Non-profit organisation going social
The impact of vividness, purpose of a post and framing on online engagement on Facebook
Ghezal Arian (1073317) University of Amsterdam
March 24, 2016
Supervisor: Theo Araujo Master’s Thesis
Master’s programme Communication Sciences
Abstract
A study was done on non-profit organisation in The Netherlands posting in Dutch on the social media platform Facebook. A sample of 250 posts was analysed to answer the research question ‘To what extent do vividness, purpose of a post, and framing influence the online engagement on a Facebook post of a non-profit organisation?’ The results of the analysis led to the following conclusions: the purpose Dialogue and Community Building purpose elicits likes instead of comments, probably because two-communication is lacking between non-profit organisations and their followers. The frames Conflict and Responsibility both elicited likes and Conflict frame stimulated also shares. The Conflict frame has the goal to let followers empathize with a message while Responsibility frame has the goal to make followers of aware of serious issues that matter to a non-profit organisation. Thus both frames deal with heavy subject that can concern society and that probably is convincing people to like or share posts framed this way. Pictures received the most online engagement in the form of likes and shares, and when it was combined with Dialogue and Community Building purpose it received also an significant amount of comments. A reason behind this result is that pictures are compelling and make a message easy to understand to followers on Facebook.
Keywords: vividness, framing, Facebook, non-profit organisations, purpose, online engagement
Introduction
Social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube or Twitter, have become a popular medium for organisations to promote their vision, goals, products and services to their stakeholders (De Vries, Gensler, & Leeflang, 2012). These platform’s users are also growing in large numbers, this can be illustrated by using an example: Facebook. Facebook’s users are increasing daily with 17% year on year. Their daily users via mobile are growing even faster with 31% (Facebook Inc., 2015). Facebook users are a fan of at least ten brands and actively interact with at least five of them (Van Belleghem, Thijs & De Ruyck, 2012).
With such a large amount of active users, an amount that is growing each year, organisations take the opportunity to gather information through social media on how their stakeholders perceive and experience their products, services and vision (Chua & Banerjee, 2015; Sabate et al., 2014). Organisations and brands use these platforms to become more connected with their stakeholders and engage with them (Chua & Banerjee, 2015).
When looking at the type of organisation that could profit from using a social media platform such as Facebook to connect and engage with their stakeholders, non-profit is at the forefront. The benefits that Facebook could give non-profit organisations are, (1) engagement with their stakeholders (2) building a community with them and maintaining it (Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012; Mclean-cobban, 2012) and (3) raise funds (Waddingham, 2013). To be able to build an community and ask stakeholders for funding, non-profit organisations should first be able to engage with their stakeholders. Engaging fans on Facebook is the exact matter that non-profit organisations are still struggling with (Waters, Burnett, Lamm, & Lucas, 2009). That’s why this study will be focusing on the engagement on the Facebook Pages of non-profit organisations. The platform Facebook is chosen for this study because it is one of the biggest social media platforms (Hughes, Rowe, Batey, & Lee, 2011) and is providing objective and realistic data (Luarn, Lin, & Chiu, 2015) in a simple manner on user behaviour from past and present.
When looking into the field of engagement on social media research, several key elements were found that influenced it. In studies on for-profit organisations the key-elements “vividness” (Chua & Banerjee, 2015; Coyle & Thorson, 2001) and “framing” (Kidd, 2011) were found. Vividness is defined as "the representational richness of a mediated environment as defined by its formal features” (Steuer, 1992) and framing as “selecting aspects of the perceived reality to enhance their salience in such a way to promote a particular problem definition, casual interpretation, moral evaluation or treatment recommendation” (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000). In the studies on non-profit organisation the key element “post purpose” (Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012; Nah & Saxton, 2013) was found, which was also investigated in the study of Laurn, Lin & Chin (2015) on for-profit organisations.
These three key elements are not thoroughly investigated for non-profit organisations, while they are of great importance for (profit and non-profit) organisations. Vividness could draw attention to Facebook posts in an environment overloaded with information (Chua & Banerjee, 2015). Successfully framing a Facebook post could lead to a debate (Chalmers & Shotton, 2015) about that post, which could be also perceived as engagement. Posts with different kind of content could lead to different kind of engagement (Luarn et al., 2015), which makes it valuable to investigate “post purposes”.
The outcome of this study will add to the communication field by understanding which one of these key elements or a combination of them will enhance the engagement on Facebook for profit organisations. It is important to understand this because most research on non-profits on social media has been focusing only on how to create a two-way communication (Nah & Saxton, 2013) without looking at aspects as vividness and framing in the post. Also this study will help non-profit organisations with how to organise their Facebook posts to reach the highest amount of engagement on their Facebook Page, when engagement is high then it will become easy build a community and maybe even ask funding. Consequently this leads us to the
research question: “To what extent do vividness, purpose of a post, and framing influence the online engagement on a Facebook post of a non-profit organisation?”
Theoretical Framework
Online Engagement
This study is looking into engagement on an online platform, in this case Facebook. This type of engagement is sometimes referred to as online engagement (Cvijikj & Michahelles, 2013; Luarn et al., 2015). In past research online engagement was measured through the likes, the shares and the comments given on a Facebook post by fans (Chua & Banerjee, 2015; Cvijikj & Michahelles, 2013; Luarn et al., 2015). These elements are considered as good measurements of online engagement on a Facebook post (Luarn et al., 2015).
