title: Advocacy Communication and Social Identity: An Exploration of Social Media Outreach.
abstract: Increasingly, advocacy organizations employ social networking sites as inexpensive and often effective ways to disseminate outreach messages. For groups working to reach lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth, social media provide key platforms for connecting with target audiences. Although these young people increasingly utilize social media, little is known about how digital advocacy campaigns influence their sexual identity formation. This article applies concepts of social identity to examine how LGBTQ youth understand advocacy campaigns, how they perceive LGBTQ as a social category presented in campaigns, and what values they assign to LGBTQ group membership.
authors.affiliation: a Jack J. Valenti School of Communication , University of Houston , Houston , Texas , USA.
authors.forename: Erica L
authors.initials: EL
authors.lastname: Ciszek
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D003142:Communication; D005260:Female; D005783:Gender Identity; D006716:Homosexuality; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012725:Sexual Behavior; D000072339:Sexual and Gender Minorities; D012933:Social Identification; D061108:Social Media; D060756:Social Networking; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014189:Transsexualism; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Activism; LGBTQ; advocacy communication; digital communication; identity; social identity; social media