From Quantification to Donor Appreciation: Post-Humanitarianism and Discursive Strategies of NGO Legitimacy on Social Media

Approaching legitimacy discourses through the lens of post-humanitarianism, this study examines discursive legitimacy strategies in international NGOs’ social media communication. The findings identify seven strategies through which NGOs negotiate legitimacy via an ambivalent assemblage of palatable pity, institutional branding, and compensatory discourses. While these strategies do not reflect a wholesale adoption of post-humanitarianism, they reveal complex, layered attempts in which NGOs simultaneously mobilize multiple logics of legitimation. In doing so, they produce problematic articulations of humanitarian subjectivities and aid relations, while mediating depoliticized claims to legitimacy. Overall, the study calls for critical reflection on legitimacy construction within digital humanitarian communication.