The Role of Public Education in NGO Advocacy in the Authoritarian Context: A Case Study of Chinese ENGOs

2.1 NGO Advocacy and Strategies

Advocacy is widely recognized as one of the core functions fulfilled by NGOs in civil society (Guo and Saxton 2020, p. 3). Despite its well-acknowledged importance, regarding the definition of NGO advocacy (more frequently referred to as “nonprofit advocacy” in previous literature), there is a theoretical discrepancy between the narrow and broader definition without consensus (Guo and Saxton 2020, p. 4). Some studies adopt a narrower definition focusing on direct lobbying aimed at the government. However, there exists a broader definition of advocacy. This definition states that, in addition to direct lobbying, “grassroots lobbying” aimed at the public and educational efforts aimed at influencing public opinion should also be included in advocacy. While both definitions have merit, the broader perspective more accurately reflects the diverse strategies employed by NGOs, particularly in restrictive political environments. For this study, we adopt Reid’s comprehensive definition of advocacy as “a wide range of expression or action on a cause, i.e. or policy” (Guo and Saxton 2020; Reid 2000, p. 1).

Scholars have developed various frameworks to categorize advocacy strategies, which helps clarify the role of public education in advocacy. One categorization appropriate for this study distinguishes insider and outsider strategies (Gormley and Cymrot 2006; Mosley 2011). The former focuses directly on authoritative agencies, while the latter expands the conflict beyond the decision-makers. Based on this, Guo and Saxton (2010) developed 11 tactics of insider and outsider strategy, where public education is defined as a part of the outsider strategy (Table 1). While Mosley et al. (2023) highlight the importance of organizations’ flexibility in selecting and combining different strategies, current research aims to understand the determinants of current strategy selection and combination (Ward et al. 2023).

Among these diverse advocacy strategies, public education deserves particular attention, especially in contexts where direct lobbying approaches may be constrained or less effective. The following sections explore the role of public education as a component of advocacy efforts and its significance in the Chinese context.

2.2 Public Education as an Important Part of Advocacy

In another perspective proposed by Ward et al. (2023), advocacy targeting public opinion can be seen as a venue, except for legislative, administrative, and judicial venues. In this sense, public education can be defined as an advocacy strategy that promotes change by shaping public opinion and mobilizing citizen participation. Empirical studies further confirm that public support is a critical determinant contributing to the success of advocacy efforts (Willems and Beyers 2023).

Although public education is widely recognized as an integral component of advocacy efforts, significant research gaps remain, particularly in the Chinese context. While Guo and Saxton (2014) found that public education strategy is a predominant advocacy tactic in social media, some advocacy studies often fail to identify the advocacy venues being examined, paying little attention to a single strategy or venue (Ward et al. 2023). This gap highlights the need for more focused research on specific advocacy tactics and their effectiveness in different political contexts, especially in authoritarian regimes such as China, where direct lobbying might be seen as challenging state authority.

To evaluate the public education strategy on social media, we draw insights from NGO social media studies and environmental education studies.

In studying social media use by NGOs, Lovejoy and Saxton (2012) provide the most frequently cited theoretical model, referred to as “the hierarchy of engagement model.” Their methodology involves categorizing social media content based on communicative purpose, identifying three primary functions: conveying information, building community, and calling for action. While this model offers a broad framework for understanding NGO social media engagement and was used by scholars for a wide range of research questions (Campbell and Lambright 2020), it requires adaptation for specifically analyzing public education content.

For Chinese ENGOs, public education predominantly takes the form of environmental education. Therefore, we referred to related literature on environmental education. The Tbilisi Declaration of 1977 established the grounding picture of environmental education, pointing out that it is expected to provide opportunities for everyone to cultivate the awareness, knowledge, attitudes, skills, and participation necessary to protect and improve the environment (UNESCO 1978). Based on this, Monroe et al. (2008) developed a framework for environmental education strategies based on purposes, and it can be applied to communication, education, and formal and nonformal initiatives by different participants. This framework includes conveying information, building understanding, improving skills, and enabling sustainable actions. These four categories are not mutually exclusive but rather form a nested relationship, where each subsequent category can build upon and incorporate elements of the previous ones. This framework is particularly relevant to our study of ENGOs’ social media use, as it provides a structured approach to analyzing public education content and strategies in digital environments.

