The Facebook and NGO’s Accountability Practices

Abstract

Nowadays, the famous platform to share information is through social media such as Facebook. Unlike other sectors that provide written documents in attracting their investors, a situation in the third world sector seems different. Facebook becomes a familiar platform for a non-government organization (NGO) to share information about their activities including fundraising. Facebook allows NGOs to communicate with potential and existing donors. However, Facebook also has the potential to destroy the NGOs themselves through inaccurate information shared by the user of social media. This situation could create harm to the NGOs’ reputation if they are not taking proactive action. This study investigates how far Facebook can express the NGO’s accountability practices. This study uses a qualitative approach by choosing NGO in Malaysia as a case study. This NGO has humanitarian aid towards refugees especially in the middle east countries. Data was collected through document analysis and interviews with ten (10) interviewees including NGO personnel, donors, and beneficiaries. Underlying to social capital theory, this research found Facebook has a powerful impact on the NGO’s accountability practices. The Facebook application becomes a norm for NGOs to express their activities. It allows NGOs to convince donors for fundraising purposes. Therefore, this study found Facebook has a vulnerability towards accountability practices in the NGO. The limitation of the study only focuses on Facebook as social media accountability. Thus, the comparision of NGO disclosure between other social media could be applied in the next future study.