Mediating development online: The politics of visibility and representation in NGO social media space

This study examines how leading international development NGOs construct their public face of development through their social media representations of aid recipients and providers. Drawing on a critically oriented quantitative content analysis of 1037 Facebook and Twitter (now “X”) posts collected from four US-based global development NGOs, the study analyzes recurring visual and verbal patterns of representation. The findings reveal a persistent dominance of women and children depicted as passive recipients, juxtaposed against active and agentive providers, thereby reproducing colonial and gendered hierarchies between the global South and the global North. While negative imagery is largely absent, this avoidance does not resolve the ethical tensions embedded in dominant development discourses and the complex politics of NGO visibility in the digital space. The study calls for more reflexive and subversive NGO communication practices that foster equitable visibility and critically challenge the platformed politics underlying development representation in the digital age.