Affect, credibility, and solidarity: strategic narratives of NGOs’ relief and advocacy efforts for Gaza

3.1 Instagram and strategic communication

Instagram, an image-oriented social platform that encourages visual modes of communication, has been increasingly popular for use by organizations including NGOs. The research literature in the field of strategic communication on Instagram, including research on NGOs’ use of social media including Instagram, while growing, is limited (Bernardi and Alhamdan 2022; Bozkanat and Aslan 2022; Elgammal 2021; Kim et al. 2021; Navarro et al. 2023; Pinto et al. 2020; Tirado-García and Doménech-Fabregat 2021; Watkins and Smith 2022). Despite Instagram’s relatively brief history as a social network and its media consumption patterns differing from those of other segments of society, the platform is beginning to gain significance as a vehicle for political communication.

3.2 Non-governmental organizations and strategic communication

NGOs are increasingly important sources of information and framing in the media coverage of armed conflicts (Fenton 2009; Meyer and Sangar 2014). In their work, “Between Factoids and Facts: The Application of ‘Evidence’ in NGO Strategic Communication on War and Armed Conflict,” Fröhlich and Jungblut (2018) note NGOs have used strategic communication to engage diverse audiences and accomplish specific objectives (see, also, Seo et al. 2009). Strategic communication has evolved into a pivotal tool for NGOs, offering a novel and cost-effective means of reaching wide, global audiences and shaping public discourse, opinion, and sentiment.

NGOs’ primary objectives are to champion a specific cause, or a set of intersecting causes, to advocate for particular viewpoints, or to propel forward a mission of political, social, or philanthropic significance (LaBelle and Waldeck 2020). These entities typically focus on areas such as healthcare, education, environmental preservation, wildlife conservation, and the provision of essential resources like food and water. Unlike for-profit enterprises, which distribute surplus revenue to owners, nonprofits channel their financial gains back into furthering their mission. Fundamentally, NGOs must secure revenue streams through fundraising efforts and strategic development initiatives to acquire the monetary and material resources essential for their undertakings.

The strategic communication of NGOs is a “form of public discourse” which aims to “promote, maintain, and resist dominant political and economic ideologies” (Motion and Weaver 2005, 64). Miskimmon et al. (2013) describe discourses as communicative acts that “are never quite fixed and thus create” “space for politics and contestation” (16–17; see, also, Curtin 2016). While NGOs are often perceived as objective sources of information, they are also strategic communicators with vested interests in specific political outcomes (Murdie and Peksen 2014). Consequently, NGOs must provide high-quality information and communication materials to compete effectively in public discourse and shape the narrative around their causes. The literature on NGOs report that they employ various tactics, including but not limited to, information politics, to advance their goals (Keck and Sikkink 1999).

Despite the paramount significance of the strategic communication of NGOs, scholarly inquiry into this domain remains relatively limited (see, for instance, Dumitrica 2022; Fröhlich and Jungblut 2016; Koutromanou et al. 2023; Meyer et al. 2018). NGOs have long been challenged in their ability to generate and maintain power both for individuals and for their negotiations with established systems of authority. Often focused on presenting narratives of “survivors” and “victims,” the promotional activities of NGOs serve as a type of soft power (Nye 1990, 2004) articulated to advance their advocative charge. Through the construction of a victim-agent status, NGOs promote the goal of status change for individuals and localities more quickly than most governmental and legislative efforts can achieve. However, the reliance on the victim-agent reinforces difference, and reinforces power differentials within a non-profit industrial complex (Finley and Esposito 2012; Gereffi et al. 2001). As such, NGOs are constrained to reconstructing or deconstructing restricted opportunities for change.

