Do communication content functions drive engagement among interest group audiences? An analysis of organizational communication on Twitter

The value experience perceived by users and the extent of interactivity on social media show how engaging audiences are. Few studies have looked at what drives this value experience in organizational communication. This study explores the functional use of communications by interest group organizations (IGOs) and discerns their effect on user engagement with and without multimedia inclusion on Twitter. A bi-term topic modeling technique is used to analyze posts from 121 organizations, and a generalized linear regression model to assess the link between the content functions and user engagement. The results show that the information and communication content functions include event updates and people recognition. Further, report, event, period, and people communication functions drive a higher engagement with multimedia inclusion, while unite, sign, and glean communication functions are more likely to increase engagement without multimedia elements. This study bridges the gap in the service literature as it pertains to non-profit organizations (i.e., interest group organizations) by exploring organizational communication using communications content functions of Twitter posts. This study is the only one to investigate content functions beyond the categorizations of message functions and the relationship between content functions and user engagement.