Global Activism and New Media: A Study of Transnational NGO's Online Public Relations

9:00 PM | by The A-Team
by Hyujin Seo, Ji Young Kim, Sung-Un Yang
Taken fro Public Relations Review 35 (2009)
pg 123-126

This study examines how transnational nongovernmental organizations, (WWF, SPCA, etc...) make use of new media tools in their public relations activities and what factors influence their online public relations, like promoting their causes and raise funds. This study analyzed the factors behind it - objective, revenue, efficiency, or capacity - best predicted NGO's use of new media with regard to type and function. The methods used in summary, was by conducting a survey - closed and opened-ended questions - with communications representatives of transnational NGO's based in the United States, randomly selecting 230 organizations from the International category on the Charity Navigator website.

The findings are:
  • The organizations' website is perceived to be the most important new media tool for NGOs, followed by blogs, video casts, podcasts, and wiki, respectively. It's likely too, that NGOs are broadening the use of new media in the future.
  • The respondents said the most important function of new media is to promote the image of their organization, followed by fundraising, providing information to journalists, interaction with the public, and networking with others, respectively.
  • The higher the capacity rating of the organization, the more important video casts are for its public relations activities and image promotion.
  • However, organizational efficiency and revenue were not significant predictors of NGO's new media use when controlling for organizational objective. It is possible due to tight budget and resources NGOs have to work under.
  • Organizations' increased use of new media tools has resulted in changes in approaches to traditional mass media by being less dependable to traditional media, and beginning to reallocating resources to work on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
  • Through open-ended questions, respondents identified the concerns of new media technology as their organizational public relations tools about - reliability, message control, and scope of online audiences.
  • Some practitioners believe that messages posted to blogs or other social media are easily modified and misused by others.
This study suggests that NGOs should consider expanding their online public relations to include more diverse modes of new media, and it would be wise for them to recognize the potential of new media tools for enhancing two-way communications with publics to lay out their public relations strategies accordingly.

I believe that since NGOs have tight budget and resources, it is good enough to raise their efficiency through extensive use of new media modes in order to promote the organization's image and raise funds. Future research is key in order to permit examination of functions, user-friendliness, and sophistication of new media tools used by NGOs.

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Summarized by:

Noratikah Mohamad Ashari
2008299068

p/s: Congrats for our 1st event people! 2 more to come. Wooot!!
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