3.3 Non-governmental organizations and strategic visuality

Azoulay (2001) poses several crucial questions guiding our study: “Who sees? Who is capable of seeing, what, and from where? Who is authorised to look? How is this authorization given or acquired? In whose name does one look? What is the structure of the field of vision?” (p. 4). These inquiries, framed within the scopic regime associated with photography and the moving image, open avenues for three types of imagery to be perceived: “imaginary, tangible, and virtual” (p. 4). Finnegan suggests that “a powerful photograph can seem a lot like a powerful piece of oratory in terms of circulation and impact” (cited in Bruce and Finnegan 2021: 99; see, also, Koutromanou et al. 2023). Scholarly work on the visual signifiers of conflict within global strategic narrative constructions inform this analysis how the visual rhetoric of war and conflict aims to elicit affective responses (Zeitsoff 2016), always mindful of the ethical considerations inherent in unpacking hegemonic and ideological positions in imagery. By utilizing Azoulay’s (2008) concept of the civil contract of photography, particularly images of oppression, we seek to uncover connections between the political and photography, searching for potential solidarity.

In their article, Visualizing Violence: Aesthetics and Ethics in International Politics, Gabi Schlag and Anna Gei (2017) interrogate the “ambivalences and contingencies, and the normative and ethical questions that are related to communication in general as well as to images in particular” (193). These ambivalences and contingencies are also highlighted by scholars of discourse, such as Ziberi et al. (2023), Newsom (2022), Newsom et al. (2018), and O’Tuathail (1996), who argue strategic visuality does not neutrally reflect dominant socio-political perspective and contexts. Instead, images hold a central to construct identities, be they individual, organizational, or at the nation-state level.

NGO activity in social media recreates this challenge. Social media has become a major platform for constructing strategic narratives. Relief NGOs have increasingly employed visuals in their strategic communication efforts (Lee et al. 2022). However, social media is also a challenging space, in part due to a strategic narrative constructed against mainstream and traditional news media that simultaneously reinforces distrust in institutions, including NGOs. This is exacerbated by surveillance mechanisms in the Middle East, East Asia, and other areas with authoritarian leadership, or among those with conspiracy assumptions or authoritarian tendencies. Therefore, NGOs must find a means of appealing both emotionally and to the audience’s perceptions of credibility and accuracy of information (Smith et al. 2023; Townsend and Townsend 2004). In discussing NGOs serving the Middle East and North Africa, for example, notes NGOs have experienced funding declines, negative media campaigns hurting their reputation, and are under threat from being targeted by security forces (Abdelaziz 2017; Hamdan et al. 2020; Smith 2007; Steinberg 2012; Steinberg et al. 2013). It is not surprising, then, that NGOs focused on Gaza find themselves needing to carefully frame their messages and rhetorical appeals.

3.4 Non-governmental organizations and persuasive messaging

Fröhlich and Jungblut (2016) offer compelling evidence that reinforces the perception of NGOs as trustworthy and legitimate sources in public discussions on war, armed conflict, and conflict analysis more broadly. Consequently, evidence emerges as a crucial indicator of the effectiveness of persuasive messages conveyed through NGOs’ strategic communication initiatives in the context of war and armed conflict. This includes how NGOs strategically utilize discursive strategies in their efforts to provide relief during times of war and armed conflict. The resonance of NGOs’ strategic communication on media platforms acts as a measure for assessing the effectiveness of their persuasive endeavors.

Political agents, particularly national and international actors, seeking to shape public opinion among their constituencies often resort to strategic narratives (Roselle et al. 2014). These narratives, constructed and utilized by political institutions, serve to inspire cohesive public opinion and drive international narratives of power (Archetti 2013; Hellman et al. 2016; Newsom et al. 2022; Schmid 2014). Furthermore, strategic narratives are meticulously crafted stories intended to evoke specific audience reactions (Archetti 2013; Neuriter 2017), a reflection of their emphasis on emotionally contextualizing political issues.

