Stream: Social media & Communities
Abstract
In an era where everyone is connected on social media platforms, this paper investigates how social network sites influenced online users to engage in online volunteering community. Facebook and Twitter being the two widely use platforms from billions of people across the world will be used as examples to analyse the impact on online volunteering community. Through this paper, we will see how the internet may affect consumers’ engagement and how it is related to our investigation. We will come across various examples to demonstrate the essential role of the internet in maintaining online volunteer communities. Through, this paper, we will see the different challenges faced by these online communities. Furthermore, we will see how the internet has an impact on different important theory that are crucial in the well-being of any online communities.
Keywords: online volunteering community, volunteering, communities, social media platforms, volunteer social media platforms.
Introduction
In this time of instability where humanity needs to help each other with the impact of Covid-19 and war happening in Europe, the internet has become an essential tool in helping non-profit organization to reshape their structure and framework thus encouraging online consumers to better engage with such organization (Kim & Hastak, 2018). Amichai-Hamburger (2008) states that the internet and its social media platforms is one huge influence on people social behavior. Online volunteering can be defined in many ways, but the essence of being a volunteer is to help and devote your time for others without expecting any form of remuneration (Ferreira & al, 2012). However, it is not easy to grow and maintain such organizations. This comes as a reason why nowadays online volunteer communities make use of the different social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter for instance. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the impact of the different advance features offered by platforms like Facebook and Twitter to ensure the well-functioning of these online volunteering communities. Through this investigation we will see how technology is in the service of online volunteering in terms of engagement, recruitment, and motivation.
Recruitment
In this past twenty years, we have seen how social media platforms has become an essential tool in encouraging people to share their daily lived experience and advise others in difficulties for instance, thus creating an online community (Kim & Um, 2017). This kind of online volunteering community is qualified as an informal one. Formal volunteering relates to people who help others as a group or organization without getting paid whereas informal volunteering stands for giving unpaid help as an individual to other people like doing social work for your locality for example. Online volunteering is classified as formal and informal volunteering. In a study made in Canada examining the formal and informal volunteer, Handy & al, (2017) argued that social networks sites encouraged online consumers to participate both in the formal and informal volunteering. Online volunteer communities communicate and reach their audience by using the facilities emerged by the rapid growth of the internet around the globe. Online communities sharing their activities via platforms like Facebook and Twitter influenced viewers and this may encourage them to join in and participate as well. Online volunteering communities should adopt a digital recruiting strategy. They should post regular updates of their different projects. They should keep their different online pages updated and always keep a two way communication. Using social media platforms, such communities are guaranteed to reach a high number of people around the globe. Salmani & Seddighi (2018) argued that technology influenced various part of a human life nowadays. For instance, according to Pew Internet Project, more than seventy per cent of the United States population look for health information online (Ha & al, 2016). This demonstrates the trust people put in social networks sites thus encouraging online communities to use this important resource to recruit more volunteers, grow up their communities and keep working hard for those in difficulties.
Engagement & Motivation
When talking about online volunteering community, one term that comes out frequently is social capital. Ha & al (2016) define social capital as an establishing trust-based language and networks. This means to set up a strong relationship in terms of connections among the communities’ members. Moreover, the rapid evolution of information technology, has made an impact on the social capital. In a study, made in Israel with two communities, analyzing the effect of internet on social involvement, results revealed that it encouraged civic participation and reinforced community engagement (Mesch & Talmaud, 2010). Another important concept when talking about engagement around online volunteer community is the community sustainability. For a community to be sustainable, members should feel well integrated in the community and should have a sense of attachment as well (Lee & Park, 2019). Here again, social media platforms play a crucial role in sustaining an online community. For instance, in a study made by Dantrea & Moren-Cross (2005) in analyzing social capital and social support on the web, results showed that digital socializing encouraged more face-to-face socializing. Thus, the presence of the web in such community is more than essential to ensure the well-being of the engagement of every member. Furthermore, on digital platforms like Facebook and Twitter, users can give their opinions and manage their content, this is known as user-generated content. This allow users to engage with online volunteering communities. It has been noticed that the image, the visuals used by online volunteering communities to create their social media pages and sites serves as a motivation tool for users to support and participate in volunteering projects. It is argued that communities not using such resource from the internet may miss opportunities of recruiting new members. However, we should not forget that communities have always existed, and they were functioning without this digital communication that online communities are using nowadays.