The amount of likes on a post indicates the popularity of a post on a Facebook page (Luarn et al., 2015; Sabate et al., 2014; Saxton & Waters, 2014). The higher the popularity of a post the higher the chance of it being distributed among a bigger audience (Luarn et al., 2015).
The shares are considered as an electronic word of mouth (Sabate et al., 2014). Fans of a Facebook Page share a post on their own wall or in a group, because they want to influence people around them (Sabate et al., 2014). Willingly sharing the message of an organisation among your peers makes you an active advocate for an organisation (Sabate et al., 2014; Saxton & Waters, 2014).
The comments are the “degree of success or impact” that a Facebook post has on the page of an organisation (Luarn et al., 2015). This because the fans take their time to write their opinion (Sabate et al., 2014). This opinion stands for the level of the public engagement about the message in the post, since there is a discussion on the topic of the post (Saxton & Waters, 2014). Comments are also considered an element that is similar to (electronic) word of mouth
(De Vries et al., 2012).Thus the more comments are present on a post, the more successful it is considered by organisations, because stakeholders are discussing the topic of the post.
Factors influencing online engagement
The purpose of a Facebook post. Facebook posts can have several purposes and each of them can cause a different level of online engagement. In online engagement literature three main categories are found for what the purpose of a Facebook post can be: (1) Information Sharing, (2) Promotion and Mobilization, and (3) Dialogue and Community Building.
Information Sharing posts contain messages to inform stakeholders about “the mission, programs and services of an organisation” and are form of one-way of communication (Luarn et al., 2015; Saxton & Waters, 2014). One of the reasons why people follow a brand on Facebook is because of the information they can find on their Facebook page about the brand (Luarn et al., 2015; Sabate et al., 2014), which makes them feel more connected with the brand they are following (Smith & Gallicano, 2015). In the research of Smith & Gallicano (2015) it is mentioned that fans like to share the information about the organisations they follow to show their friends who they are and what they stand for. In the studies by Luarn, Lin & Chiu (2015), a study focused on for-profit organisations, and Saxton & Waters (2014), a study focused on non-profit organisations, it was observed that informational posts indeed had more shares compared to Facebook posts with other purposes. This leads to the following hypothesis:
H1a: Information posts will elicit more shares than posts with other purposes
Promotion and Mobilisation posts are meant to encourage and enable fans on Facebook to do something beneficial for the organisation (Saxton & Waters, 2014). There are three kinds of Promotion and Mobilisation posts: ‘Fundraising and Sales’, ‘Events and
Promotion’ and ‘Call to Action’.
Fundraising and Sales, which focuses on raising money for the organisation through charities, donations or product sales (Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012; Saxton & Waters, 2014).
Fundraising is one of the most important goals for a non-profit organisation, you need money to function well, and social media has been seen as a new tool to attract more funds. In several studies it turned out that posts on Facebook related to fundraising, did not received as much attention compared to posts with other purposes (Saxton & Waters, 2014; Waddingham, 2013). Waddingham (2013) gives several reasons for why non-profits struggle with raising money through Facebook: (1) Facebook is not the best way to raise money, especially when you do not use it the right way as a non-profit organisation, (2) people do not like to share on social media about funding an organisation and (3) non-profit organisations do not ask their benefactors to share on social media why they are funding them. Waddingham (2013) poses that if they would share their motivation on Facebook in turn it would attract more shares and more funds. Based on the previous facts by Waddingham (2013) our next hypothesis will be:
H1b: Fundraising & Sales posts will receive less likes, shares and comments than posts with other purposes
Events Promotion are posts that encourage stakeholders “to engage with the organisation by attending an online or offline activity hosted by the organisation” (Saxton & Waters, 2014). Facebook posts that promote events, received more likes compared to posts that give information or fulfil any other purpose (Luarn et al., 2015).
Call-to-Action is the last group in the Promote and Mobilize category. These posts do not ask stakeholders to be part of an event or do not ask for financial support. Instead these posts are encouraging stakeholders to sign petitions or to become volunteers or advocates for the organisation (Saxton & Waters, 2014). Call-to-action posts receive shares and are a suitable way to increase comments on a post (Saxton & Waters, 2014).
H1c: Posts promoting events will receive more likes than posts fulfilling other purposes
Dialogue and Community Building is the last purpose that a Facebook post can have. Dialogue and Community Building is considered as two-way of communication. Here an
organisation engages with its stakeholders by having an conversation with them about social issues related to the cause of the organisation, or by mentioning their stakeholders or
competitors in their posts (Saxton & Waters, 2014). Mentioning stakeholders in posts is done to give them recognition for their work or acknowledgement for events (Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012).