NGOs, as global organizations, utilize existing strategic narratives to engage targeted consumers who are expected to respond to the narrative constructs promoted in their advocacies. Walter Fisher (1984) posited that stories generally evoke emotional responses, making them more persuasive than public arguments when aimed at audiences expected to react emotionally. The affective nature of image-based communication harnesses the power of visual rhetoric, with affective visuals capable of instantaneously communicating with pathos directed at targeted audiences and stakeholders. Fisher further elucidates that narratives constructed for what Aristotle termed “untrained thinkers” often prioritize emotive over logical arguments. NGOs, as entities likely to address untrained thinkers due to their focus on reaching a broad stakeholder group, must navigate political polarizations and increasingly resistant audiences by balancing emotional appeals with logical and ethical appeals to credibility. Through this lens, we recognize that the formation of strategic narratives may not always be analytical and, when lacking evidence or experience, may rely on appeals to emotion or on suspect metaphors and dubious historical analogies (Freedman 2006: 23).

Finally, the study is informed by the work of Sara Ahmed’s (2014) discussion of affect in her groundbreaking book, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, as well as her other work on affective economies (Ahmed 2004) for guidance on the interpretation visual rhetorics and the rule of affect as a soft power attribute within constructions of responses to global strategic narratives.

4.1 Selection of NGOs

The NGOs were selected through a convenience sampling process based on lists of signatories on open letters calling for an immediate ceasefire, as well as cross-references and partnerships with those signatories. We limited our potential organizations to those with a minimum of 400 Instagram posts since 2014 to ensure a strong presence in that social media. Then we eliminated any with fewer than five posts specifically related to Gaza since October 7, 2023. The resulting number of selected organizations was 14, which were further separated into ten relief organizations, and four advocacy focused organizations.

4.2 Methodological framework

Analysis is informed by the methodological framework emerging from the disciplines of strategic communication and, specifically, political science and international studies work on strategic narratives. Visual narratives and artistic representations aimed at generating support for individuals and regions in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have been most easily identified and recognized when they fit within global and Western visual narrative norms, including when they are placed in direct opposition to center-right and far-right narratives promoting violence, both visual and textual. This tendency indicates that NGO-based advocacy through visual rhetoric aimed at redefining or promoting empowerment for victims and survivors must claim a disruptive space and tone within strategic narratives.

Lane (2015) explains, “A disruptive rhetoric must unify power and action from preexisting avenues and harness the rhetorical power of digital visibility” (para. 23; see, also, Glaw et al. 2017). The strategic narratives of Islam, Islamophobia, and antisemitism all have a profound grip on the diplomacies, the political and economic functioning, and the everyday lives of individuals in the MENA. Changing the power of that narrative requires shifting understandings of power dynamics in the region. This is true as much for NGOs acting to generate temporary relief measures as it does for long-term political change. Therefore, it is important to investigate how the relationship between vision, visibility, power, social theory (Brighenti 2010), and social justice efforts can impact the politics of visibility in Israel/Palestine (Faulkner 2019; Hochburg 2015). For NGOs, visual activism provides a meaningful way of widening the space in which politics of change can be conceived, performed, and represented.

4.3 Collaborative analysis and intercoder reliability

As critical and qualitative scholars, we limited our quantitative analysis to simple frequencies through our analysis of the NGO Instagram posts, and more complex critical-cultural qualitative analysis approach to establish emergent themes in the posts, and coded those categorically. Our analysis discusses these basic frequencies, but focuses on our critical analysis of the visual rhetoric in how our data categories reflect the three deliberative appeals to gain audience acceptance and generate action from stakeholders.

The analysis was conducted collaboratively by a team of authors with expertise in strategic communication, visual rhetoric, and critical-cultural analysis. All coding processes were conducted manually by two co-authors, ensuring meticulous attention to detail and consistency throughout. These co-authors undertook the responsibility of analyzing the visual imagery, photography, line art/graphic, and videos posted on the Instagram accounts of the selected NGOs. Following the initial coding phase, all authors actively participated in subsequent steps, including thematization and refinement of emergent themes. This collaborative approach facilitated robust discussions and ensured comprehensive coverage of relevant insights, enriching the depth and validity of our analysis.