Effective use of Facebook & Twitter for online volunteer communities
Campbell & Lambright (2020) argued that Facebook and Twitter use by non profit organizations give them two dimensions: presence and engagement. According to their study, Facebook offers a higher level of engagement between the organization and the public. The advance features of Facebook help the public to create a more personalized experience with the community. Moreover, unlike Twitter, there is no character limit when using Facebook and this may be appropriate to communities when providing information about an event for example. However, Twitter may be more suitable to post the different hashtags related to the event and ensure a better engagement than Facebook. This may be why community may be using mainly these two platforms to establish a presence and engaged with the public as well. The way such organization wants the public to engage will depend on how effectively they used their social media platforms. Furthermore, in this new digital era, we have seen the importance of social media platforms to provide instant information specially on Facebook. Online consumers react usually very positively when it comes to do volunteers by helping the other, this is how these posts create an online community. In addition, online volunteering communities should envisage to do more videos to attract more viewers when managing their social media platforms. This could increase their audience and be an interesting way to attract new members as well. These platforms are essential to deliver emergency information and solicitate volunteers’ help in a way. An example which dominates news headlines these days, is the Ukraine vs Russia war happening for more than a month now. Through social media, people from all part of the world are watching this terrible situation. In just one week after Russia invasion, million of Ukrainians had moved to other nearby countries. This mass displacement was facilitated by volunteers who help to ride people to different regions but also to feed them and give medical assistance (Zielienski, 2022). A call for more volunteers has been made on social media as the number of refugees keep increasing.
Another example that is directly link to my island, Mauritius, is the solidarity of Mauritians during the Wakashio oil spill episode. Here again, social media platforms have operated as an essential tool in the activation of volunteers to evacuate oil from the coast of Mauritius (Abdi & Peltier, 2020). As people are nowadays constantly consuming news online, specially on social media platforms, Mauritians were rapidly aware of what was happening to their blue lagoon and without hesitation thousands of them went on place to give some help. From that very first day till the destruction of the ship, people from all parts of the island came and contributed to protect their paradisiac coast. It should be highlighted that this tragic incident happened when the island was still struggling with Covid-19 pandemic and had just get out of three months of severe lockdown. In such a time, social media platforms were the unique platform where people could express their dismay at the actual government who give the nonchalant attitude. There were online campaigns to encourage Mauritians to give their hairs as it could be used as an absorbent of oil. Fund-raising platforms having put in place and hundreds of thousands of dollars has been collected from abroad thanks again to social media platforms (Abdi & Peltier, 2020). Without social media platforms, Mauritians would have never been aware of the impact of the Wakashio in their country. The videos posted online by local web radio and tv channels were crucial to mobilize numbers of volunteers that comes on site to save their island. Moreover, the national television of Mauritius, the Mauritius Broadcasting Cooperation, were far from showing what was really happening in the coast of Mahebourg in their daily news show. This emphasized on the importance of social media platforms in creating this momentum of solidarity and community.
