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Sarah Lannon

The Current Status of Social Media use among Nonprofit Human Service Organizations: An ... - 0 views

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    Social media has proliferated throughout the nonprofit sector over the last five years and organizations use these new tools in a variety of ways. Little research is available on the use of social media within nonprofit human service organizations (HSO) specifically. This study is one of the first of its kind to explore how and why human service organizations are using social media. The aim of this study is to understand the current status of social media use among nonprofit human service organizations by exploring and describing the social media platforms in use, associated practices with social media, the frequency of use, general satisfaction, and plans for the future use of social media. A cross-sectional research design was selected and a survey instrument was created for the study. Data were collected from 125 nonprofit human service organizations in the Richmond, VA metropolitan area that were identified from a sampling frame of nonprofit organizations. The current status of social media use among nonprofit human service organizations is that HSO's initially adopted social media to engage the community. Although many HSO's continue to do this, promoting the HSO's programs and services has also become a top priority. This is primarily done using Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to share organizational newsletters and other information with their online community at least twice a day. On average, human service organizations have been using social media for more than five years and most plan to continue using social media in the future. Although HSO's report using social media less than ten hours a week, they are generally satisfied with the outcomes, but admitted more assistance is needed. This study establishes a foundation for HSO's to discuss the uncertainty of the future and to identify goals and strategies to help the HSO move forward. Increased understanding of why and how to use social media will also help HSO's to determine strategies for using social med
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    Social media has proliferated throughout the nonprofit sector over the last five years and organizations use these new tools in a variety of ways. Little research is available on the use of social media within nonprofit human service organizations (HSO) specifically. This study is one of the first of its kind to explore how and why human service organizations are using social media. The aim of this study is to understand the current status of social media use among nonprofit human service organizations by exploring and describing the social media platforms in use, associated practices with social media, the frequency of use, general satisfaction, and plans for the future use of social media. A cross-sectional research design was selected and a survey instrument was created for the study. Data were collected from 125 nonprofit human service organizations in the Richmond, VA metropolitan area that were identified from a sampling frame of nonprofit organizations. The current status of social media use among nonprofit human service organizations is that HSO's initially adopted social media to engage the community. Although many HSO's continue to do this, promoting the HSO's programs and services has also become a top priority. This is primarily done using Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to share organizational newsletters and other information with their online community at least twice a day. On average, human service organizations have been using social media for more than five years and most plan to continue using social media in the future. Although HSO's report using social media less than ten hours a week, they are generally satisfied with the outcomes, but admitted more assistance is needed. This study establishes a foundation for HSO's to discuss the uncertainty of the future and to identify goals and strategies to help the HSO move forward. Increased understanding of why and how to use social media will also help HSO's to determine strategies for using social med
Sarah Lannon

Using Video to Build an Organization's Identity and Brand: A Content Analysis of Nonpro... - 0 views

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    Organizational scholarship has increasingly focused its attention to how nonprofit, for-profit, and government agencies develop their unique organizational identity through their strategic communication efforts. As social media continues to become more prominent in communication campaigns due to the high levels of public usage and public involvement with organizations on social media sites, it is important to examine these social media messages as they relate to organizational identity. YouTube videos increasingly are being used by organizations to educate and inform just as much as they are to entertain. Through a content analysis of the most viewed videos on the top 100 official nonprofit YouTube channels, this study found that nonprofit organizations primarily use their YouTube videos to inform and educate viewers about their missions, programs, and services. While the videos also occasionally discuss the organizations' advocacy, volunteering, and fundraising efforts, nonprofit organizations were not living up to their potential in terms of engagement through direct appeals for involvement. Additionally, the organizations were more likely to use outsiders' words and stories to build the videos' narratives rather than using internal stakeholders. The benchmark numbers provided by this study reiterate key rules that are stressed in practitioner-oriented work on video production for branding and identity-building efforts.
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    Organizational scholarship has increasingly focused its attention to how nonprofit, for-profit, and government agencies develop their unique organizational identity through their strategic communication efforts. As social media continues to become more prominent in communication campaigns due to the high levels of public usage and public involvement with organizations on social media sites, it is important to examine these social media messages as they relate to organizational identity. YouTube videos increasingly are being used by organizations to educate and inform just as much as they are to entertain. Through a content analysis of the most viewed videos on the top 100 official nonprofit YouTube channels, this study found that nonprofit organizations primarily use their YouTube videos to inform and educate viewers about their missions, programs, and services. While the videos also occasionally discuss the organizations' advocacy, volunteering, and fundraising efforts, nonprofit organizations were not living up to their potential in terms of engagement through direct appeals for involvement. Additionally, the organizations were more likely to use outsiders' words and stories to build the videos' narratives rather than using internal stakeholders. The benchmark numbers provided by this study reiterate key rules that are stressed in practitioner-oriented work on video production for branding and identity-building efforts.
kharris216

