Building global strategic alliances in the virtual space: a structural analysis of international nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations' transnational relationship networks

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1463
• Author: Aimei Yang
• Date: 01 August 2013
• Published date: 01 August 2013

■Academic Paper

Building global strategic alliances in the

virtual space: a structural analysis of

international nonprof‌it and

nongovernmental organizations’

transnational relationship networks

Aimei Yang*

Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

This study provides a benchmark analysis of how over 500 environmental international nonprof‌it and

nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) used websites to communicate with the general public around the world

and build virtual relationships with their strategic allies. Using social network analysis and data mining, this study

found that INGOs were able to attract a considerable number of visitors from multiple countries. In addition, INGOs

used their hyperlinks to build a globally connected network. Shared mission was an important consideration in

INGOs’relationship building strategy. Further, many INGOs built reciprocal hyperlinks with other INGOs. A large

number of INGOs were well embedded in in-groups but developed less connection with out-group organizations.

Implications for practice, future research and theory building are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Many scholars have noticed the potential for the

Internet to transform activists’public relations

strategies and tactics (Cozier and Witmer, 2001;

Taylor et al., 2001). Studies have documented how

activists around the globe have used online media

to communicate with their publics, mobilize collec-

tive actions, inf‌luence the media agenda and launch

campaigns against powerful social actors. This

recent development in global civil society has

important implications for global public affairs

(Park and Thelwall, 2003; Shumate and Lipp, 2008;

Yang and Taylor, 2010; Kim and Cho, 2011).

In the international arena, activists’use of online

media is especially crucial for them to reach out

and build relationships with geographically

distributed publics (Wakef‌ield, 2008). Nevertheless,

few public relations studies have examined interna-

tional activists’use of the Internet. The dearth of

research is partly due to the lack of attention to

activism studies in the mainstream public relations

scholarship. As Berger (2005) pointed out, even

though the effectiveness of public relations practices

to serve the corporate interests has been well docu-

mented in the literature, little research has been car-

ried out to examine whether public relations

strategies can benef‌it activists and the development

of civil society. When activists are occasionally stud-

ied, public relations scholars often take a corporate

perspective (Anderson, 1992). Dozier and Lauzen

(2000) lament that activism is ‘largely studied by

public relations scholars from the perspective of

organizations with pockets deep enough to hire

professional public relations practitioners’(p. 8).

Additionally, the lack of research on international

activism may be also due to the diff‌iculty in

*Correspondence to: Aimei Yang, Assistant Professor, Annenberg

School forCommunication and Journalism,University of Southern

California,Los Angeles, CA, USA.

E-mail: aimei.yang@usc.edu

Journal of Public Affairs

Volume 13 Number 3 pp 239–250 (2013)

Published online 30 May 2013 in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pa.1463

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.