Philippine NGO Websites, Usage Patterns, and Implications to State-Civil Society Relations

Abstract

The opportunities that the Internet brings for civil society groups, from information dissemination to deliberation and from service delivery to mobilization have led scholars to anticipate it to be a critical resource for communication and collaboration with its stakeholders. However, such studies on the breadth and level of use remain limited, mostly on transnational or developed country NGOs, or focused on a few exceptional cases. This exploratory study aims to contribute to the still scant body of empirical evidences through an analysis of the websites of 193 non-government organizations (NGOs) in the Philippines. This study investigates the website features of Philippine. NGOs: from serving as a platform for information dissemination and advocacy, creating an arena for discussion and dialogue, strengthening organizational capacity, online service-delivery, to mobilizing action. Attention is made on differentiating Internet use by accredited and non-accredited NGOs and draws important implications to state-civil society relations in the information age. The study is critical as it provides a much-needed empirical/baseline research for supporting internet use/efficacy theory building, particularly with the civil society as the user-context. It finds that website usage patterns tend towards information provision with some promise for organizational strengthening and that there are functional differences in the way accredited and non-accredited NGOs use websites. Broader issues of civil society and the Internet, including NGO resource issues, accreditation and legitimacy in the information society, and emerging patterns of power are brought into the discussion.