TY - JOUR
T1 - Social Network Analysis of Nonprofits in Disaster Response
T2 - The Case of Twitter During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States
AU - Gong, Xi
AU - Peng, Shuyang
AU - Lu, Yujian
AU - Wang, Shaohua
AU - Huang, Xiao
AU - Ye, Xinyue
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the University of New Mexico, Office of the Vice President for Research WeR1 Faculty Success Program and Research Allocations Committee (RAC) awards; and the University of New Mexico, A&S Interdisciplinary Science Cooperative through the Office of Research (Faculty Team Research Concept Competition Award #TA-1003).
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2022.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - The COVID-19 pandemic has created complex problems that require organizations to collaborate within and across the sector line. Social media data can provide insights into how nonprofits interact for the pandemic response from both social network and geographical perspectives. This study innovatively investigated the connection and interaction patterns among 74 National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (NVOAD) nonprofits and three government agencies based on structural analyses and content analyses of their Twitter communications during the long-term global COVID-19 pandemic. The daily tweeting quantities of all nonprofits were generally consistent with the pandemic severity in the United States before July 2020 and remained stable afterward. Nonprofits’ tweets can reflect their purposes of sharing information, building communities, and taking actions for disaster response. Government agencies played leadership roles in providing COVID-19 guidelines and information. Human services, International and Foreign Affairs, and Public and Societal Benefit nonprofits, especially American Red Cross played central roles in the nonprofit communication network. Possible explanations include the following: (1) Geographically, connections and interactions among nonprofits are more likely to happen within the same city or in neighboring states. (2) Both mission homophily and heterophily contribute to connections and interactions among nonprofits, depending on their subsectors. The findings not only help the public better understand how nonprofits are collaboratively fighting the pandemic, but also provide guidance for nonprofits to plan for better interactions and communications in future disaster response.
AB - The COVID-19 pandemic has created complex problems that require organizations to collaborate within and across the sector line. Social media data can provide insights into how nonprofits interact for the pandemic response from both social network and geographical perspectives. This study innovatively investigated the connection and interaction patterns among 74 National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (NVOAD) nonprofits and three government agencies based on structural analyses and content analyses of their Twitter communications during the long-term global COVID-19 pandemic. The daily tweeting quantities of all nonprofits were generally consistent with the pandemic severity in the United States before July 2020 and remained stable afterward. Nonprofits’ tweets can reflect their purposes of sharing information, building communities, and taking actions for disaster response. Government agencies played leadership roles in providing COVID-19 guidelines and information. Human services, International and Foreign Affairs, and Public and Societal Benefit nonprofits, especially American Red Cross played central roles in the nonprofit communication network. Possible explanations include the following: (1) Geographically, connections and interactions among nonprofits are more likely to happen within the same city or in neighboring states. (2) Both mission homophily and heterophily contribute to connections and interactions among nonprofits, depending on their subsectors. The findings not only help the public better understand how nonprofits are collaboratively fighting the pandemic, but also provide guidance for nonprofits to plan for better interactions and communications in future disaster response.
KW - COVID-19
KW - Twitter
KW - disaster response
KW - nonprofits
KW - spatial social network
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U2 - 10.1177/08944393221130674
DO - 10.1177/08944393221130674
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85139219969
SN - 0894-4393
JO - Social Science Computer Review
JF - Social Science Computer Review
ER -