Nature Education Organizations\u27 Use of Twitter for Public Engagement

In the age of digital and social media, technology-empowered individuals are increasingly gaining control over communication messages disseminated by organizations, institutions, and businesses. Given the shifting nature of communication environment, this study attempts to discover how leading nature education organizations utilize social media to effectively reach and build relationship with their audiences. Specifically, it employs a content analysis to examine how the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), U.S. National Park Service (NPS), and National Geographic (NG) take advantage of Twitter to better communicate with their external publics. Out of a total of 6,289 tweets sent by these organizations for a six-month period from January to June 2018, a random sample is used for quantitative analysis. This study will uncover various key engagement patterns that emerge from non-profit organizations\u27 social media activities as communication increasingly take place on social media platforms. The expected outcomes include the importance of visual-based messages, the strategic use of informational and action-oriented messages, and the different levels of engagement by the three organizations (i.e., UNESCO, NPS, and NG). The current study will benefit other non-profit organizations by revealing ways in which these organizations purposefully use social media to fulfill their mission, including practical guidelines to strategic communicators in public-sector organizations