In the field of research there is some disagreement on the impact of Dialogue and
Community Building on likes, shares and comments. De Vries et al. (2012) found that posts that are meant to create a community and dialogue increase the amount of comments and shares on that post. Saxton & Waters (2014) discovered that the number of shares did not increase, but the amount of likes and comments did increase. Luarn et al. (2015) found that only comments were enhanced by posts that contained messages to build a community and dialogue, while it had no influence on shares and likes . From the previous literature it was noted that one kind of online engagement was stimulated by Dialogue and Community Building posts, which is
comments, that’s why the following hypothesis is formulated as:
H1d: Dialogue and Community Building posts will have more comments than posts with other purposes
Vividness. Vividness is defined by Steuer (1992) as “the representational richness of a mediated environment as defined by its formal features; that is the way in which an environment presents information to the senses”. Vividness is important because high vividness of a media type means that a message is instantly transferred without any misunderstandings or other interpretations and the receiver has the opportunity to give feedback immediately (Daft & Lengel, 1986). Media types with low level of vividness will have a higher probability to be misunderstood
and wrongly interpreted, this also means that readers or viewers of the message will not be able to give a response back immediately (Daft & Lengel, 1986). Another aspect of high vividness is that the media message is of such good quality, that an individual will experience the media type as realistic, even though he is sitting in his own personal environment (Yim, Cicchirillo, &
Drumwright, 2012). An example of such an media type is a movie. This is a media type that gives the viewer the opportunity to experience the same feelings and thoughts as the performer in a movie. On Facebook the following media types can be shared; (1) text, (2) picture, (3) a link and (4) a video, these media types can be considered as the different levels of measurement for vividness on Facebook, text being the lowest level and video the highest level (Cvijikj &
Michahelles, 2013).
Even though the authors above agree that media with the highest level of vividness receive the most engagement, Brookes (2010) (as cited in Sabate et al., 2014) disagrees with this. In his study ‘pictures’ received more engagement than videos, because they were
considered more compelling than ‘videos’ (Sabate et al., 2014).
This study expects, as previous studies, that the media with the highest level of vividness present in a Facebook posts, will receive the most engagement from the followers of the page. A reason for this expectation is that on Facebook high vivid media, like a video, can be used as a marketing tool and in studies on for-profit these kind of media received the most online
engagement (Cvijikj & Michahelles, 2013). As we expect that non-profit organisations will be using high vivid media also as an marketing tool, we expect that it might have the same effect as for for-profit organisations that is why the following hypothesis is hypothesized as:
H2: Posts containing a video will have more likes, shares and comments than posts containing a text, picture or a link
Framing. Framing is an important factor in the news industry. Framing the news in a certain way attracts more readers towards an issue. One can highlight certain elements of an issue while ignore others and it gives the newspapers a certain power to control a debate or lead it to a certain direction (Chalmers & Shotton, 2015). Frames are also important for organisation (Chalmers & Shotton, 2015) to raise awareness among their audience about a certain issue or lead them to a certain thought process. The five news frames are (1) conflict frame, (2) human interest frame (3) economic consequences frame, (4) morality frame, (5) responsibility frame (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000):
1. Conflict Frame “emphasizes conflict between individuals, groups, or institutions as a means of capturing audience interest” (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000, p. 95). An example of the use of a Conflict Frame on Facebook would a post of Stichting AAP, a foundation that protects monkeys. In this post it was stated that a monkey called Robby should have been handed to Stichting AAP by a circus, which was the verdict of a judge. The owner refused and acted against the judge’s verdict. This post illustrates a conflict between the organisation and the owner of the monkey.
2. Human Interest Frame “brings a human face or an emotional angle to the presentation of an event, issue, or problem” (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000, p. 95-96). This frame
personalizes a posts, dramatizes and “emotionalises” a post to capture and keep the
audiences interest (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000). Stichting AAP used this frame by posting a picture to introduce their volunteers that help them out during Christmas (see Figure 1).
3. Economic Consequences Frame “reports an event, problem, or issue in terms of consequences it will have economically on an individual, group, institution, region or country” (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000, p. 96). This frame is used in different ways by non-profit organisations: ask(ing) directly or indirectly for financial help, explaining to their
Figure 2. “your vote is worth money for stichting aap! because 123inkt.nl has been voted
as the best online store, this store donates € 100,000 - to charities like Stichting AAP! the money will be allocated according to votes, so go to http:
//www.123inkt.nl/goededoelen/stemmen/aap and help our animals with receiving a happy new year’s gift” (Facebook Stichting AAP, 2015).
audience that they need their votes to win a competition (which will benefit them financially). An example of this can be found on the page of Stichting AAP (Figure 2) 4. Morality Frame “puts an event, problem, or issue in the context of religious tenant or
moral prescriptions” (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000, p. 96). Posts with this frame can contain moral messages or social prescriptions about how to behave (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000). An example is a post of the Dutch Heart Association that requested their followers to share the message that smoking increases the heart and vascular disease so that more people become aware of it and quit smoking.
5. Responsibility Frame “presents an issue or problem in such a way as to attribute responsibility for its cause or solution to either the government or to an individual or group” (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000, p. 96). In the post of the Dutch Heart Association the audience is given the responsibility to share a message and make their fellow citizens aware of the consequences of smoking, thus responsibility is attributed to the people themselves.
In the study of Kidd (2011) on museums active on social media, she mentions that the museum’s that used the right frame in their messages reached a better engagement with their audience than the once that didn’t. A reason for why the messages of the museums’ on social media with the ‘right’ frames received the highest online engagement, was because the frames made the message of the museums’ ‘understandable’, which again made it easier for their audience to discuss the topic with the museums’ (Kidd, 2011).
Thus we argue that the frames eliciting the most online engagement on Facebook, are the right frames for non-profit organisations to use to engage with their fans. Therefore this study will be looking at which frames, used on the Facebook posts of non-profit organisation, elicit the highest online engagement. This leads us to the following hypothesis of this study:
H3: which out of the five frames lead to the highest amount of likes, shares and comments?
Lastly this study will also look at how the combination of frames, purpose of a post and vividness will lead to the highest online engagement, which brings us to the sub-question:
Sub-question 2: Which combination of purpose of a post, vividness and frame lead to the highest likes, shares and comments?
