Evolution of Social Media: Nonprofit Organizations' Use of Twitter and Instagram: A Conceptual Framework

Today, it's impossible to deny the prevalence of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and blogs. Social media has proven to be so powerful that many non-profit organizations have implemented it in their communications and marketing strategies. The goal of this study is to build a conceptual framework for understanding the role of social media as a communication tools in nonprofit organizations; considering three different disciplinary perspectives: organizational communication, community engagement, and stakeholder engagement vehicle. More specifically, it relies on literature on communication tools on Twitter and Instagram. It also refers to literature that examines the relationship between social media engagement and community engagement. In order to prove their point of view, both sides focus on the same issues. The study critically analyses the main issues, discussing how nonprofit organizations use Twitter and Instagram to engage stakeholders via dialogic and community-building practices than have been with traditional websites. Through a multidisciplinary framework, it proposes a more nuanced picture of the relationship between the social media and organizational communication, along with its implications for future studies in this area.