AUTHORS: Ritesh Chugh
Download as PDF
ABSTRACT: This study explores the role of social media for fundraising by people in a foreign country, in the aftermath of the Nepal earthquake in 2015. The Nepalese community in Victoria (and other parts of Australia) geared up almost instantly through Facebook to disseminate critical information and coordinate relief fundraising. Within two days of the earthquake, nearly 7000 people joined the Facebook page ‘Victorians Stand Together for Nepal’. Content analysis of the Facebook page reveals that social media can be successfully used to drive fundraising in a disaster situation, particularly in geographically distributed populations. The page inspired thousands of people in Australia to donate over half a million dollars. Regular emotional pictorial posts on the page encouraged donations and a social network effect was evident. It was found that the Facebook page’s focus on transparency, engagement, acknowledgement, encouragement and motivation were vital elements to the steady fundraising efforts
KEYWORDS: Fundraising, Social Media, Disaster Relief, Charity, Donation, Facebook, Nepal, Australia.
REFERENCES:
[1] K. Proudlock and B. Ramalingam, 'Don’t chase headlines, chase good quality news; don’t be first, be accountable,' in 'https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/res ources/17CD0862675F468EC125747C005E60 E8-23_media.pdf,' 2008.
[2] Australia Stands Together For Nepal. (2018). Australia Stands Together For Nepal. Available: https://www.facebook.com/VictoriansForNepal ?fref=ts
[3] J. B. Houston et al., 'Social media and disasters: a functional framework for social media use in disaster planning, response, and research,' Disasters, vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 1-22, 2015.
[4] R. Chugh, Harnessing social media as a knowledge management tool. Hershey: IGI Global, 2016.
[5] C.-M. Huang, E. Chan, and A. A. Hyder, 'Web 2.0 and Internet social networking: a new tool for disaster management?-Lessons from Taiwan,' BMC medical informatics and decision making, vol. 10, no. 1, p. 57, 2010.
[6] G. D. Saxton and L. Wang, 'The social network effect: The determinants of giving through social media,' Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, vol. 43, no. 5, pp. 850-868, 2014.
[7] S. E. Cho, K. Jung, and H. W. Park, 'Social media use during Japan's 2011 earthquake: how Twitter transforms the locus of crisis communication,' Media International Australia, vol. 149, no. 1, pp. 28-40, 2013.
[8] M. Pantti, 'Grassroots humanitarianism on YouTube: Ordinary fundraisers, unlikely donors, and global solidarity,' International Communication Gazette, vol. 77, no. 7, pp. 622-636, 2015.
[9] D. Bird, M. Ling, and K. Haynes, 'Flooding Facebook-the use of social media during the Queensland and Victorian floods,' Australian Journal of Emergency Management, The, vol. 27, no. 1, p. 27, 2012.
[10] R. Bennett and R. Kottasz, 'Emergency fundraising for disaster relief,' Disaster Prevention and Management: An International Journal, vol. 9, no. 5, pp. 352-360, 2000.
[11] K. Starbird and L. Palen, 'Voluntweeters: Selforganizing by digital volunteers in times of crisis,' in Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems, 2011, pp. 1071-1080: ACM.
[12] A. Lobb, N. Mock, and P. L. Hutchinson, 'Traditional and social media coverage and charitable giving following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti,' Prehospital and disaster medicine, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 319-324, 2012.
[13] A. Okada, Y. Ishida, and N. Yamauchi, 'Effectiveness of social media in disaster fundraising: Mobilizing the public towards voluntary actions,' International Journal of Public Administration in the Digital Age (IJPADA), vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 49-68, 2017.
[14] C. J. Einolf, 'Is cognitive empathy more important than affective empathy? A response to “who helps natural‐disaster victims?”,' Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 268-271, 2012.
[15] S. Muralidharan, L. Rasmussen, D. Patterson, and J.-H. Shin, 'Hope for Haiti: An analysis of Facebook and Twitter usage during the earthquake relief efforts,' Public Relations Review, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 175-177, 2011.
[16] Z. Zainal, 'Case study as a research method,' Jurnal Kemanusiaan, no. 9, pp. 1-6, 2007.
[17] E. Milliot, 'Case study as research method,' 2014.
[18] R. K. Yin, 'Case study research: Design and methods ', 5th ed: London, UK: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2014.
[19] C. L. Snelson, 'Qualitative and mixed methods social media research: A review of the literature,' International Journal of Qualitative Methods, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 1-15, 2016.
[20] K. Klaus, 'Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology,' 2nd ed: Sage Publications, 2004.
[21] C. Hahn, Doing qualitative research using your computer: A practical guide. Sage, 2008.
[22] M. Bengtsson, 'How to plan and perform a qualitative study using content analysis,' NursingPlus Open, vol. 2, pp. 8-14, 2016.
[23] A. Bruns, J. E. Burgess, K. Crawford, and F. Shaw, '# qldfloods and@ QPSMedia: Crisis communication on Twitter in the 2011 south east Queensland floods,' 2012.
[24] M. Blaszka, L. M. Burch, E. L. Frederick, G. Clavio, and P. Walsh, '# WorldSeries: An empirical examination of a Twitter hashtag during a major sporting event,' International Journal of Sport Communication, vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 435-453, 2012.
[25] S. B. Liu, L. Palen, J. Sutton, A. L. Hughes, and S. Vieweg, 'In search of the bigger picture: The emergent role of on-line photo sharing in times of disaster,' in Proceedings of the information systems for crisis response and management conference (ISCRAM), 2008, pp. 4-7: Citeseer.
[26] R. D. Waters, 'Increasing fundraising efficiency through evaluation: Applying communication theory to the nonprofit organization—donor relationship,' Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, vol. 40, no. 3, pp. 458-475, 2011.
[27] J. Schwartz, J. Schwartz, J. Chen, H. Gruber, and E. Feig, 'Method and system for an efficient fundraising campaign over a wide area network,' ed: Google Patents, 2002.
[28] Non-Resident Nepali Association Australia. (2018). Earthquake Donors Listing. Available: http://nrn.org.au/localnews/146/
