Accountability through (Inter)Action? A Framework of Affordances for Understanding Civil Society Accountability on Social Media Platforms

This article investigates how social media can enable and constrain civil society organizations’ (CSOs) discharge of accountability. Based on a comparative analysis of the Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter (X) posts of the Swedish Red Cross during 1 year (N = 1014), we propose a framework of affordances that illustrate how platform features, practices, norms, and perceptions about audiences jointly shape the accountability potential of a platform. Accountability is overall more content- than process-oriented, emphasizing visibility of action rather than far-reaching social interactivity. Our study, however, reveals important differences between Instagram and Facebook, on the one hand, and Twitter, on the other. Whereas accountability is more short-term, scripted, and donor-oriented in the former, it is more abstract and ad hoc, with mainly indirect efforts at interactivity, in the latter. Our framework of affordances sheds light on the hitherto under-researched intersection between the literature on CSO accountability and the literature on CSO use of social media.