Information, Community, and Action: How Nonprofit Organizations Use Social Media - Love... - 0 views

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    The rapid diffusion of "microblogging" services such as Twitter is ushering in a new era of possibilities for organizations to communicate with and engage their core stakeholders and the general public. To enhance understanding of the communicative functions microblogging serves for organizations, this study examines the Twitter utilization practices of the 100 largest nonprofit organizations in the United States. The analysis reveals there are three key functions of microblogging updates-"information,""community," and "action." Though the informational use of microblogging is extensive, nonprofit organizations are better at using Twitter to strategically engage their stakeholders via dialogic and community-building practices than they have been with traditional websites. The adoption of social media appears to have engendered new paradigms of public engagement.
Sarah Lannon

Modeling the adoption and use of social media by nonprofit organizations - 0 views

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    This study examines what drives organizational adoption and use of social media through a model built around four key factors - strategy, capacity, governance and environment. Using Twitter, Facebook, and other data on 100 large US nonprofit organizations, the model is employed to examine the determinants of three key facets of social media utilization: (1) adoption, (2) frequency of use and (3) dialogue. We find that organizational strategies, capacities, governance features and external pressures all play a part in these social media adoption and utilization outcomes. Through its integrated, multi-disciplinary theoretical perspective, this study thus helps foster understanding of which types of organizations are able and willing to adopt and juggle multiple social media accounts, to use those accounts to communicate more frequently with their external publics, and to build relationships with those publics through the sending of dialogic messages.
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    This study examines what drives organizational adoption and use of social media through a model built around four key factors - strategy, capacity, governance and environment. Using Twitter, Facebook, and other data on 100 large US nonprofit organizations, the model is employed to examine the determinants of three key facets of social media utilization: (1) adoption, (2) frequency of use and (3) dialogue. We find that organizational strategies, capacities, governance features and external pressures all play a part in these social media adoption and utilization outcomes. Through its integrated, multi-disciplinary theoretical perspective, this study thus helps foster understanding of which types of organizations are able and willing to adopt and juggle multiple social media accounts, to use those accounts to communicate more frequently with their external publics, and to build relationships with those publics through the sending of dialogic messages.
Kyra Youngblood

Information, Community, and Action: How Nonprofit Organizations Use Social ...: EBSCOhost - 2 views

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    The rapid diffusion of 'microblogging' services such as Twitter is ushering in a new era of possibilities for organizations to communicate with and engage their core stakeholders and the general public. To enhance understanding of the communicative functions microblogging serves for organizations, this study examines the Twitter utilization practices of the 100 largest nonprofit organizations in the United States. The analysis reveals there are three key functions of microblogging updates-'information,''community,' and 'action.' Though the informational use of microblogging is extensive, nonprofit organizations are better at using Twitter to strategically engage their stakeholders via dialogic and community-building practices than they have been with traditional websites. The adoption of social media appears to have engendered new paradigms of public engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] .
Kyra Youngblood

Exploring the Impact of Culture in the Social Media Sphere: A Content Analy...: EBSCOhost - 2 views

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    Through a content analysis of 225 nonprofit organizations' Facebook profiles, the current study examines the impact of cultural orientation when it comes to American, Chinese, and Turkish nonprofit organizations' behavior and communication patterns in the social media sphere. Specifically, the research explored how organizations disclose information about themselves and those managing their Facebook presence, promoting organizational news and accomplishments, and stakeholder engagement in relation to their context, performance, and collectivist/individualist natures, respectively. The study found mixed support for the impact of traditional cultural expectations indicating that the global connectivity of social media may be contributing to blurred cultural boundaries in favor of a virtual culture that promotes the global community. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER] .
Jason Coats