Our analytical framework (Figure 1) integrates both approaches by adopting Lovejoy and Saxton’s (2012) content-coding methodology while using Monroe et al.’s (2008) four educational purposes as the coding categories. This integration is supported by research showing that social media can enhance environmental education by expanding outreach options (Ardoin, Bowers, and Gaillard 2020; Chung et al. 2020; Ho et al. 2018) and can facilitate dialogues that create participatory learning environments (Bortree and Seltzer 2009; Kent and Taylor 2021; Lovejoy and Saxton 2012). This framework allows us to analyze how ENGOs use social media for public education by categorizing content according to its educational purpose.

Figure 1:

A framework for analyzing public education on social media. Source: created by the authors, based on Lovejoy and Saxton (2012), and Monroe et al.’s (2008).

2.3 NGO Advocacy in China

For Chinese ENGOs, advocacy has undoubtedly been a long-standing focus due to its political environment (Popović 2020). As indicated by Ward et al. (2023), scholars have studied nonprofit advocacy in three aspects: antecedents, process, and outcome. This research framework is equally applicable to Chinese NGO advocacy. In extant research, most studies focus on antecedents, exploring the factors that shape NGO advocacy behavior. Among these, institutional factors have consistently been considered crucial in influencing Chinese NGO advocacy activities (Li et al. 2017; Zhan and Tang 2013). These studies primarily concentrate on how NGOs manage their relationships with the government to better achieve their goals through direct lobbying strategies. However, in contexts where civil society is perceived as potentially threatening to government authority, only a limited number of trusted advocacy organizations are permitted to participate in policy discussions (Popović 2020). This might explain why many studies focus on case studies of how specific organizations influence policy processes (Xia 2024; Zhang 2017; Zhuang et al. 2022). In these studies, the Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) is frequently used to analyze the advocacy process and outcome, highlighting how actors with shared beliefs form coalitions to influence policy change (Li et al. 2024). Li et al. (2024)’s systematic literature review on 112 studies using ACF shows that in China, policy change often results from hierarchical intervention rather than coalition negotiation. This highlights the importance of examining indirect advocacy strategies, such as public education, that are often employed alongside or outside formal policy engagement in constrained institutional settings.

More recently, however, some studies have begun to examine the process dimension of advocacy from the aspect of framing (Dai and Spires 2018; Qiaoan and Saxonberg 2022). For instance, Qiaoan and Saxonberg (2022) apply frame analysis to study the policy advocacy process of environmental organizations in China, emphasizing that successful advocacy strategies require constructing argumentative frames that align with China’s dominant master frames (harmony, nationalism, and developmentalism) to gain recognition and support from decision-makers.

Despite limited performance in direct policy advocacy, Chinese ENGOs are deemed as active in public education (Hsu 2014; Yang and Taylor 2010; Zhan and Tang 2013), especially when public education faces a less restrictive environment than other kinds of activities, such as helping pollution victims (Li et al. 2018). However, as pointed out before, some studies have been limited to a narrow definition of advocacy, excluding public education from the advocacy category, thus neglecting its role in advocacy (Yang and Taylor 2010; Zhan and Tang 2013). For example, Yang and Taylor (2010) differentiate between public education and advocacy, conceptualizing them as separate activities. This narrow conceptualization fails to capture the strategic use of public education as an indirect form of advocacy, potentially underestimating the scope and impact of NGO advocacy activities in China.

Several studies have recognized the significant role of public education as an advocacy strategy. Before the rise of social media, scholars noted that NGOs could conduct advocacy by mobilizing the public through conventional media channels. Zeng (2007) highlighted the fact that NGOs used conventional media to publicly communicate their views, which led to the development of societal discussions and interactions with the government, finally resulting in policy changes. With the advent of social media, NGO advocacy strategies have undergone a significant transformation, offering new opportunities for public education and engagement (Guo and Saxton 2020). Mao (2021) employed the ACF to analyze the policy advocacy roles of two ENGOs in a pneumoconiosis issue, highlighting social media as a crucial platform for influencing public opinion in advocacy. In examining ENGOs’ pathways to influence, Popović (2020) underscored the importance of voice strategy in social media as opposed to impact through direct access to the government. These studies align with Guo and Saxton’s (2020) perspective that social media provides a key venue for shaping public opinion, enabling NGOs to accumulate greater public attention, and leading to the advocacy outcome. Nonetheless, these studies have not adequately emphasized the distinctive role of public education strategy in social media.

