Date

4-29-2026

Department

School of Communication and the Arts

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy in Communication (PhD)

Chair

Sandra Romo

Keywords

qualitative research, social media, stakeholders, social capital, nonprofits

Disciplines

Communication

Abstract

Countless nonprofit organizations in the United States have worked diligently to increase adequate access to literature and to improve child literacy rates through supplemental programming. Revenue growth in a nonprofit depends largely on the relationships between the organization and the public, yet nonprofits face additional obstacles to achieving strategic organizational goals in comparison with their for-profit counterparts (McGee & Donoghue, 2009). Although the majority of nonprofit organizations have been addressing societal issues at a grassroots level (Carter et al., 2019), most community-based nonprofits have faced challenges expanding to other communities and difficulties in replicating effective stakeholder engagement strategies (Nardini et al., 2022). In light of the $900 billion economic value in social media and the financial and human capital constraints that often plague nonprofits, this research utilized a qualitative content analysis to identify the message themes that successful community literacy nonprofits use on social media and the subsequent communication flow present in those messages (Shah & Jha, 2018). This research was framed by both stakeholder theory and social capital theory and contributed to an introductory understanding of how successful community organizations have been generating strategic messaging for stakeholder communication on Facebook, which communication flows have framed the organization’s communication efforts, and how literacy nonprofits have been using digital engagement to build online social capital. Study limitations and directives for future research were reviewed.

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