The civility of social capital - 0 views

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    Scholars have analyzed public relations' role in democracy via proxy concepts like the public sphere and civil society. However, some have critiqued the public sphere on grounds of equal access and portrayed civil society as a guise for first-world imperialism. These critiques have implications for the role of public relations in the public sphere and civil society. This article suggests the normative role of public relations in democracy is best perceived as creating the social capital that facilitates access to spheres of public discussion and in maintaining relationships among those organizations that check state power. To that end, the paper argues that social capital does much to advance public relations theory and prescribe the role of public relations in democracy. Several implications for public relations from a social capital perspective are offered, including the creation of generalized societal trust, the building of cross-cutting or "weak" ties, the engagement of media on behalf of subaltern counterpublics, and the (re)creation of community or a fully functioning society.
patelrh3

Impact of a Community Gardening Project on Vegetable Intake, Food Security and Family R... - 0 views

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    This community-based participatory research project used popular education techniques to support and educate Hispanic farmworker families in planting and maintaining organic gardens. Measures included
kharris216

New Media & Society - 0 views

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    This study examines how information and communication technologies - mobile phone, social networking websites, blogging, instant messaging, and photo sharing - are related to the diversity of people's social networks. We find that a limited set of technologies directly afford diversity, but many indirectly contribute to diversity by supporting participation in traditional settings such as neighborhoods, voluntary groups, religious institutions, and public spaces. Only one internet activity, social networking websites, was related to lower levels of participation in a traditional setting: neighborhoods. However, when direct effects were included, the total influence of social networking services on diversity was positive. We argue that a focus on affordances of new media for networked individualism fails to recognize the continued importance of place for the organization of personal networks: networks, that as a result of the persistent and pervasive nature of some new technologies, may be more diverse than at any time in recent history
sconzy

Actors and networks in urban community garden development - 1 views

  • Harambee gardens have developed and survived through network connections between garden participants and external actors.
  • Connection to larger organizations also provides access to knowledge and information about processes of obtaining permits and applying for grants.
  • Examining the role of social networks in community garden development is important precisely because social networks contain power dynamics.
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  • s we will demonstrate, although networks enable Harambee community garden development, networks formed between citizen groups and other actors also contain unequal power relations and conflicts that can constrain the activities of community garden groups.
  • In gardens managed by Groundwork, groups of citizen volunteer organizers are responsible for regular maintenance and decision-making
  • State disapproval of green space often takes on racialized or classist implications, as the state may promote certain kinds of space at the expense of others, in ways that conscribe what kinds of people belong or do not belong in public space or what forms of public space are legitimate
Kyra Youngblood

Modeling the adoption and use of social media by nonprofit organizations - 2 views

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    This study examines what drives organizational adoption and use of social media through a model built around four key factors - strategy, capacity, governance and environment. Using Twitter, Facebook, and other data on 100 large US nonprofit organizations, the model is employed to examine the determinants of three key facets of social media utilization: (1) adoption, (2) frequency of use and (3) dialogue.
sconzy

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/15575330809489660 - 0 views

    • sconzy
       
      'It provides opportunities for everyone involved to develop skills in leadership,  community organizing, cultural competency, program planning, implementation, and  evaluation" (para. 3) Having community gardens helps community member to interact with each other. It builds relationship among neighbors and also help individual develop skills like leadership, interpersonal and working in teams. Also it helps individual learn about different culture. Also it becomes a network.
    • sconzy
       
      "addressing the need of green spaces and appearance; and decreased crime in urban neighborhoods" (para. 1) Research have shown that urban agriculture can help reduce crime rates within urban communities because people become familiar with each other and strangers and people new society.
    • sconzy
       
      "the public health benefits of urban agriculture as providing food security, personal Wellness, community betterment, and environmental health"  "provide a more livable physical environment through control of temperature, noise and pollution; create a positive community image" (para. 2) Community garden is more than a piece of land or space that provides foods. In addition to it providing food security it also provides fresh and healthy food for people who live in urban cities.  It can also help create a healthy environment because plants filter the air which will reduce air pollution 
britt311

Environmental Activism and the Internet [eScholarship] - 3 views

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    The impact of the Internet and other forms of technologies can make an impact and support organizations who work on maintaing the environment.
courtmulligan12

