Social Action Through Facebook: The Case of Yellow Boat of Hope Foundation

Abstract

The advancement of social media brought Facebook to billions of people worldwide. It has become a new art of communication and advertisement used by companies and organizations to create brand awareness and to influence its audience to participate from as simple as Liking and Sharing the posts on their Facebook Pages, to mobilize action by donating or volunteering. This study aimed to identify the kind of communication strategies that NGOs can use to create awareness and participation by looking at Yellow Boat of Hope Foundation’s effective use of their Facebook Page as their platforms to do so.

Data collection through observation of posts and emailed questionnaire had served purposes its purpose in achieving the objectives of this study which were to find out the strategies used by Yellow Boat in their Facebook Page usage, and find out if they effectively use the platform in creating awareness through number of people reached or engagement rate in their posts by presenting data of posts per day, number of likes and shares per post, and type of media content posted during a one-month observation period.

Findings revealed that the use of visual media combined with emphatic storytelling or compelling stories can create engagement and participation from followers either by liking and sharing of a post to taking real-life action, volunteering and donating.