THE COMMUNICATIVE FUNCTIONS OF FACEBOOK POSTS The categorisation model of information-community-action proposed by

Lovejoy and Saxton (2012) was a useful starting point in examining the content of charities’ Facebook posts, and a number of conclusions were reached from the data collected using this model. For example, the fact that information was the single largest content category for all three cases in this study echoes Lovejoy and Saxton’s finding that non-profit organisations use Twitter as an extension of their websites. In addition, the fact that only a minuscule proportion of the charities’ Facebook posts called for donations supports their 2012 study’s finding that non-profit organisations are missing the opportunity to use social media as mobilisational tools. Investing in social capital is unproductive unless it can be mobilised and converted to fundraised income, so until charities find a way to ask for help that fits sensibly and unobtrusively within their remit (by tapping into the peer-to-peer dynamic, for example, see Section 8.4), this thesis argues that Facebook will remain largely a lost opportunity for fundraising.

Figure 8.6 below presents the percentage of ‘donate’ posts by case, and shows that Macmillan Cancer Support’s posts were twice as likely to include a donation appeal than Marie Curie’s posts.

Figure 8.6: Percentage of ‘donate’ posts by case. Source: author.

Contrary to Lovejoy and Saxton, 2012, Waters et al., 2009, and Quinton and Fennemore, 2013, this study found that the three cases were taking

advantage of Facebook’s potential as a community-building tool. Although information was the largest single content category for all cases, combined, the five community content categories were found in a larger percentage of total posts than information. This finding was supported by the interviews, with the social media experts from all three cases emphasizing the importance of strengthening relationships with their fans. In addition, although Lovejoy and Saxton (2012) claim that “Facebook statuses and tweets are so similar that many users, including several of the organizations in our study, send out the same messages on both outlets simultaneously”, this study found that

charities were aware of the fact that different social media platforms target different audiences, and tailored their messages accordingly. CRUK’s Aaron Eccles, for example, explained that Facebook was the most obvious platform to reach the charity’s traditional audience of women over 35, which is why it was more important to his team than Twitter (author’s interview, 13 June 2014). The anonymous source from Charity C also indicated different

institutional uses for Facebook and Twitter: “I think Facebook probably allows better quality of interaction with people – it’s great for sharing photographs, it’s great for getting albums up, it’s great for having more in-depth conversations with people. I think people are more likely to share on Facebook, but Twitter is great for having a constant feed of information and calls to action going out on it” (author’s interview, 18 June 2014).

Consequently, the Facebook posts examined in this research did not fit neatly into the categories originally designed by Lovejoy and Saxton (2012) to study Twitter posts, despite the authors’ claims that they should, suggesting that a refinement of this categorization scheme is needed to take into account the differences between different social media platforms. Twitter content, for example, consists of very short posts, limited to 140 characters, with relatively more simple communicative functions than Facebook posts, which tend to be

longer and more complex in structure. But perhaps the most important difference between the two is that Facebook is better at connecting people, while Twitter is better at connecting trending ideas and topics. Twitter may be used as a social networking tool, but its main purpose is microblogging

(Carillo, 2013).

Table 8.1 below presents the communicative functions of the Facebook posts of the three cases during the three months of the web content analysis

undertaken in this research. It shows that the majority of posts (69 per cent) actually had a tripartite communicative function, combining information with elements of community building and a call (or calls) to action.

Table 8.1: The communicative functions of Facebook posts (n=370). Source: author.