In line with recommended best practices in qualitative analysis, our research team conducted an evaluation of intercoder reliability (ICR) to enhance the rigor and credibility of our coding process. Following O’Connor and Joffe (2020), each author independently reviewed a subset of NGO Instagram posts to identify emergent themes. Subsequently, the authors convened to compare findings, discuss discrepancies, and refine the coding process until consensus was reached. This step also served as “a means of reflexively improving the analysis by provoking dialogue between researchers” (O’Connor and Joffe 2020: 6). Given the importance of ICR assessment, our team followed established guidelines to ensure its effective implementation. We meticulously compared coding decisions across multiple coders, engaging in thorough discussions to resolve any discrepancies and refine the coding scheme iteratively. This iterative process ensured the reliability and validity of the qualitative analysis.

The analysis facilitated the identification of themes aligned with the three deliberative appeals: establishing credibility, fostering emotional connections, and issuing direct appeals to end violence and promote solidarity. The emergent themes were subsequently categorized to reflect these overarching appeals, allowing for a nuanced examination of how visual rhetoric embodies these appeals to engage audiences and stakeholders effectively.

5.1 Appeals to credibility

The appeal to credibility was a predominant theme in the posts from relief organizations. Almost all relief organizations included some level of an ethos appeal in their visual rhetoric. Among the key examples of the appeals to credibility were descriptors of prior humanitarian aid and relief efforts in Gaza and globally by the NGOs, resulting in 68.7 % of relief organization posts. Another common example of ethos-building includes descriptors of how donated funds were spent in Gaza as well in prior crises. This frequent example of the ethos appeal is evident in 39.1 % of posts from relief organizations.

Additionally, we found many of these organizations built their ethos through the establishment of need in Gaza. This articulation of credibility-building is evidenced through illustrations of the struggle to provide aid in a variety of our determined codes, including food distribution challenges, danger to relief workers, blockages to humanitarian aid, lack of vital services, destroyed hospitals, displaced families, the aftermath of bomb attacks, and struggling children. These examples combined are, unsurprisingly, illustrated through images and narrative descriptions in fully 100 % of the relief organizations’ posts. We recognize a similar trend among the posts from advocacy organizations, but the ethos in these cases appear to focus on establishing the narratives of the war, humanitarian crisis, calls for ceasefire, to gain participation in marches, sit-ins, and other activist actions, rather than on the credibility of the organizations themselves.

5.2 Affect appeals

The use of emotional appeals is central to deliberative and messaging, and we found that expectation maintained in our analysis of the NGO Instagram posts. Patterns and codes we found emerging that reflect pathos appeals appear constructed to address broad constituency and stakeholder concerns, as well as competing strategic narratives associated with Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, extremisms, and terrorism. Given the highly politicized nature of contemporary media consumption, we can see why pathos-driven messaging is of particular importance to NGOs, especially activism-oriented ones seeking to generate participation from stakeholders.

The pathos-laden images and incorporated text we cataloged include a diverse range of codes illustrating the devastation of war, hunger, loss of life and death tolls, calls for social justice, description of violations of international law, veteran support, narratives of terrorism, and descriptions of sad or problematic holidays, particularly as both Hanukkah and Christmas occurred during the 90-day timeframe investigated. The range of codes is broad, and the number of instances also varies greatly in these categories. Codes such as Gaza, children, families, videos and photographs of peaceful demonstrations, and calls for ceasefire were most frequent for the advocacy NGOs. Less frequently but still prominently, were death toll, food insecurity, and condemnation of violence.

The advocacy organizations relied much more heavily on stimulating emotional response than the relief organizations, which promoted a more balanced rhetorical style which blended pathos with ethos and/or logos in most circumstances. The advocacy organizations instead produced a substantial number of Instagram posts that rest solely on the emotional appeal. The most common occurrences of pathos imagery came from advocacy-based NGOs, for whom establishing emotive connections with audiences is the core of their messaging framework. Videos and photographs of the aftermath of violence and bombardments in Gaza were the most frequent codes for Instagram posts of the advocacy NGOs. Less frequently were images of demonstrations with poster signs reading genocide and political leaders from other Global South nations articulating that genocide of the mass murder of nearly 23,000 Palestinians by January 7, 2024 (Schrader 2024).

