Date of Award

6-6-2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Specialization

Communication and Leadership

School or Department

School of Leadership Studies

First Advisor

Dr. Carolyn Cunningham

Second Advisor

Dr. Heather Crandall

Abstract

In the 1960s, philosopher Jürgen Habermas introduced his idea of the public sphere—a space where citizens could meet openly to discuss all manner of issues facing society, free of controlling influence like the state. The discussions integral to Habermas’s public sphere rely on Buber’s relational theory of dialogue wherein participants meet in the “between” to understand each other. Modern scholars, conjecture that the Internet and possibly even social networking sites (SNSs) like Facebook and Twitter are the modern-reincarnation of Habermas’s public sphere. This study reviews current literature supporting the theory that SNSs can function as modern-day public spheres and conducts a content analysis of Facebook posts to explore what types of posts made by American nonprofit organizations elicit the most audience interaction. In 30 days of Facebook messages by 10 different organizations, 393 posts were liked a total of 393,710 times and were shared 131,019 times and received 43,764 total comments. No single Facebook post type was found to have received the greatest percentage of likes, shares and comments for all 10 studied organizations during the stated time period. However, “lobbying and advocacy” and “acknowledgement of current and local events” posts most often received the greatest percentage of an organization’s total likes and shares regardless of political affiliation while Facebook posts that called the audience to action by directly soliciting a response or asking users to advocate for the cause received the greatest share of comments. Studies have shown nonprofit organizations often fail to utilize SNSs effectively due to lack of resources. This study helps direct nonprofits toward Facebook posts that may result in more audience engagement, perhaps furthering their cause.

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