Methods
The present study employed an content analysis on Facebook pages of nine non-profit organisations to answer the research question “To what extent do vividness, purpose of a post, and framing influence the online engagement on the Facebook posts of non-profit
organisations?”
A content analysis was performed because with this method one could capture what non-profit organisations are really posting on their pages. The content analysis was carried out on a sample of 250 Facebook posts gathered from the months September and October in the year 2015.
Selection of research units
The non-profit organisations for this study were selected from the 2014 report of the organisation Goede Doelen, through four steps. De ‘Goede Doelen’ is an association for non-profit organisations, established by non-non-profit organisations, that can financially support them where needed. The first step was by seeing if the non-profit organisations in the list of the ‘Goede Doelen’ owned a Facebook page. The second step was excluding all the non-profit organisations from the list that were posting in English, because this study focuses only on non-profits posting in Dutch. A reason to focus only on non-non-profits that post in Dutch is the
assumption that this group will be only active in the Netherlands and no other countries. The third step was to ensure non-profit organisations of the same sector were put together. There were three sectors “health”, “nature”, “welfare & culture”, these were chosen because the non-profit organisation in these sectors were posting only in Dutch. The last step was to randomly select three organisation from each sector, results are in Table 1.
Table 1.
Organisations selected for the sample of this study
Name of the organisation Sector Background
Hartstichting (Heart Foundation) Health The association is committed to fight against cardiovascular diseases
Nederlandse Vereniging voor Autisme (Dutch Association for Autism)
Health The association is committed to the interests of people with autism and their families Fonds Gehandicaptensport (Fund for
Disabled Sports)
Health The association is committed to the interests of disabled people active in sports Stichting AAP (Foundation for Monkeys) Nature The association is committed
to the interests of monkeys in bad conditions
WNF (World Wide Fund for Nature) Nature The association is committed to the interests of animals Natuurmonumenten (Nature Monuments
Fund)
Nature The association is committed to the interests of protected nature
Stichting voor Vluchetling-Studenten UAF (Foundation for Refugee Students)
Welfare & culture The association is committed to the interests of student refugees
Clini Clowns Netherlands Welfare & culture The association is committed to the interests of sick children in hospitals
Bijbelvereniging (Bible Association) Welfare & culture The association is committed to the interests of the church and the Holy Bible
Procedure
After the development of a codebook one coder tested it to see if any elements were missing. After some minor adjustments one coder was trained and coded 251 posts. While coding it was discovered that one post was present twice in the sample, the duplicate post was removed which brought the number of posts to 250. The same coder coded also, a week between both coding periods, 10% of the sample to check for coder reliability. The inter-coder reliability was carried out with the help of the website www.dfreelon.org where an Krippendorff's Alpha was performed. The results of the inter-coder reliability are presented in Table 2.
Table 2.
Results inter-coder reliability
Variable Krippendorff's Alpha
Purpose post .775 Conflict frame .657 Economy frame .615 Human frame .782 Morality .755 Responsibility frame .437 Vividness .921
Of all the variables only one had a low reliability, Responsibility Frame. A reason for this low reliability is that the coder disagreed on if someone was held responsible or not for a certain situation that was mentioned in the posts of the non-profit organisations. A disagreement could have been caused because the instructions in the codebook were not clear on if only “negative responsibilities” should have been coded or also the “positive responsibilities”. Once the coder coded both negative and positive responsibilities, the other time she coded only for the negative once.
Measures
Independent Variables
The purposes of a post. The five purposes, equal to five variables, in this study were operationalised by the definitions of Luarn, Lin & Chiu (2015), Lovejoy & Saxton (2012) and Saxton & Waters (2014):
1. Information Sharing purpose was assigned to a post when it was one-way of
communication about the mission, program and services of the non-profit organisation (Luarn et al., 2015; Saxton & Waters, 2014).
2. Fundraising and Sales purpose was assigned to a post when the post focused on any kind of financial aspect of the non-profit organisation.
3. Event and Promotion purpose was assigned to a post when the post was informing and requesting followers on Facebook to attend an event, offline or online, organised by the non-profit organisation.
4. Call-to-Action purpose was assigned to a post when it requested followers of the non-profit organisation to sign petitions, or become an active volunteer or advocate for the organisation.
5. Dialogue and Community Building was assigned to a post when it encouraged two-way communication between the non-profit organisation and its followers, and also by
acknowledging the work of their stakeholders and fellow non-profit organisations. The purposes Fundraising and Sales, Events and Promotion and Call-to-Action are
sub-categories of the purpose Promotion and Mobilisation but in this study these sub-sub-categories will be treated as separate categories. Each post was assigned one purpose, because the study looked only at the main purpose of a post.
Vividness. The vividness of a post was operationalised by coding the highest level of vividness present in a post. Vividness was measured through four variables on an ordinal level:
(1) text, (2) picture, (3) link and (4) video. Thus if there was text, link and a video present in a post then the highest level would be coded, which is a video.
Frames. The study of Semetko & Valkenburg (2000) was used to operationalise the five frames together with an example in the codebook:
1. Conflict Frame, was assigned “present” if a conflict between groups, individuals or institutions was mentioned.
2. Human Interest Frame, was assigned “present” if a human factor was presented or an emotional angle was given to an issue or a problem.