To construct our theoretical framework on NGO advocacy in China with an emphasis on public education, we primarily drew upon seminal studies in the field, including the works of Guo and Saxton (2010, 2020) and Guo and Zhang (2014), which address NGO advocacy strategies, and their application in the social media era.

Regarding the factors that shape advocacy activities, particularly in non-Western contexts, we draw upon Guo and Zhang’s (2014) three-factor explanatory model of nonprofit advocacy, which was developed through research in Singapore, a non-liberal democratic regime. This model provides a systematic framework for understanding how organizational cause, capacity, and contextual factors collectively influence the scope and intensity of advocacy. The validity of this model can be supported by various studies across different contexts. For instance, human service organizations tend to favor insider strategies over outsider strategies, which can be explained through institutional theory and resource dependence theory, relating to capacity and context (Almog-Bar and Schmid 2014). In the Chinese context, Zhan and Tang (2013) found that organizations with more financial resources and better relationships with the government are more likely to strengthen insider strategies. Popović’s (2020) case study revealed that outsider strategies aimed at gaining public support are crucial for successful advocacy by Chinese ENGOs. Dai and Spires (2018) identified three advocacy strategies employed by ENGOs: cultivating stable relationships with the government, gaining media exposure, and choosing appropriate framing strategies. These studies emphasize the importance of moderate, non-confrontational strategies in Chinese NGO advocacy, reflecting the influence of China’s distinct political and social environment on NGO advocacy activities.

In the social media context, Guo and Saxton (2014) found that NPOs’ social media advocacy favored “a mass approach” emphasizing outsider strategies including public education and grassroots lobbying, which means that using social media for advocacy would work less well with direct lobbying. Although it was based in the U.S., it can provide insights into the case in China, where online scrutiny may lead to more restricted social media advocacy.

Drawing from these studies, we posit that Chinese ENGOs likely engage in public education on social media while simultaneously employing complementary outsider strategies to strengthen public opinion influence. These strategies may include conducting research to enhance the credibility of their public education efforts or collaborating with media outlets, as media coverage is recognized as a crucial pathway for ENGOs to gain legitimacy. However, due to China’s stringent control over online discourse, advocacy strategies employed on social networks may not align well with insider strategies.

Finally, Guo and Saxton (2020) proposed an “attention-based theory of nonprofit advocacy”, which emphasizes that attention is the foundation of social media advocacy. This theory comprehensively accounts for the characteristics of social media platforms, examining the factors that influence an organization’s ability to garner attention at both the organizational and message levels. While our study does not quantify these attention metrics, we aim to analyze social media advocacy strategies in the Chinese context through the lens of “attention.”

To conclude, our theoretical framework (Figure 2) integrates multiple complementary perspectives. By combining Guo and Saxton’s (2010) framework of nonprofit advocacy strategies with Guo and Zhang’s (2014) three-factor explanatory model, we propose a comprehensive approach to understanding public education’s role within advocacy efforts. This combination allows us to analyze why this role has developed and offer recommendations for future research directions. Specifically, by referencing Guo and Saxton’s attention-based theory of nonprofit advocacy, we aim to explore how public education functions within advocacy strategies in the context of social media engagement.

Figure 2:

An integrated framework for understanding NGO advocacy in China. Source: Created by the authors, based on Guo and Saxton (2014), Guo and Saxton (2010, 2020).

3.1 Sampling Method

We adopted purposeful sampling regarding the selection of Chinese ENGOs. We chose purposive sampling for the following reasons. First, as the research questions of this study are open-ended and require in-depth investigation, we aimed to include only active organizations with a certain level of social media presence. Second, purposive sampling allows us to select information-rich cases that can provide valuable insights into the phenomenon of interest. Third, given the exploratory nature of this study, purposive sampling enables us to identify and include ENGOs that exhibit diverse characteristics, such as their focus areas and organizational size.

Based on these considerations, we developed specific criteria for selecting ENGOs for our study. From the perspective of data accessibility, we aim to focus on ENGOs that maintain an active presence on both Weibo and WeChat, the two most prevalent social media platforms in China. Accounts with insufficient activity levels fail to provide adequate data support for the study.

