Iranian nonprofit organizations (charities) and stakeholders in social media A qualitative study of communication patterns

Today many individual’s lives have been affected by social media in all aspects. Official statistics prove that a significant number of people spend a huge amount of time in social media. NGOs, like other organizations, use social media to stay competitive and attract and manage their stakeholders, such as donors, volunteers, managers, and employees. Developing more effective stakeholder relationships in NGOs requires a more suitable and relevant strategy for using social media. This research has been done in terms of applied-developmental purpose, in terms of descriptive method and qualitative content analysis method. The statistical population includes experts and stakeholders in the two fields of social media and non-governmental organizations. 13 people were interviewed in-depth by the theoretical saturation method. In Iran, due to various barriers and limitations of using many social media platforms, Instagram has been the main used social media platform by NGOs, yet other social media platforms are used as complementary tools with less engagement rates than Instagram. This study research emphasizes the need and the importance to reform the strategy and structure in non-governmental organizations, to the increase the comprehensive knowledge of social media communication, to identify and differentiate the characteristics of different stakeholders and build a network of them for charity purposes. In this study, we found that there is no general public communication strategy due to infrastructural differences including technology, geographical constraints, differences in knowledge, and cultural and individual preparations and to use a contingency and targeted interaction strategy with the stakeholders is suggested.