Networked advocacy in sustainability governance: how NGOs adapt communication across stakeholder relationships on Twitter/X

Systematic evidence remains limited on how NGOs adapt their communication across stakeholder relationships in multi-stakeholder sustainability governance networks. Focusing on Turkish sustainability discourse on Twitter, this study examines how NGO communication varies across interactions with public, private, media, academic, and NGO stakeholders. Drawing on strategic communication theory, network governance, and institutional logics, the study combines social network analysis and sentiment analysis of 82,327 tweets posted between 2012 and 2023. The findings show that NGO communication patterns vary systematically across stakeholder groups in both structural directionality and emotional tone. NGOs engage more intensively with private sector actors than with public sector actors, while communication directed at public authorities displays a more polarized pattern. Interactions with private sector, media, and academic actors exhibit different forms of asymmetry, whereas intra-NGO communication remains comparatively more balanced and reciprocal. Overall, the findings suggest that NGO communication in digital sustainability debates is differentiated across stakeholder relationships rather than uniform across audiences. The study contributes to research on strategic communication and digital governance by showing how communication structure and tone vary across stakeholder relationships in an emerging economy context.