ANALYSIS OF INTERACTIONS ON NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION’S SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNEL IN THE CONTEXT OF CRUELTY-FREE ETHICAL CONSUMERISM

Social media offer non-profit organizations a new, convenient, cheap, and wide reach medium to spread their messages, increase awareness and connect with supporters. The main objective of this study is to examine interactions on social media to understand how people engage with the content published by non-profit organizations. This study is set in the context of cruelty-free ethical consumerism and data for analysis were collected from the international non-profit organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) official Facebook page. Study points out that lack of awareness and knowledge is one of the main reasons why people do not behave ethically and therefore do not follow the studied organization’s main goal. However, once awareness and information are gained, individual may reach epiphany and willingness to change behaviour. At that point individuals also showed support to organization’s main goal. The research shows that content with informational component received the most engagement on average and supporting comments were prevailing. Informational content is perceived as especially valuable when there is a lack of knowledge about the topic and therefore such content is recommended to non-profit organizations to raise awareness, create new and strengthen relationships with existing supporters