What Do We Know about Social Media in Nonprofits? A Review

The increasing use of social media in nonprofits has attracted significant attention from researchers in various fields. As this body of literature expands, no comprehensive review integrates and discusses the extent of social media use in nonprofits. This paper reviews, analyses and presents findings of the literature on social media in nonprofits, particularly, its functions, enablers, and inhibitors. The paper discusses the findings of 84 research articles on social media in nonprofits published between January 2010 and March 2018. Overall, our study identifies seven (7) functions of social media in nonprofits including relationships, information exchange, conversation and interaction, co-creation and innovation, community building, collective action, and reputation and legitimacy. This paper also discusses the enablers and inhibitors of social media in nonprofits. The extant literature presented in this paper offers an extended look into social media use while providing direction for future research.

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