Humanitarian Organizations in the Public Sphere: How Type of Funding Predicts Cooperation

Abstract

Humanitarian organizations (HOs) face a dilemma. On the one hand, they need to engage in inter-organizational cooperation in order to amplify their aid efforts to the public. On the other hand, they compete with each over the scarce (social) media attention in order to attract more donors to their cause. Against this background, previous research further qualified and found that, because private funding is more volatile than public funding, privately funded humanitarian organizations (HOs) are generally less cooperative in the media sphere than publicly funded organizations. With the present research, we replicate and critically extend these findings. Specifically, we argue that even publicly funded HOs’ cooperation is restricted in that other HOs’ funding type will affect whether they are cooperated with (if from an ingroup, i.e. public funding) or not (if from an outgroup, i.e. private funding). Analyzing Twitter interactions in 780 organizational dyads over 28 months (2018-2020), we find support for our hypothesis. Our findings highlight the relevance to be more nuanced when trying to explain humanitarian operations’ cooperative versus competitive behaviors as a function of funding type.