3. Economic Consequence Frame, this frame was assigned “present” when a problem, issue or event was discussed in terms of how it economically could influence the non-profit organisation.
4. Morality Frame, was assigned “present” when a post discussed a problem or issue in the context of religious tenant or prescriptions, or if it contained any moral or social
messages that prescribed how to behave.
5. Responsibility Frame, was assigned “present” when responsibility was attributed to an individual, group or institution for the cause or solution of an issue or problem.
All five frames, variables, were measured on a dichotomous level. This means that if a frame was present it would be coded as “present” and if it was not present then it would be coded “not present”, which means that several frames could be present in one post. The five frames were later computed to one variable named “Frames”, so an ANOVA could be facilitated.
Dependent variables. The online engagement was operationalised by the variables that measure likes, shares and comments on Facebook posts of non-profit organisations. All three variables were measured on a ratio level. The number of likes for each post had to be coded, the
number shares of each post had to be coded (thus only shares directly from the non-profits organisation page), for each post the number of comments were coded (the replies on a comment were not included).
Results
Before delving into the results our main research question for this study is “To what extent do vividness, purpose of a post, and framing influence the online engagement on a Facebook post of a non-profit organisation?”. To find an answer for this main research question the following hypotheses were developed:
H1a: Information posts will elicit more shares than posts with other purposes
H1b: Fundraising & Sales posts will receive less likes, shares and comments than posts with other purposes
H1c: Posts promoting events will receive more likes than posts fulfilling other purposes H1d: Dialogue and Community building posts will have more comments than posts with other purposes
H2: Posts containing a video will have more likes, shares and comments than posts containing a text, picture or a link
H3: Which out of the five frames lead to the highest amount of likes. Shares and comments
Sub-question 1: Which combination of purpose of a post, vividness and frame lead to the highest likes, shares and comments?
The results of these hypotheses will be discussed in the order that is presented here. The ANOVA’s conducted in this study are all one-way.
Purpose of a post in relation with online engagement
An analysis of variances was conducted to analyse the hypothesis 1a on Information posts eliciting more shares than posts with other purposes, with the ‘purposes of a posts’ being the independent variables and the ‘shares’ the dependent variable. The ANOVA showed that the effect of ‘the purposes of a post’ is significant, F (4, 245) = 6.03, p = .000. It must be noted that the outcome of the Levene’s test was significant, Levene’s F (4, 245) = 10.54, p = .000. Because the assumption of equal variances was violated, for the post-hoc test a Dunnett T3 test was used. The results of the Dunnett T3 test indicated that there are not any significant differences between the different purposes of a post. Thus results for hypothesis 1a are not accepted, because the post-hoc Dunnett T3 test shows that the influence of all the purposes are similar on shares and none of them has a significant effect on shares.
Hypothesis 1b, which stated that posts with the purpose of ‘Fundraising and Sales’ will receive the least online engagement, was tested through an ANOVA. The ANOVA showed an significant result for likes, F(4, 245) = 11.81, p = .000 and significant results for shares, F (4, 245) = 6.03, p = .000. The assumption of equal variances in the population was violated for the shares, Levene's F (4, 245) = 10.54, p = .000, and for likes, Levene’s F (4, 245) = 25.93, p = .000. As a result of the Levene’s test, the Dunnett T3 was chosen for the post-hoc test. The post-hoc-test revealed five significant results among the groups. The first results is that posts with the purpose ‘Fundraising and Sales’ received the least comments (M difference = -227.07, p =.038) compared posts containing ‘Dialogue and Community Building’ purposes. Posts with the purpose ‘Fundraising and Sales’ received also the least likes (M difference = -5288, p =.01) compared to posts with the purpose ‘Dialogue and Community Building’ and posts with the purpose ‘Information Sharing’ (M difference = -1217.14, p =.045). The other two significant post-hoc results were that posts with the purpose of ‘Dialogue and Community Building’ received more likes than posts with the purpose ‘Events and Promotion’ (M difference = 4904, p =.021) and the purpose ‘Call-to-Action’ (M difference = 4896, p =.020). It can be confirmed that ‘Fundraising and
Sales posts’ received the least likes and comments, but for shares there was not any significant results among the groups. Thus hypothesis 1b is partly accepted and partly rejected.
For hypothesis 1c, stating that posts with the purpose ‘Events and Promotion’ would receive the most likes, it can be said from the results from hypothesis 1b that most likes were received by posts that promoted ‘Dialogue and Community Building’ messages (M difference = 904, p = .021) and not posts with the purpose ‘Events and Promotion’. Thus we can say that
hypothesis 1c is rejected. Although the homogeneity of variances test was violated and it cannot be said with confidence that these results are correct.
Hypothesis 1d suggested that posts with the purpose of creating ‘Dialogue and
Community Building’ would receive the most comments. This hypothesis was tested insignificant in the ANOVA with F(4, 245) = 1.46, p = .21. Thus hypothesis 1d was rejected. Once more the homogeneity of variances test was violated and it cannot be said with confidence that these results are correct.
