The production of social capital in non-governmental organizations through socialmedia: The case of ahbap platform on Twitter

Although the concept of social capital is defined in various ways in literature, it essentially refers to the quality of a community. Connections (networks), trust, adopted norms and values, cooperation and civic participation, and satisfaction of individuals in a community are indicators of social capital, which is a relational and abstract concept. The fact that such things, which make the community liveable, are high in a community means that there is a high level of social capital in that community. In modern societies, NGOs play an important role in the construction of social capital, which is obtained through factors such as family ties and religion in traditional societies. The successful performance of this role by NGOs depends on their close and correct interaction, and integration with the society. In this regard, social media, which saves the communication phenomenon from the dominance of time and space, offers important opportunities for NGOs. Within this context, the aim of this study is to reveal how the tweets of Ahbap platform, which is an NGO that establishes its contact with the society largely through Twitter, are received by Twitter followers in the context of social capital, as well as the quality of the tweets in terms of social capital. For this, two different methods have been carried out in this study: firstly, the tweets shared from the @ahbap Twitter account were analysed within the framework of social capital indicators using the qualitative content analysis method; and then it was attempted to reveal how Twitter followers, who are not members of the platform, received the platform in the context of social capital through semi-structured in-depth interviews for the second phase of the research. The result of the research shows that the tweets of Ahbap contain a lot of elements of social capital, especially participation and trust. In parallel with this, it has been concluded that the attitude of Twitter followers towards the platform strongly reflects social capital elements such as trust, satisfaction, participation, and cooperation tendency; and the platform also got positive reactions from the followers in terms of social capital.