Abstract:
This study interrogated the influence of online reviews on Twitter on the public perception of the Kenya Red Cross Society. The objectives of the study were to explore the prevailing attitudes towards Kenya Red Cross Society as exhibited through online reviews, to examine the engagement metrics on the online reviews about Kenya Red Cross Society and to examine the orientation of the public perception of Kenya Red-Cross based on the online sentiments. A critical qualitative content analysis research was conducted on tweets about Kenya Red Cross on NVivo version 12 software. Findings indicate that people are generally happy with the work of Kenya Red Cross Society. There were very few instances where the public was negatively affected by the actions of Kenya Red Cross. People used Twitter to express their own, and also voice the feelings of the community towards Kenya Red Cross. Overall, most of the tweets expressed positive perceptions. Neutral perceptions were indicated by tweets that shared information like breaking news. Negative perceptions were often just by association; not necessarily directly inferring the actions of Kenya Red Cross. This study recommends that organizations must consider managing their image(s) on social media. Organizations must be ready to be scrutinized on social media. Further, nongovernmental organizations should review the comments that people make about them online. Future studies need to be on the lookout for the development of communication faculties of nongovernmental organizations. A quantitative survey should also be conducted to analyze the public perception of Kenya Red Cross Society and assess the independent variables for their causation effect on the dependent variable ‘the reputation of Kenya Red Cross Society’. Further, neutral reviews need to be investigated to unearth any more underlying implications.