Holmes and Smith: Intergroup dynamics of extra-legal police aggression - 1 views

  • extra-legally, as informal means of coercive control over those perceived as threats to police authority or personal safety
  • Nowhere is that possibility more apparent than in the treatment of racial and ethnic minorities in disadvantaged locales
  • most commonly (although not exclusively) in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods
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  • Some explanations of the behavior identify individual differences among police officers or organizational differences among police departments as primary causal factors, approaches that generally lack empirical support
  • situational
  • exigencies, such as the race and demeanor of citizens, may determine the use of extra-legal police aggression.
  • conflicts of interest
  • tereotyping
  • egregation and discrimination
  • hypothesis that the police employ formal legal authority less vigorously in disadvantaged areas, Kane (2002) argued that, in the socially disorganized neighborhoods where lax enforcement occurs, various forms of police misconduct may become normalized by officers who encounter conflict with citizens and challenges to their legitimacy
  • social psychology of intergroup relations to develop a theory of the underlying causes and ecological variations in the use of various types of extra-legal police aggression.
  • Profanity and racial slurs, racially motivated stops and searches, and excessive physical force would generally constitute violations.
  • uch as police brutality and excessive force, are often used to describe the phenomena under consideration, but these concepts generally refer only to physical force
  • extra-legal police aggression is preferable for several related reasons.
  • ggression
  • any form of behavior that is intended to injure someone physically or psychologically.”
  • Both unconscious and conscious processes may trigger extra-legal aggression by the police.
  • he concept of aggression captures the critical point that the behaviors in question specifically aim to injure citizens.
  • Profanity, racial slurs, and gratuitous verbal threats degrade, humiliate and frighten citizens
  • An investigation conducted in six cities by the NAACP (1995) reported that verbal abuse and harassment are the most common forms of extra-legal police aggression and are standard operating procedure in minority communities.
  • erbal abuses as well as obscene gestures and spitting
  • An emerging focus of research on policing minorities is racial profiling, the practice of stopping and searching citizens on the pretext of suspicious or illegal activity but actually on the basis of racial identity alone.
  • A study of police stops in New York City showed that Blacks and Hispanics were stopped at higher rates than Whites in all areas, but those encountered in neighborhoods with relatively small Black populations were stopped relatively more frequently
  • intrusive searches subsequent to police stops, which likely occur more frequently in areas of concentrated disadvantage
  • The most extreme forms of extra-legal police aggression involve the use of excessive physical force, that which occurs “under color of authority, without lawful necessity”
  • Race appears to be an important correlate of its use.
  • cities of 150,000 or more population, percent Black and percent Hispanic
  • were related positively to criminal complaints against police officers
  • nvestigated by the FBI and reported to the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ from 1985 to 1990, found that
  • some research findings suggest a link between race and neighborhood characteristics.
  • percent
  • Black population and extreme Black segregation were related positively to sustained complaints of excessive force
  • Percent Hispanic was also related positively to sustained complaints, but Hispanic segregation was not.
  • Most studies include a small number of jurisdictions, rely on weak research designs with respect to causal generalizations, and/or use imprecise dependent measures.
  • minority suspects encountered in disadvantaged neighborhoods are at greatest risk of victimization at the hands of police
  • For example, Stewart et al. (2009) maintain that the police may discriminate against Black youth to defend the interests of White neighborhoods
  • Certainly the use of questionable practices by the police, such as stops and searches on the basis of racial profiling, may serve the interests of Whites in maintaining the boundaries of the “racial-spatial divide”
  • These findings support the proposition of a greater incidence and severity of extra-legal aggression in disadvantaged minority neighborhoods, but also suggest that lesser forms, such as unnecessary stops, may be used to handle “suspicious” Black citizens outside their neighborhoods.
  • Relevant dimensions of intergroup relations include complementary processes involving group conflict, emotions, and cognitions.
  • These social–psychological dynamics have been identified as primary contributors to aggressive behavioral responses.
  • he various models of intergroup relations and aggression suggest that distal background conditions of neighborhoods and proximate psychological responses elicited in situational encounters with citizens determine the specific targets (race) and general locations (place) of extra-legal police aggression.
  • 1) social, emotional, and cognitive preconditions to aggressive behavior, (2) activation of aggressive responses by a target perceived as threatening, and (3) social and individual mediators/moderators of aggressive behavior.
  • Group conflict