Vividness in relation with online engagement
For hypothesis 2 an ANOVA was conducted to investigate if videos will receive the most online engagement, meaning the most likes, shares and comments than posts containing text, picture or link. The results of the ANOVA were significant for likes, F(3, 246) = 19.41, p = .000, shares F(3, 246) = 13.04, p = .000 and comments, F(3, 246) = 3.39, p = .019. Although the test of homogeneity of variances was violated for likes, Levene’s F(3,246) = 48.36, p = .000, for shares, Levene’s F(3,246) = 28.56, p = .000, and for comments, Levene’s F(3,246) = 6.46, p = .000. For this reason it was decided to do the post-hoc Dunnett T3 test. The post-hoc test showed that there was a significant difference between the levels of vividness, but the most important difference was that pictures received the most online engagement compared to videos in the form of likes (M difference = 3914, p = .000) and shares (M difference = 292, p =.000). Pictures
received also the most like (M difference = 4131, p = .000) and shares (M difference = 316, p = .000) compared to text posts and also the most likes (M difference = 3728, p = .000) and shares (M difference = 257, p = .000) compared to links in posts. There was not any significant difference between the levels of vividness in relation to comments. Thus hypothesis 2 is rejected, which means that videos do not elicit the most online engagement.
Frames in relation to online engagement
Hypothesis 3, which out of the five frames lead to the highest likes, shares and
comments? An ANOVA was performed with the Frames being the independent variable and the Online Engagement the dependent variable. The ANOVA was significant for likes, F(5, 244) = 5.93, p = .000, and shares, F(5, 244) = 3.80, p = .002. The assumption of equal variances was violated for likes, Levene's F (5, 244) = 18.42, p = .000 and shares, Levene's F (5, 244) = 10.55, p = .000. As a result of the Levene’s test, the hoc Dunnett T3 test was chosen. The post-hoc test revealed six significant results. The first result three significant results showed that the Conflict Frame received more likes than Human Interest Frame (M difference = 2775 , p =.000), the Economic Consequence Frame (M difference = 2959, p =.000) and Morality Frame (M difference = 2586, p =.002). The Responsibility Frame received more likes than the Economic Consequence Frame (M difference = 980, p = .042). The last two significant results of this analysis showed that the Conflict Frame also received the most shares compared to the Human Interest Frame (M difference = 183, p =.004) and the Economic Consequence Frame (M difference = 169, p =.012). For comments there were not any significant results between the five frames. Thus from this
analysis we can answer hypothesis 3 with the answer that the Conflict Frame receives the most likes and shares, the Responsibility Frame is the second frame with the most likes.
The sub-question stated, how the combination of level of vividness, purpose of a post and framing impact the online engagement? The results for this multiple regression will
presented in the following order; first the results for the multiple regression with the likes as the dependent variable will be given, then shares and lastly the results of the multiple regression where comments are the dependent variable. The independent variables in this regression are all the levels of vividness, all the purposes of a post and all the frames.
The results for the first multiple regression with likes as the dependent variable was significant for the predictors: picture, Dialogue and Community Building purpose and
Responsibility Frame, F (3, 246)= 32.44, p = .000. These predictors can explain 27.5% of the likes in the model. Pictures (b*= .34, t = 5.93, p =.000) and Dialogue and Community Building purpose (b*= .27, t = 4.72, p =.000) have significantly a moderate strong association with likes, while the Responsibility Frame (b*= -.13, t =-2.27, p =.024) has a weak negative association with likes. All the other variables had no significant association with likes.
The results for the second multiple regression with shares as the dependent variable was significant for the predictors: pictures and Dialogue and Community Building, F (2, 247)= 25.35, p = .000. These predictors explain 16.4% of the shares in the model. Pictures have a moderate strong association with shares (b*= .32, t = 5.22, p =.000) while Dialogue and Community Building’ (b*= .19, t = 3.2, p =.000) have a weak association. All the other variables did not have a significant association with shares.
The results for the third multiple regression with comments as the dependent variable was significant for the predictor pictures, F (1, 248)= 10.24, p = .002. Pictures could explain only 3.6% of the comments in the model. The association of picture’ with shares was moderate (b*= .20, t = 3.2, p =.002). All the other variables have no significant association with comments.
From the results for our sub-question “how the combination of level of vividness, purpose of a post and framing impact the online engagement?” it can be concluded that pictures and Dialogue and Community Building combined influence the online engagement more in the form of likes and shares. For comments only pictures were able to predict a small portion of them. All the other variables had not any significant association with comments.
Discussion
The aim of this research was to investigate how the vividness, purpose of a post and different frames influence the amount of likes, shares and comments under a post of a non-profit organisation on Facebook. It was important to research this, as many non-profit organisations are still struggling with how to increase their online engagement (Waters et al., 2009). Thus in the conclusion of this study an advice will be provided to non-profit organisations on their social media usage. Also some recommendations for future studies will be given.
The reason for non-profit organisations to go on social media was to engage with their stakeholders, build a community with them and maintain it and also raise funds (Waddingham, 2013), but none of these goals has been met on a level that satisfies the non-profit
organisations. Waddingham (2013) explains that most non-profits have no clear guidelines for their Facebook usage, which makes it difficult for them to make the most of the it. From the results it appears that only two forms of online engagement are reached significantly by the non-profits, which are likes and shares.
Most likes were received by the purpose Dialogue and Community Building, this is partly in line with the study of Saxton & Waters (2014) because it does reaches the most likes but not the shares. Studies such as that of Luarn et al. (2015) stated that only comments would be elicited by this purpose because it has a two-way communication goal. The purpose of Dialogue and Community Building did not reach many comments. This could be explained by that non-profit organisations do not take part in the discussion that they start themselves. For example many non-profits asked the opinion of their followers on Facebook, but some of the non-profits did not do anything with that opinion or did not react back to the comments or questions of their followers. Thus the organisation is not giving any kind of acknowledgement to their followers, acknowledgement is a form of two-way communication as mentioned by Lovejoy & Saxton (2012) Saxton & Waters (2014).