Conclusion
This paper has come across various studies and examples showing how the internet and its advance features are essential tool in the framework and function of an online volunteer community. It has been explored how people nowadays are fully connected to the latest technology but also spend the majority of their time on different social media platforms. This connection to these social network sites has revealed to be a real advantage for online communities to share their activities, reach an audience and recruit new members at the same time. It has also been concluded that social media can create a sense of belonging and thus facilitating the engagement of the different members. This paper has also demonstrated how the internet affect social capital and community sustainability which are important theory in maintaining and growing up of workforces. Furthermore, we have seen why Facebook and Twitter were the two platforms frequently chosen by online volunteer communities to communicate and operate. In addition, we have seen how online consumers reacted from the different posts and videos posted on these social media platforms. It has been concluded that online volunteer community should be effectively using their platforms in order to solicitate a real engagement from the public. However, this paper has also come across the fact that, communities has always existed, long time ago before the advent of the internet, more research could have been done to see how online volunteers’ community could learn from grass-root community. This may be an interesting approach as well to better understand the impact of the internet when talking about communities. Finally, we have seen how the internet plays an essential role in informing people and how this can trigger a surge of solidarity thus creating volunteering communities. This example has come as a support in stating the vital role of social media platforms in creating and maintaining online volunteer communities.
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Appreciate your analysis
Thanks for reading and commenting !
Hi, I enjoyed reading through this post and wanted to note/ask a couple of things. I thought one of the most important parts of this post was at the beginning and this statement “the internet and its social media platforms is one huge influence on people social behaviour”. I see that your writing is focused on some of the positive aspects of this, but do you think whilst knowing this, governments and businesses can take advantage of people’s emotions in order to push a previously unpopular policy (for example NATO membership in Finland – https://www.businessinsider.com/finland-majority-support-joining-nato-after-russia-invades-ukraine-survey-2022-3?IR=T) or business’ profiting or growing their market (using a charity/volunteering event to make t-shirts etc..) as a form of advertisement?
Another question I’d like to ask, is do you think a solution to this “more than seventy per cent of the United States population look for health information online” would be a new social network in which Doctors who are qualified can answer and debate questions patients/regular people have about health? Could this possibly be a function integrated into Facebook or Instagram (or another existing social media network)?
Hi Jake,
Thanks for your interest in my paper. I would like to start by answering your second question.
Like I mentioned in my paper, online consumers trust in the different advises they got from doctors online or from any other people who could help them solving their specific problem, so yes I think it would be really interesting to implement this new feature on the different social media platforms, as I am pretty sure that people will really engage in it and found it really helpful and accessible for them, so yes I think your suggestion is great.
Coming to your first question, I should add that everything has its negative aspects as well like you mentioned in your example, unfortunately governmental institutions and other powerful businesses tends to find a way to take advantage of this “people emotion’s” like you said. It’s happening already for many businesses around the globe to look for what is people trends actually and make advantage of it to grow their business.
Hi, thank you for the response and I wish you good luck for the rest of the unit.
Great analysis!
Thanks for reading !
Hello, the paper was very informative and the examples relevant to our reality, knowing that many social media users keep scrolling for hours without really paying attention to every post. And, with the enormous amount of information already being pushed towards consumers on social media platforms, do you think a desensitization of the matters brought to light by online volunteering community might happen as people dismiss them for entertaining posts?
Interesting work! Accurate points are been highlighted in this work ! and i can relate to it . Indeed ; Living in a digitalised word it is true that the internet influence people!
Hi Kaleivani,
Thanks for your interest in my paper. Yes, the rapid growth of technology is indeed changing the way people communicates nowadays.
Hi Anais,
Thanks for your interest in my paper. Yes I do think so, however online volunteering community should do their best to make their posts interesting and engaging. The strategy used to engage online viewers is crucial when posting content online. For example, making use of video instead of writing posts may be a solution to get the users’ attention. The use of platforms as well, I think TikTok right now is the most trending platforms to engage online users. I hope my response answered your question.
Zama Jean-Luc.
Hello Jean,
I read your paper and found it very instructive. I personally think that this particular topic touches all of us because it is of the responsibility of everyone to be informed of what is happening around us, how we can contribute to help those who are in serious need and as well developed by you earlier the importance of digital communication to raise the awareness of more people about our dear mother nature. I liked the way you planned your piece of work because you spoke a lot of what is happening abroad and on our island as well. Additionally, you provided good references based on the articles of previous writers. However, the only part that I would say you should have developed more on is about the different communities. You said in the paragraph of Engagement and Motivation before digital communications, communities have always existed. In my opinion, you should have developed more on how they were able to function, the different difficulties that they might have faced and the advantages of using digital communications in their different tasks.