Of note, the second most frequent individual code we found in our analysis of Instagram posts, with 552 total instances, is, in fact, images and videos of advocative demonstrations around the world in favor of ending the violence in Gaza. These images evoke emotion in multiple ways: highlighting acts of violence, aftermath of the bombardments, dead and dying civilians including nearly 10,000 children by January 7, 2024. Affective resonance was also achieved through imagery of hope and solidarity through the many thousands of demonstrations (there were approximately 4,200 protests between October 7 and November 7 alone; Lay and Murillo 2023) in nearly 100 countries, including, but not limited to, Brazil, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Morocco, the Netherlands, South Africa, UK, USA, Tunisia, and Zimbabwe.

5.3 Calls for solidarity

Logos-based appeals were, in many ways, the least evident in our analysis of Instagram posts; however, a clear pattern of logical appeals rooted in calls for peace and calls for a cease-fire developed among both advocacy and relief organizations. When framed as such, some of the highest frequencies of coding exist in two distinct categories, illustrating 753 and 507 instances, the first and third most common respectively, are the categories “international solidarity” and “interfaith solidarity” with the people in the Gaza Strip. The majority of these images resided in advocacy NGO Instagram posts, however similar codes indicating the need for solidarity were also evident in a number of relief organization posts, particularly ones highlighting the challenges of navigating aid in the war-torn region.

While the total number of codes for logos-based appeals (n = 1,681) as a category is smaller than the total identified for ethos (n = 1,962) and pathos (n = 2,663) as general categories, the fact that the highest number of appeals, particularly among the advocacy organizations, in individual categories present as appeals to solidarity stands out. Significantly, these are blended logos and pathos calls, as the pathos gives the emotional hook. However, a vast majority of these focus on the “humanitarian crisis,” “illegal activity by Israel,” and reminders that the people of Gaza are of “multiple faiths” as a means of constructing arguments grounded with forensic data. Thus, we find that these examples focus on a forensic rhetorical structure rather than a deliberative one, resulting in a call to the logical analysis of audiences and stakeholders.

6.1 Organizational credibility

Among the most prevalent data collected are the clear tendencies for all 14 NGOs to promote three key attributes of visual rhetoric in their Instagram posts. The appeal to credibility or ethos repeatedly performed throughout these images. This is especially true of the NGOs focused on providing relief. Second, repeated examples of pathos appeal, or use of emotionally laden rhetoric to inspire affect, were identified. Finally, there were consistent examples of a need for peacebuilding evidenced through direct calls for peace from both the relief and advocacy organizations.

The ethos-building evident among the relief organizations illustrates the need to engineer consent (Herman and Chomsky 1988) from stakeholders by reassuring audiences that buy-in will generate results. To gain financial support from those audience members who may waver in their understandings of need in Gaza, and in their support for relief efforts, and thereby grow their stakeholder population, NGOs must carefully construct a deliberative persuasive message intended to soften resistance to ideological concerns as a call to action. Additional ethos-building focused on establishing the credibility of need, evident in the Instagram posts from both relief and advocacy organizations, illustrates the focus on the audience commodity (Meehan 2013) due to the growing reliance of the “consumer as product” (Crain and Cohen 2023) in social media. For advocacy organizations, the call to action is a call to embodied response, requiring an understanding of stakeholders and participants as products to be shaped and exploited. Such manipulation requires the appeals to the credibility of the situational need through deliberative persuasive means, meant to sway audience participation in spite of potential ideological misalignment, especially to audiences with little understanding of the ongoing conflict and current humanitarian crisis.

The strategic messaging of Gaza-related calls to action and calls for support is thus framed in deliberative techniques which include an appearance of transparency of agency and need. The use of transparency in crisis communication to reduce stakeholder distrust is growing in social media (Sanders et al. 2020; Schnackenberg and Tomlinson 2016) and is clearly incorporated into the Instagram messages analyzed, and most importantly, the vast numbers of “likes” (n = 6,899,611) to the messages, and the substantial number of followers to all 14 NGOs’ Instagram accounts (n = 2,469,130) (see Appendix 1).