The Conflict frame reached the most shares and likes while the Responsibility frame reached only a significant amount of likes. A reason for these two frames eliciting these forms of online engagement is that both focus on issues that are of great concern for individuals. These two frames reach the emotions of individuals to such an extent that people will empathize and share a message it, because they feel that other people should become aware of it, which is also the goal of these two frames (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000) .
For pictures there were some interesting results, as they elicited the most likes, shares and also comments, when it was combined with the purpose Dialogue and Community Building. This can be explained by the findings of Brookes (2010) that said pictures are more compelling than video’s thus they can reach a higher engagement. If pictures are combined with a frame that starts a dialogue then it can become a powerful message to an audience. The power of this combination lies probably in that a message becomes more vivid, visually and mentally that it is easy for the audience to understand a message and comment on it. This is an assumption that does need some further investigation.
As expected one of the results was that posts with the purpose to raise funds did not reach any kind of engagement. A reason behind this finding could be that Waddingham (2013) mentioned that people do not like to share in public that they want to fund a non-profit
organisation. Although the non-profit organisation the Clini Clowns did tackle did problem by motivating their followers to fund by sharing the stories of stakeholders that received their
service, which is also an suggestion made by Waddingham (2013) . An example is the story of a father that told how the Clini Clowns helped his son smile while he had been through a tough time in the hospital, and how much he saw the value of the non-profit (Clini Clowns) for children that are in the hospital. When a story like this was posted, followers automatically commented by telling their story about how a Clini Clown made them or a family member laugh in hospital or
why they are funding them.
theoretical framework. A reason for this could be that the sample was small. An example of one of the rejected results is the result that videos did not elicit the highest amount of online
engagement. Probably there were not enough videos in the sample to measure the effect of videos on online engagement.
We conclude with recommendations for non-profit organisations that they should include pictures in their posts, as they always stimulate some kind of online engagement and are making messages understandable for followers.
Two-way communication is important on social media, even though the results only showed it stimulates likes and shares. Non-profit organisations are still advised that when this purpose is used they also actually need to actively respond back to their followers and
stakeholders to reach the best online engagement. Also this purpose will help the non-profit organisations to maintain their community, because when people receive responds back from the organisation they will return because they feel part of something.
A last advice is that non-profit organisations should think about what they want to reach with a post and reconsider what kind of pictures and frames can achieve the purpose they have. In the literature it is mentioned that most non-profits use the social media to engage with their audience but they have no clear guidelines on how to use social media (Waddingham, 2013) which also makes it hard for them to achieve their goals.
Recommendations for future research is to do a similar research but then a combination of interviews with non-profit organisations and an experiment, because then the motivation of followers that follow non-profit organisations could be understood and their behaviour towards the posts of non-profits. Also this information could be then compared with the interviews given by the non-profits to understand the interaction between the non-profit organisation and the follower. This kind of research could give more answers on how non-profits can engage with their followers and what the expectations are of the followers and non-profit. Also it will help the non-profits to gain more insight on how to build a strong social community and understand when
followers are ready to fund an non-profit organisation through social media. Although this will become a challenge with the changing environment of social media, especially Facebook that has recently not only a thumb up for like but also emoji’s that represent different emotions.
A last recommendation is to investigate the idea of Waddingham (2013) on that non-profit organisations should ask their benefactors to share their story of funding them. If it proves to work, then it would be of great benefit for many large but also small non-profit organisations that struggle with finance.
Limitations
One of the limitations in this study was that the dependent variables were not normally distributed, but the groups were sufficient enough to do the research.
A second limitation is that the sample, if it was larger, it would have given better results on how the key elements in this research influenced the online engagement on Facebook posts. An example is the hypothesis testing if video’s reach the highest online engagement. This hypothesis was rejected, a reason for this could be that there were not enough videos in the sample to measure the effect.
A last aspect that is considered as an limitation is that there was one coder, more coders could have benefitted the codebook, as there were some parts that could confuse a coder.
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Appendix
Codebook
Research question: To what extent do vividness, purpose of a post, and framing influence the online engagement on a Facebook post of a non-profit organisation?
Part 1: general
1. Name of the Facebook Page: see figure 1
2. Sector: indicate in which sector the non-profit organisation is active, this information can be found in the Goede Doelen Nederland Rapport 2014
a. Health
b. Nature, environment & animals c. Welfare & culture
3. Page likes: write the amount of fans that are following the page of the non-profit organization (figure 1)
……
Part 2: Coding posts Engagement
FIGURE 2
4. Post Date: write the date of when the Facebook post was posted on the wall of the page (figure 2)
……
5. Post Time: write the clock of when the Facebook post was posted on the wall of the page (figure 2)
……
6. Online engagement: write the number of likes, shares and comments on the Facebook post (figure 2)
a. Likes: b. Shares: c. Comments:
Part 3: Purpose of a Facebook post
Explanation of the purposes of Facebook posts
d. Information sharing posts contain messages to inform stakeholders about “the mission, programs and services of an organization” and are a one-way of
communication (Luarn et al., 2015; Saxton & Waters, 2014)
Promotion and mobilisation posts are meant to encourage and enable fans on Facebook to do something beneficial for the organisation (Saxton & Waters, 2014). There are three kind of promotion and mobilisation posts
e. Fundraising and sales, which focuses on raising money for the organization through charities, donations or product sales (Lovejoy & Saxton, 2012; Saxton & Waters, 2014)
f. Events and promotion are posts that encourage stakeholders “to engage with the organization by attending an online or offline activity hosted by the
g. The last group that promotes and mobilizes is the call-to-action, these posts do not ask stakeholders to be part of an event or do not ask for financial support, these posts are encouraging stakeholders to sign petitions, become volunteers or advocates for the organization (Saxton & Waters, 2014).