Hi Yohann,
Thanks a lot for your interest and your response concerning my paper. I really appreciate your suggestion and agree with you that I could have been more specific when elaborating on how far online communities now depends on technology nowadays compared to grassroot communities. Big thanks for your response.
Very informative and nicely written enough for someone who has no idea of such a topic to get a good view of the mediatical representation of online volunteering
Hi Thomas,
I really appreciate your response. Thanks for reading.
Hi Jean, I found your research paper very instructive and topics discussed were well developed. I also agree with Anais about the fact that content from online volunteering communities may be missed by some people who’ll scroll and not pay attention to the subject. I appreciate the solution of attractive content creation. Furthermore, this piece of work has brought forward several pros of social media platforms related to, as mentioned above, social capital. Hence, with the adequate content, is there any specific strategies you think those non-profit organizations should adopt to recruit new volunteers as there may be a lot of unreliable people being actively engaged to this particular community?
Hi Maelle,
Thanks for commenting on my paper. I think you have an interesting question there. In my opinion, I think that like any other company recruiting new members there should be an interview to know more about the person and know whether they are eligible to fit in the organization. Moreover, using technology, organizations could do some research online on these people to know more about their activities and how they behave online. This could give them a significant indication of what kind of people want to join them.
Hi Jean Luc,
I really enjoyed reading your paper. I found it easy to read and very informative. The way you linked the theory of social capital to how to trigger motivation and engagement on social media and your analysis of Twitter and Facebook was really nice. I also enjoyed the fact that you included real-life examples such as the Russo-Ukraine conflict and the Wakashio oil spill in Mauritius to illustrate how the online volunteering community used social media platforms in times of crisis.
In fact, Twitter and Facebook are powerful tools for online volunteering communities, but do you think Instagram could also help in disseminating information for the volunteering community as I believe in Mauritius we are more used to Instagram and Facebook.
Best,
Julie
Hi Julie,
Thanks for reading my paper. I really appreciate your comment as well. In fact, I totally agree that Instagram as well could be an ideal platform for online volunteering community. Instagram could help to promote all the visuals aspect of the different activities of such organizations in terms of photos and videos using different hashtags as well. I chose to emphasize on Facebook and Twitter for my example because I found that it was the two main platforms used by online volunteering communities.
Hi Jean-Luc, your paper was interesting to read and informative with excellent examples. I agree that social media has been of great help in promoting volunteering as it has higher reachability in terms of audience than traditional ways of campaigning. But do you think that with new technological advances, can digital communication be enhanced to facilitate volunteering globally?
You can check my paper on how social media helped in creating terror and panic during ther covid-19 pandemic in Mauritius :
https://networkconference.netstudies.org/2022/csm/374/social-media-helped-in-creating-terror-and-panic-during-the-covid-19-pandemic-in-mauritius/
Thank you.
Hi Nadarajan,
Thanks for your interest in my paper. I really appreciate your comment. Yes of course, I do think so. I know that there are a lot of no fee volunteer project online, where people could simply connect and help others. Using new technology, more similar project could be promoted on different social media platforms like adding a new volunteer feature on these platforms and hence facilitating the digital communication to engage people to do volunteering around the globe.
This article sums up how we can make use of these platforms for a positive change !
Although much social medias have been misused in the past, the examples which you gave perfectly explains how in some cases when the community comes together, we can use the virtual world to man an impact on the physical world !
Thanks a lot for your response Madhav. Indeed the virtual world has completely revolutionized our way of living !
Well analysed! This is a detailed yet not overloaded report, the kind people enjoy reading, in-fact I did!
Would like to see more content like this on subjects like dangers of social media or the way big corporations use them to gain customers.
Thank you Jean-Luc!
