Paper short abstract:

This paper inductively analyses how the legitimacy and accountability of NGOs are constructed in Uganda among urban public constituencies (Twitter users). The paper uses a social media analysis of 400 tweets to shed light on perceptions and understanding of NGOs' legitimacy in authoritarian regimes.

Paper long abstract:

This article examines a case study of a popular Twitter campaign in Uganda (#UgandaNGOsExhibition). Activists and Twitter users posted about their experiences with NGOs – either as employees in the sector, beneficiaries of NGOs’ programs, or ordinary Twitter users. Critical NGOs in Uganda experience increased hostilities from the regime - through a restrictive legal environment, raids on NGOs’ offices, asset-freezing, and co-optation (CIVICUS, 2023; Bukenya, 2021). Concurrently, the dependency of Ugandan NGOs on foreign funding has threatened their legitimacy before the government and the public, questioning whose interests they promote and who they are accountable to (Larok, 2021; Bukenya, 2021).

This article addresses three questions: (1) What are the perceptions of Uganda’s Urban Public (Twitter users) on the state of NGOs’ accountability and legitimacy in Uganda? (2) How do NGOs respond to demands for their accountability when their legitimacy is at stake? (3) How effective was the urban public’s effort to hold NGOs accountable through the Twitter campaign? The study uses digital ethnography and inductively analyses a dataset of 417 tweets (under #UgandaNGOsExhibition) using NVivo coding. Twitter data has gained popularity in social science research as a source of text for data analysis (Steinert-Threlkeld, 2018). The findings reveal that framing NGOs’ accountability in the #UgandaNGOsExhibition prioritized three main mechanisms to hold NGOs accountable - Donor Scrutiny, Peer Accountability, and Naming and Shaming. Conversely, the campaign placed less emphasis on the role of Government Oversight and Community Oversight mechanisms. Yet, NGOs have previously prioritized their legitimacy to the state.