h. Dialogue and community building is the last purpose a Facebook post can have, which is considered as a two-way of communication. With this purpose an organization engages with its stakeholders by having an conversation with them about social issues related to the cause of the organization, or by mentioning their stakeholders or competitors in their posts (Saxton & Waters, 2014).
7. The purpose of the Facebook post: Code the main purpose of a post; if the post has several purposes, code the primary purpose of the message in the post. [see explanation 1]
a. Information sharing [see explanation 1.i]
b. Promotion and mobilization: fundraising & sales [see explanation 1.ii] c. Promotion and mobilization: events and promotion [see explanation 1.iii] d. Promotion and mobilization: call-to-action [see explanation 1.iv]
Part 4: Vividness of a Facebook post
8. Vividness of a post: indicate which element is present. If it is difficult to distinguish between a link and a picture then select option “e” and describe what you see. An example is figure 4, a picture is present, but it is within the link. If a coder sees something similar or
something that is not given in the options, then they can select the option “other” and describe what they see.
a. Text: read the whole text to be able to answer questions on frames b. Picture
c. Link: the link should be clicked to measure the level of its vividness, see question 10
d. Video: click on the video, watch the whole video to be able to answer question on frames. If there is a video present in the post, answer question 11
e. Other:….
9. What is the highest level of vividness in the link given in the Facebook post a. Text
b. Picture c. Link d. Video
Part 5: Frames in a Facebook post
Explanation of frames
i. Conflict frame: “this frame emphasizes conflict between individuals, groups, or institutions as a means of capturing audience interest” (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000, p. 95).
Dit is Robby, een chimpansee die al decennia lang eenzaam in een Duits circus leeft. AAP en diverse andere dierenwelzijnsorganisaties, zoals animal public e.V. en PETA Deutschland zetten zich al jaren in om Robby uit het circus en bij AAP te krijgen, waar soortgenoten op hem wachten. Zover is het helaas nog niet; de eigenaar kreeg in oktober te horen dat hij Robby af moest staan, maar ging daartegen in beroep. We geven echter niet op en zetten alles op alles om ervoor te zorgen dat dit Robby's laatste kerst in eenzaamheid is. Laat jij ook een
kerstwens voor Robby achter?
ii. Human interest frame: “this frame brings a human face or an emotional angle to the presentation of an event, issue, or problem” (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000, p. 95-96). These frames personalize the posts, dramatize or “emotionalise” the posts, in order to capture and retain audience interest (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000).
FIGURE 4 EXAMPLE HUMAN INTEREST FRAME
iii. Economic consequences frame: “this frame reports an event, problem, or issue in terms of consequences it will have economically on an individual, group,
institution, region or country” (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000, p. 96). Example: Jouw stem is geld waard voor AAP! Omdat 123inkt.nl tot Beste Webwinkel is verkozen, schenkt deze webwinkel €100.000,- aan goede doelen zoals AAP!
Het bedrag wordt verdeeld op basis van stemmen, dus ga
naarhttp://www.123inkt.nl/goededoelen/stemmen/aap en help mee aan een leuk eindejaarscadeautje voor onze dieren.
iv. Morality frame: “this frame puts the event, problem, or issue in the context of religious tenant or moral prescriptions” (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000, p. 96). Posts with this frame can contain moral messages or social prescriptions about how to behave (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000).
Gezocht: voor de kleine dieren in onze quarantaine zijn we op zoek naar sjaals, wanten (geen handschoenen) en mutsen van fleece. De dieren kruipen hier
graag in weg of gebruiken het als nestmateriaal.
Verder zijn we nog op zoek naar (afgekeurde) klimtouwen voor de inrichting van de chimpanseeverblijven.
Hier vind je ons complete verlanglijstje en waar je spullen heen kunt sturen of brengen: https://www.aap.nl/nl/help-mee/ons-verlanglijstje
v. Responsibility frame: “this frame presents an issue or problem in such a way as to attribute responsibility for its cause or solution to either the government or to an individual or group” (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000, p. 96).
De boodschap is overgebracht: AAP-directeur David van Gennep overhandigde deze week ruim 25.000 (!) handtekeningen tegen de illegale handel in
berberapen aan Eurocommissaris Vella van Milieu, Maritieme Zaken en Visserij. Over twee weken wordt door de EU een besluit genomen over de
beschermingsstatus van de berberapen. Bedankt allemaal voor het tekenen!
https://www.aap.nl/…/ruim-25-000-handtekeningen-overhandigd…
10. Which frames are present in the Facebook post [see explanation 2]: code 1 ( = present) when a frame is present and 0 ( = not present) when a frame is not present.
a. Conflict frame [see explanation 2.i]
b. Human interest frame [see explanation 2.ii]
c. Economic consequences frame [see explanation 2.iii] d. Morality frame [see explanation 2.iv]
