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Assessing scope and cohesion of nonprofits audiences in social media: A case study

Abstract:

Nonprofits maintain an active social media presence; however, the effect of this presence remains unclear. We propose to use social network analysis to investigate the relationship between a nonprofits social media activity and the growth patterns of its online audience. To pilot the approach, we conducted a case study on the social media accounts of a well-known Chilean nonprofit. Facebook data show that the number of nonprofits posts increased over time, users' 'comments' increased somewhat slower (and the network morphed into a few large clusters), but users' 'likes' increased at a much faster pace (and morphed into a single strongly connected network). Twitter data reveal that the number of tweets dropped over time, and the 're-tweets' decreased even faster (morphing into ever more isolated small clusters). This pilot study shows that morphological analysis of social networks can be fruitfully applied to identify the changing interaction among nonprofits and their audiences.