We first checked the overall social media use situation of Chinese ENGOs. First, we referred to the Heyi Institute, a database of Chinese ENGOs, which is one of the most comprehensive NGO directories and has also been used as a data source by other scholars (Zhang and Skoric 2020). Using a VBA program, we collected the names, types, focused issues, and organizational areas of all ENGOs depicted on this map. After eliminating duplicate entries, we compiled a list of 3,043 ENGOs. Of 3,043 ENGOs, 234 (7.6 %) have both WeChat and Weibo accounts. Followers can reflect the size of the organization’s audience and its probable degree of activity (Chen and Fu 2016; Saxton et al. 2015). Since the followers of the WeChat account are not visible to the public, Weibo followers were employed as a selection criterion. 103 organizations are found to have more than 10,000 followers, and 131 organizations have less than 10,000 followers. Then, we selected 10 organizations from each of these two groups for in-depth analysis, resulting in a total of 20 organizations. The selection criteria included the organization’s level of activity and the diversity of environmental issues they focused on, ensuring a representative and varied sample. We prioritized organizations that maintained a regular and up-to-date social media presence, enabling us to closely examine and analyze their social media usage patterns. In addition, our objective was to incorporate organizations that addressed various environmental issues, including climate change, biodiversity conservation, and water resource management. In this way, we can thoroughly comprehend how Chinese ENGOs effectively utilize social media platforms.

Subsequently, we contacted these 20 organizations for interview requests. Ultimately, five organizations agreed to participate in our interviews. Among these five, two organizations had a high level of social media exposure, while the other three had lower visibility on social media platforms.

3.2 Data Collection and Analysis

4.1 Public Education as a Component of Advocacy Strategy

The interview results showed an ambiguous relationship between public education and advocacy strategies. Overall, we found that social media-based public education effectively expands ENGOs’ influence and reach in the Chinese context. However, the potential of social media to attract attention acts as a double-edged sword for ENGOs: while it offers unprecedented opportunities for outreach in public education practices, as pointed out by Guo and Saxton (2020), it also requires a cautious approach due to perceived risks in an authoritarian context. Interestingly, media advocacy (one of the outsider strategies) can help mitigate these risks. However, offline public education is more effective than its social media counterpart when it comes to aligning well with other advocacy tactics. We discussed the findings within the framework as shown in Figure 2.

4.2 The Strategy Adopted by Chinese ENGOs in Public Education

In this section, we presented the findings of the content analysis of social media data on public education. Upon identifying the content types and publication strategies, we further examined how these patterns reflect and reinforce the findings derived from the interview data.

First, we identified 1,777 out of 2,961 pieces of social media data that are involved with public education. The high proportion (60 %) of public education content reveals that Chinese ENGOs prioritize public education on social media, consistent with practitioners’ perspectives on this strategy as a core organizational mission. Then, through our theory-guided mixed coding approach, we identified 13 distinct categories of social media public education content, organized under four primary educational purposes as shown in Table 2. This classification system provides a comprehensive taxonomy of ENGOs’ public education strategies on social media, with each category described according to its specific content characteristics and primary educational function.

Based on these coding results, we identified several patterns of public education conducted by ENGOs on social media platforms. First, the predominant focus on conveying information about environmental issues, as evidenced by over 50 % of the content, can be explained by the findings revealed in interviews. On one hand, low-interactivity content (especially “nature display”) helps reduce the demand for human resources while ensuring a baseline level of activity on social media platforms. On the other hand, this strategy reflects a cautious approach to risk management by avoiding dialogic content or opinion-based discussions, organizations minimize the likelihood of triggering sensitive reactions from either the state or the public.

Additionally, ENGOs also focus on improving skills or enabling sustainable actions by promoting various online and offline activities (approximately 25 %). These strategies are regarded as the most promising and effective (Monroe et al. 2008). It is worth noting that although social media inherently guarantees interactivity from a technical standpoint, realizing such interactivity is determined by the nature of the content itself. ENGOs can effectively utilize the interactive characteristics of social media when they focus their efforts on promoting activities. Although only approximately 25 % of content focuses on improving skills or enabling sustainable actions, this proportion reflects how some Chinese ENGOs are attempting to transcend online-offline boundaries and construct more meaningful public engagement models. As illustrated in the interview with Organization C (see the previous section), community-level offline public education can gradually establish connections with policy advocacy strategies. Such online-offline interaction strategies indicate that some environmental organizations are exploring pathways beyond one-way information dissemination, seeking to mobilize and organize actual environmental actions through social media.