  • Several conflict theories hold that complex societies contain various interest groups and that conflict is an inevitable social process with predictable consequences for social organization and behavior.
  • ntergroup conflict arises as a collective reaction to real or perceived threats to group interests. T
  • The conflict theory of law maintains that the deployment of coercive crime mechanisms expressly seeks to regulate threats to the interests of the powerful
  • For example, police use of lesser forms of extra-legal aggression may accommodate the interests of Whites in affluent neighborhoods who can marshal political influence to dictate police practices
  • The police may more freely employ more severe forms of extra-legal aggression in areas of minority disadvantage, as there is less risk and more salient personal interests at stake
  • Realistic group conflict theory calls attention to the reality that the police constitute a distinct social group that possesses unique interests that do not always correspond to the interests of the dominant group of the larger society
  • maintains that the existence of such outgroup threats create hostility toward the source of threat, ingroup solidarity, ingroup identity, tightened ingroup boundaries, punishment of ingroup defectors and deviants, and increased ethnocentrism.
  • African Americans and Hispanics, who constitute the largest and most threatening outgroups in American society
  • hese disadvantaged neighborhoods pose a host of challenging circumstances—social isolation, poverty, crime, drugs, weapon availability, violence, and social disorder/incivilities
  • Much urban police work takes place in such locales.
  • Subcultural conflicts of group interests between police and minority citizens exist in these neighborhoods and create normative rifts that often place them at odds with one another.
  • he mutual perceptions of distrust and threat held by police and minorities in disadvantaged neighborhoods may generate group dynamics that reinforce ingroup solidarity and intergroup conflict that would not occur in more affluent locales.
  • Such intergroup conflict may elicit various less severe forms of extra-legal aggression by the police, which are seen as instrumental to maintaining authority and avoiding danger.
  • Conflict theories offer important insights into the background tensions that precipitate acts of extra-legal police aggression; however, other social psychological dynamics also must be considered.
  • Primary emotions such as fear and happiness comprise the foundation of the complex human emotional repertoire upon which inter- and intra-group relationships are formed—human behavior is deeply rooted in myriad emotional processes
  • Entering areas of concentrated minority disadvantage may routinely activate emotional responses among the police.
  • Police officers may become unconsciously and consciously conditioned to associate such areas, as well as certain types of people, with criminality and danger
  • While humans may become consciously aware of feeling afraid when faced with an aversive stimulus, unconscious mechanisms for acquiring, storing, and retrieving emotional memories may activate both a behavioral response to and the cognitive awareness of the emotion.
  • While emotions comprise internal states of individuals that may affect behavior, they are also social phenomena shaped by society and culture
  • Police use of extra-legal aggression in disadvantaged locales may, in part, reflect subcultural norms about the appropriate targets of anger and the relative power of police over disadvantaged citizens.
  • the challenging conditions of disadvantaged minority locales clearly provide a structural context in which apprehension, fear, and anger are always relatively close to the surface, ready to take hold of a police officer's conduct.
  • pro-social emotional bonds develop among officers who work these areas, amplifying the ethnocentrism that segregates the occupational subculture of policing from outsiders
  • Heightened fear and anger toward citizens, along with emotional bonds to fellow officers, prime the police officer for aggressive responses in the face of perceived threats, whether real or imagined.
  • Cognitions of ingroups and outgroups are analytically separable, and two distinct but closely related research traditions have developed
  • akes place in tasks involving reward allocations in very minimal groups that lack normal features such as face-to-face interaction, norms, and intergroup relationships.
  • he mere perception of group membership may be sufficient to produce biased judgments and discrimination
  • self-categorization theory maintains that intergroup dynamics involving social identity occur whenever group memberships are salient and group comparisons are made
  • Large perceived differences between groups give rise to the process of self-stereotyping, whereby individuals perceive themselves more as undifferentiated, interchangeable parts of a group and less as unique persons characterized primarily by individual attributes.
  • Perceived ingroup similarity enhances elements of group cohesiveness—mutual attraction, esteem, empathy, cooperation, and ethnocentrism—among members of the ingroup and triggers discrimination against outgroups.
Kyra Youngblood

What do Stakeholders Like on Facebook? Examining Public Reactions to Nonprofit Organiza... - 2 views

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    Although public relations scholarship has often discussed the possibilities of dialogue and engagement using social media, research has not truly explored this dynamic. Instead, research on social media platforms has focused on measuring the content and structure of organizational profiles.
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