Twitter as a stakeholder engagement tool for non-profit organizations in Malaysia

Abstract

Social media offer numerous opportunities for Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs) to directly engage and interact with their stakeholders. Social media sites such as Twitter is a tool that offers new ways to develop and maintain relationships between organizations and their audiences. The study affirms that Twitter has the potential to enhance two-way communication that subsequently helps organizations to achieve their intended goals. The objectives of this research are to discover to what extend and reasons for using Twitter among NPOs in Malaysia, and how NPOs in Malaysia use Twitter to build online relationships with their stakeholders. To determine whether Twitter communication tools are actively being used for stakeholder engagement by NPOs, a content analysis of organizational tweets and semi-structured interviews are conducted. Specifically, 10 renowned humanitarian and medical relief NPOs located in Kuala Lumpur that have active Twitter account are selected for this study. Data is obtained from Twitter accounts as tweets, retweets, hashtags, public messages, and hyperlinks. At the same time, semi-structured interview is conducted with communication practitioners and social media practitioners. Data is analysed using thematic approach. The finding of this study shows that NPOs in Malaysia use Twitter as a promotional and network building tool. In terms of engaging with stakeholders, the constrains and limitations of Twitter made practitioners to underutilize the two-way dialogic communication. In terms of recommendation, the study suggests that NPOs need to integrate and imply more features in an effective manner into their tweets that lead them to two-way interactive conversation with their potential stakeholders to sustain and maintain relationship.