Dialogue Forums as (Self-) Legitimation Practice: How International Institutions Use Social Media Channels to Interact with their Critics

The paper examines the social media communication surrounding dialogue forums of international economic institutions. Several international institutions have established dialogue forums to enable more inclusive and reciprocal interaction with their critics from civil society. International economic institutions, such as the IMF and the World Bank, established these forums as a response to severe criticism and protests from civil society in the 1990s. Dialogue forums can be understood as one important strategy of (self-)legitimation of international institutions. Nowadays, social media communication is regularly part of the discursive legitimation strategies of international institutions. This includes social media communication, especially via Twitter, around dialogue forums, where international institutions aim to make themselves more likable. We assume that the social media communication relating to the dialogue forums is employed by international institutions to increase their own and the forums’ popularity and thus eventually their popular legitimacy , i.e. the perception of an organization’s legitimacy by the broader public or even by individual citizens. We examine in how far the organizations employ explicit legitimation strategies around their dialogue forums through social media communication as well as potentially emerging legitimation contests. Contestation, or affirmation, is analysed by examining comments and posts by civil society organisations and/or private individuals. The paper focuses on the dialogue forums of two international economic institutions: the Civil Society Policy Forum organized by World Bank and IMF and Engagement Group(s) of the G20. The selected organisations’ dialogue forums differ considerably in terms of organizational structures and responsibilities as well as civil society participation. The paper aims to explore how these differences are reflected in the respective social media communication and how this in turn influences reactions by critics. The paper will be based on different data sources including the quantitative presence and activity on Twitter as well as selective content analysis of tweets. Twitter data will be accessed via its API (application programming interface) using the programming software and language R. R will furthermore be used for supporting network and sentiment analyses. Additionally, data from semi-structured interviews with representatives of IOs and civil society representatives on how they use social media channels will be used.