Thanks a lot for your feedback Gael. I really appreciate your response.
hi Jean-Luc it is a very interesting paper that you have produced. Firstly i have really enjoy the topic that you used because when we talk about social media, we usually think about the worst part of it. The fact is that we usually see bad thing happening on the internet that we do not focus on the good thing that happens. I really enjoy the part of the Wakashio episode because we see that people can do great thing on the internet. It reminds me when all Mauritians use social media when the price of the fuel increased and it leads to a manifestation.
Great essay again! Thank you
And please comment on my paper where am talking about influencers!
https://networkconference.netstudies.org/2022/ioa/763/impact-of-social-media-platforms-on-online-influencers-and-followers-identity/https://networkconference.netstudies.org/2022/ioa/763/impact-of-social-media-platforms-on-online-influencers-and-followers-identity/
Hi Jean-Denis,
Thanks for your interest in my paper. Indeed like you said, the internet has allowed different sectors to progress and develop in a rapid way. We should not ignore the fact that technology has completely revolutionized our world in better way as well.
I have already commented on your paper mate ! Thanks and good luck for the rest of the unit.
Hey,
I enjoyed reading your paper and seeing the multitude of benefits created through using the social media in ways I didn’t really consider as an everyday use for social Media. I think sometimes we forgot the importance and connection that social media provides especially for volunteer and community groups. When the internet can receive such a bad rep for the damaging and hurtful /fake information spread through the internet it is really informative to see all the good and beneficial understanding of the internet for communities.
Hi Molly,
Thanks for your interest in my paper. In fact, people tends to concentrate more on the negative aspect of the internet and forget how it has contributes to this modern era.
I would highly appreciate to comment on your paper as well. Just put your link in the reply section.
Thanks.
Hi Jean,
Your paper was extremely well written and researched. I liked reading about the various real-life relevant examples of the role of social media in building a community of online volunteers. I can personally relate to it since, when I was in Perth, I had been part of various Facebook groups that were involved in Fashion Photoshoots, video shoots, short film productions, etc., on a volunteer basis. I certainly volunteered as a Fashion Model in lots of photo walks around pretty Perth, to help amateur photographers polish their skills. Moreover, India has witnessed quite many political and socio-political situations when social media volunteering has helped the poor and needy. Especially, during Covid, Indians collaborated and connected via social media to locate the needy and provide them with medical assistance, ambulance, oxygen, food, cremation services, etc.
Your paper talks about many themes and ideas that can be further researched and written.
It was lovely read, thanks.
Hi Riya,
I’m so glad that you appreciate reading my paper. Oh wow, being a volunteer for a short film production that must be a real big experience. Did you have the links of your different films and videos ? I am student in screen production field as well and this really interest me and give me ideas on how I could help as a volunteer using my film production skills. Indeed, like you mentioned, it is during Covid-19 that people around the world were united and used social media to help each other, this was the case here in Mauritius as well.
Thanks for your response Riya.
Hi Jean,
I’m happy to know that you’d like to watch my performances, while most of them I couldn’t get on my phone, I can share one of them that I have the link to, https://youtu.be/nm4CLcdOocQ
also, you can have a look at my fashion work here, https://youtu.be/1NPR8W1aFyk
Cheers,
Riya
Hi Jean-Luc,
Very interesting and well-researched paper. In a world that’s gradually shifting more and more towards the digital landscape, there is no doubt that social media is one of the best ways to get people to engage themselves in certain causes. The Wakashio shipwreck episode is also a great example of how this was done here in Mauritius.
Very informative read. All the best.
Thanks a lot for your response Dina, I really appreciate.
Hi Jean,
Great paper, very interesting topic.
I can very much understand your point of view and during covid19 I discovered that social media platforms play a very big role in the online volunteering community.
Because I am now in China, our whole community has a contact group on social media where we have staff recruiting volunteers every day to help with nucleic acid testing. I think social media is a great platform to get more people involved in volunteering.All the best.
Hi Sining,
Thanks for your comment, I really appreciate. I’m glad to hear that youngsters are engaged in volunteer and how social media is helping to get more people involved like you mentioned.
Good luck for the rest of the unit.