From women for women : the role of social media in online nonprofit activities during Wuhan lockdown

Abstract

The article examines the role of social media in mitigating information asymmetry and coordination problems during COVID‐19 epidemic crisis. We use “Sisters‐Fight‐Epidemic” online volunteering project during the outbreak of COVID‐19 in Wuhan, China, as a case to demonstrate how social media plays a role as a mechanism in linking multiple stakeholders and shaping their actions during the epidemic response. We show that social media facilitates the self‐organizing processes of volunteers and develops the emergency information networks, therefore enabling a relatively efficient relief responses to the needs of epidemic victims particularly female medical workers. This article also identifies spontaneous online volunteering project as a new form of nonprofit organization and as a new emergent response group that can leverage the strengths of social media in disaster responses to enable effective coordination, initiate advocacy, and improve transparency of relief efforts.