Social Media and Credibility: Civil Society Organizations in Mongolia

Abstract

This study aims at conveying an understanding and perception of the potentials and pitfalls of social media by Mongolians who work in not-for-profit organizations. By speaking to the experts in civil society institutions the researcher analyzed why the participants use social media, and how they assess the credibility of information. This exploratory study documents journalists’, educators’, and civil society experts’ accounts in relation to political campaign and mobilization tactics on social media. The participants' accounts to a great extent speak to communicative and deliberative potentials and affordances of social media use for civic discourses posited by the scholars in the tradition of the expanding “deliberative sphere.” They also speak to the platform-specific affordances that either constrain or enable different potentials and possibilities.