6.2 Affect and strategic crisis communication

Strategic crisis communication has long been associated with combustive terminology and imagery meant to elicit emotional response. The imagery of NGO’s Instagram posts clearly echoes patterns of strategic communication and message dissemination associated with situational crises (Fink 1986) and generating stakeholder response (Coombs 2014). This involves both the application of attribution theory (Heider 1944, 1958; Hoogervorst et al. 2016) and affect analysis (Ahmed 2004, 2014) to examine how audiences and stakeholders will interpret cause and effect along with notions of taking action (Haupt 2021).

Affect building efforts of the organizations centers on generating responses based in anger, fear, outrage, and sadness, typical of crisis response stimuli. This type of deliberation is rooted in sophistic technique, such as those associated with Gorgias’ (414 BCE/2001) claim that the resulting affect of rhetoric “upon the condition of the soul is comparable to the power of drugs of the nature of bodies” (46). We see this type of visual rhetoric consistently in these Instagram posts because the goal of advocacy-based organizations is to both consciousness-raise and, in the case for the majority of the Instagram posts we assessed, stimulate embodied activisms (Newsom and Lengel 2022) and street protest participation. Advocacy-based NGOs use visuals to generate affective response and affective resonance (Ahmed 2004, 2014). Rodriguez and Dimitrova (2011) and Lee et al. (2022) argue visual elements in social media can articulate crises more powerfully than text-based social media, can incite affective responses more urgently, and overcome language barriers.

The relief NGOs took a different approach in their deliberation. Findings are aligned with the argument of Lee et al. (2022) that crises can be more powerfully explicated through visuality: the NGOs in this study focused their posts on the still and videographic imagery depicting their acts of providing relief, with videos and photos of volunteers and relief workers making and distributing meals, fresh vegetables, oil, and other products for families to cook meals in refugee camps, as well as videos of aid trucks either stopped at or, finally, passing through the Rafah border crossing from Egypt to southern Gaza.

6.3 Logos grounding forensic deliberation

The call for solidarity is rooted in a blending of forensic and deliberative rhetorical processes. As such, they play out as a combination of arguments of fact and arguments of value, logos-driven but with the use of multiple pathos-based techniques as part of their motivational sales pitch. While calls for solidarity have been established social movement techniques since the Napoleonic era, they were most commonly associated prior to the current era with unionization movements in Europe and the Americas (Dixon et al. 2004). In recent decades, solidarity movements have been connected to peacebuilding and rebuilding efforts post-crisis. Solidarity has also been a common theme in advocacies for a two-state solution as well as human rights in Gaza (Gawerc 2016, 2017).

In the case of Instagram posts analyzed from multiple advocacy NGOs, solidarity is framed specifically as “interfaith solidarity” with a focus on locating both Jewish and Muslim-Palestinian victims of the violence and displacement caused by the humanitarian crisis. Some of these posts further highlight Christian victims, both local and foreign visitors when the attacks occurred. Using individual people of multiple faiths is a means of highlighting the human condition, and why humanitarian aid and awareness are necessary in Gaza and the surrounding areas. These examples use logos-centered evidence by illustrating the variety of people for a variety of faiths impacted by the violence, serving as a forensic grounding that uniting in solidarity means those of all faiths can be served. This is of particular interest as this forensic framing is strategically motivated to undermine dominant existing strategic narratives.

Further, solidarity efforts often pair with or are used as direct calls for a cease-fire. For the relief organizations, cease-fire calls are incorporated into their goal of allowing aid efforts to reach those in need in Gaza. Humanitarian efforts, after all, cannot happen when bombs are dropping and relief caravans are blocked from entering areas of need. The logos-centric nature of these arguments is laid out plainly: ceasefires need to happen if aid is to get to those in need, a forensic detail that leaves little room for debate.