#Legitimacy : public legitimation strategies of international organizations on social media

Social media is extensively used by international organizations (IOs) and provides them with novel opportunities to engage their audiences. The scholarly literature has yet to thoroughly explore the implications of the new medium and how it affects IOs’ agency, authority, and legitimation. Therefore, this thesis asks why and how IOs use social media in their communication practice. The thesis argues that IOs use social media strategically to legitimate themselves to the public in order to preserve their authority. Drawing on new media scholarship, the thesis conceptualizes IOs’ public on social media as fragmented and consisting of IO opinion leaders, seekers, and avoiders, whose legitimacy beliefs are all crucial for the preservation of IOs’ authority. The thesis argues that IOs leverage social media’s velocity, connectivity, and immediacy to pursue three modes of legitimation: 1) long-term planning, 2) targeting of IO opinion leaders, seekers, and avoiders, and 3) responsiveness to user engagement, world events, breaking news, and delegitimation. Thereby, IOs can spread relevant and relatable legitimacy claims to their publics. This thesis applies a mixed method approach to empirically explore the theorizations by studying the Twitter communications of the United Nations (UN). 1) Expert interviews with IO social media practitioners allowed the study of the UN’s strategic reasoning and decision-making processes behind the adoption and use of social media. 2) Quantitative methods derived from computational social science enabled the assessment of the UN’s extensive Twitter output. 3) Qualitative content analysis allowed the in-depth study of the ways in which the UN promotes legitimacy claims on Twitter. This thesis contributes to the scholarly understanding of IOs’ legitimation practice in the digital age and how social media changes its substance and methods.