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This exploratory study examined the interaction and effect of message characteristics, organizational credibility, and the presence of disaster on intention to donate to a Disaster Relief Organization (DRO). The Elaboration Likelihood Model and the Theory of Planned Behavior were used to theorize and test participant's message processing and donation behaviors. The study design incorporated random assignment into one of eight conditions. Findings reveal (a) participants have a higher donation intention when a disaster is present, (b) negative framing, when compared with positive framing, yielded the highest intention to donate when a disaster was present, (c) when no disaster is present, participants expressed a higher intention to donate to a highly credible DRO over a DRO that lacked credibility, (d) perception of DRO credibility is mediated by presence of a disaster, and (e) social media is being used in addition to more commonly found traditionally mass media for information during a disaster. In summary, this study extends previous research on processing and donation behaviors by examining the interaction of message characteristics and source credibility both during a disaster and without a current disaster. The study contributes to the growing body of research on disaster donations by incorporating social media use. / text

abstract: ABSTRACT The purpose of involvement of Non-Governmental organizations (NGOs) in armed conflict resolution is to help to keep peace, protect innocent people, contribute to relief operations, to advocate, assist in the reconstruction and development programs. This action is always carried out through the NGOs grassroots mediation processes. This study investigates the prospective of implementing humanitarian programs to help and care for the young war child survivors of the 1991 to 2001 civil wars in Sierra Leone. To explore the intervention of the NGOs activities in the civil wars in Sierra Leone, I examined three NGOs and one governmental institution as case study organizations. The NGOs include 1) UNICEF, 2) World Vision, 3) Plan International and 4) the Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender, and Childrens’ Affair (MSWGCA) as government agency. The research investigates the NGOs and MSWGC’s specific services provided to children during and after the war in Sierra Leone. The specific services include: 1) the NGOs’ implementing policies, 2) who got served and under what conditions, 3) what models of services do they use, 4) what kind of government policies were put in place, 5) what were the challenges they faced, and 6) what were their strategies during and after the civil war in Sierra Leone. There were also ten Adult Survivors of Childhood Exposure to War (ASCEW) members interviewed to balance the NGOs’ claims. Based on my literature review and findings on ASCEW, I make my recommendations to allow the organizations to move forward with their humanitarian operations. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Social Justice and Human Rights 2016

This study investigates the recovery efforts provided for low income and ethnic minority populations by organizations during the permanent housing phase of recovery in Watsonville, California, following the Loma Prieta earthquake of October 17, 1989. The case study format is used to discover what activities were performed and why each organization chose to perform them. Dynes and Quarantelli's (1968) typology of organization is used to explain how and why established, expanding, extending and emergent organizations participated in the recovery efforts. The findings indicate that the type of organization dictated the kind of tasks each organization performed. Organizations maintained activities during recovery for which they had experience, expertise and proficiency.

The aim of the study is to analyse how LoveNepal, a non-governmental organization, communicates to create engagement among their audience on Facebook. The theoretical framework is obtained from multimodal and sociosemiotics theory, with focus on different semiotic resources that LoveNepal communicate to engage their receivers. The results show that LoveNepal use different semiotics resources in images and texts to create proximity and relationship to their receivers. LoveNepal use visual and linguistic resources that can arouse deeper feelings like compassion and empathy, but also a feeling of credibility and trust in the organization. The study also shows that LoveNepal often combine different semiotics resources, that balances and reinforce each other – this is also a way for the organization to engage their audience and make feel that they want to join LoveNepal and save more lives.