Figure 8.7 below shows a post by Cancer Research UK, which is typical in that it combines information with community-building content and a call to action, as described by Lovejoy and Saxton (2012). “You’re all incredible” and “Thank you” are expressions that foster community building; “You’ve now raised over £2 million with your ♯nomakeupselfie…” provides information; and “If you want to get involved with our work, visit: http://bit.ly/1h0FlvC” is a call to action that aims to ultimately lead to increased fundraised income for the charity. Categorising this post as information or community or action would involve more conjecture than fact, unless supporting evidence can be obtained from the social media officer responsible for posting the message. Communicative function of posts Cancer Research UK (%) Macmillan Cancer Support (%) Marie Curie Cancer Care (%) Total (%) Information 16 17 19 52 Community 7 8 21 36 Action 4 15 14 33 Information and community 15 15 17 47 Information and action 19 17 12 48 Community and action 2 8 4 14 Community, action and information 36 20 13 69

Figure 8.7: Screenshot of a typical post by CRUK with a tripartite

communicative function. Source: Cancer Research UK Facebook, 2014. The web content analysis finding above was supported by the interviews with the social media experts, none of whom cited the dissemination of

information, building of community or call to action individually as key

objectives in using Facebook. What they all agreed on is that Facebook was a platform for investing in engaging and strengthening relationships with

supporters, with the hope that this investment would produce a return in the form of increased fundraised income in the long run. Most of the experts interviewed for this study talked about the unique value of Facebook in strengthening relationships with fans by aiding them on their journeys, and Bertie Bosrédon provided a vital piece of evidence when he said that the

correct way to use Facebook is by defining the key steps in an “engagement journey” that hopefully ends with a donation (author’s interview, 4 November 2014).

This thesis has found that at its best, charities’ SNS communication is about accumulating, mobilising and converting social capital. Therefore, classifying posts using the previously proposed social media categorisation model of information – community – action, as if these were independent and mutually exclusive categories, seems to be a futile exercise, as it does not explain the social capital investment, mobilisation and conversion process that charities undertake with the maintenance of their Facebook accounts. If the above post from Cancer Research UK is examined more closely, this process becomes evident. Statements like “You’re all incredible!” and “Thank you!” foster an obligation in fans to reciprocate, while “You’ve now raised over £2 million with your ♯nomakeupselfie…” is a disclosure that promotes trust in the charity, as well as engendering a sense of self-efficacy in supporters. The photograph presents members of the Cancer Research UK team as human beings, who share a common language with fans (presented on the A3 piece of paper they are holding), thus helping fans identify with the charity. Trust, obligations and identification contribute to Cancer Research UK’s investment in social capital by strengthening its relationship with fans (see Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998, and Figure 3.1), while efficacy is a motivation for providing online public goods (Kollock, 1999) and can therefore facilitate the mobilisation of social capital in the context of SNS fundraising. The call to action statement, “If you want to get involved with our work, visit: http://bit.ly/1h0FlvC”, is an attempt to convert social capital to fundraised income by linking with an online fundraising page. The productive resources that are the outcome of Cancer Research UK’s investment and mobilisation of social capital could include increased

fundraised income via donations made online by clicking on the featured link; participation by more fans in the No Make-up Selfie campaign; or fans’ public endorsement of this campaign via sharing. All of the aforementioned actions can ultimately be converted to economic capital, provided the charity has effective giving mechanisms in place to take advantage of fans’ goodwill. Most of the social media experts interviewed in this study agreed that Facebook fans did not give money because they were asked to do so by a charity; the journey from Facebook fan to donor was often long and indirect. Sharing a fundraising post was, however, a more common outcome of

charities’ investment in SNS-mediated relations and one that had the potential to increase fundraised income, so it represents a significant form of social capital in this context. Interestingly, the more complex the communicative function of a charity’s Facebook posts was, the more successful they were in terms of their average share/like ratio (see Figure 8.8) – although no cause- effect relationship is assumed.

Figure 8.8: Tripartite communicative functions and average share/like ratios. The above finding suggests that social capital is facilitated by content that combines information with elements of community building and a persuasive call to action. More specifically, web content analysis shows that social capital is accumulated by content that strengthens relationships with fans by fostering trust, obligations and identification (see Section 8.5 of this chapter), and mobilised using persuasion techniques discussed in Section 8.6 of this chapter.