public engagement and building nonprofit-public relationships and social change (Saffer et al, 2019). Thus, the nonprofit sector has increasingly adopted social media as a communication channel (Campbell and Lambright, 2020;Chung et al, 2020;Xu and Saxton, 2019;Young, 2017;Wang and Yang, 2020).…”

“…Recent studies have identified Twitter as an effective platform for nonprofits to engage with the public, and thus, researchers have begun to explore NPOs' social media strategies (Chung et al, 2020;Taylor, 2021;Wang and Yang, 2020). Despite their valuable insights, these studies have limitations in either focusing on specific types of NPOs (Chung et al, 2020;Taylor, 2021) or relying on small datasets (Wang and Yang, 2020). As a result, these studies have not presented a comprehensive picture of the effectiveness of NPOs' strategic social media use.…”