However, ENGOs’ investment in building understanding among the public regarding environmental issues is relatively limited. The limited investment of ENGOs in building public understanding, which involves complex environmental issue analyses, stakeholder perspectives, and historical comparisons, is closely related to their social media risk management strategies. Interestingly, the 25 % of content focused on improving skills and enabling sustainable actions precisely illustrates this point. For these organizations, social media content directly linked with offline activities significantly reduces potential risks compared to abstract online discussions. Offline activities, typically pre-approved, inherently possess a certain ‘legitimacy’, while purely online discussions are more likely to touch upon sensitive social and political dimensions. Consequently, these organizations tend to utilize social media as a mobilization and dissemination platform for offline environmental actions, rather than discussing complex environmental issues.

Overall, ENGOs’ approach to public education predominantly focuses on conveying one-way information, with less emphasis on the other three strategies, particularly in terms of fostering deeper understanding. The overreliance on one-way content dissemination also reflects ENGOs’ limited exploitation of social media’s interactivity.

By linking the interview insights (RQ1) with the content analysis results (RQ2), we identified certain alignments and gaps between strategic intentions and actual practices. While ENGOs conceptualize public education as a long-term, risk-conscious, and legitimacy-seeking strategy, this is directly reflected in their overreliance on one-way, low-interaction content such as nature displays or factual reporting. Conversely, areas requiring deeper public engagement, such as issue analysis or stakeholder dialogue, are underrepresented, in line with the organizations’ expressed concerns over resource constraints and political sensitivity. Thus, what ENGOs believe they should do and what they can safely and feasibly do converge in some areas (e.g., promoting offline actions), but diverge sharply in others (e.g., facilitating public discussion online). This interrelation clarifies how strategic reasoning is filtered through institutional and resource realities in practice.

In the next section, we build upon this analysis by discussing how ENGOs manage the tension between outreach and restraint through the lens of strategic attention-seeking in social media advocacy.

4.3 Toward Better Advocacy Outcomes: Strategic Attention Management

Despite ENGO staff members viewing “long-term public awareness raising” as an organizational goal, they rarely incorporate public education strategically into their overall advocacy strategies, although they might adopt the media advocacy tactic. However, a significant gap still exists between public education on social media, as well as the entire outsider strategy, and insider strategies (Guo and Saxton 2010).

To address these problems, we draw on attention-based advocacy theory (Guo and Saxton 2020) to offer strategic recommendations for securing attention in social media–based advocacy, with a focus on public education. Guo and Saxton (2020) emphasize that for advocacy-oriented nonprofits, the key prerequisite for effective action is the ability to gain and sustain public attention, and then leverage attention through online-offline collaboration. However, based on our findings, we argue that NGOs should adopt a more strategic approach to managing attention by distinguishing between two types of public education efforts in the Chinese context: (1) those tightly aligned with offline advocacy to attract targeted, small-scale attention, and (2) those aimed at broader dissemination and innovation to generate large-scale attention independent of immediate policy demands. Recognizing these distinct approaches, organizations can then more effectively leverage public education to gain and manage attention strategically.

As a foundational strategy, we recommend that NGOs with limited resources and low tolerance for political risk prioritize attracting targeted, small-scale attention through public education on social media. This approach begins with offline activities that have received official approval, such as educational events, workshops, or volunteering initiatives, which can then be extended onto social media through pre-event announcements, real-time updates, and post-event summaries or action plans. By embedding social media efforts within the legitimacy of offline activities, organizations can reduce political sensitivity and strengthen their credibility in the digital space. This strategy also allows NGOs to gradually build a highly engaged, mutually supportive community of stakeholders. As shown in recent research (Lai and Wang 2023), community-level voices are central to voluntary action in China. Sharing stories, feedback, and experiences from offline participants fosters a sense of collective identity and trust. Importantly, this approach can activate multiple layers of public education, moving from basic awareness raising to deeper understanding and skill-based participation. While our content analysis revealed a general lack of in-depth issue framing, partly due to perceived risks, community-based strategies offer a relatively safe space for more interactive, dialogic communication. They also require less staff capacity, since content naturally emerges from existing activities. At the same time, such community-building lays the groundwork for broader involvement in policy-related issues, as revealed in a case study by Ji and Han (2023). As Li et al. (2024) also point out, China’s fragmented and multi-level governance allows NGOs and community actors to form localized, issue-based alliances, often in cooperation with government allies. These coalitions are typically low-conflict and focused on concrete policy problems, making them more viable under authoritarian conditions. Although these alliances may not formally resemble traditional advocacy coalitions, they can function similarly at the community level. Community-based public education efforts, grounded in approved offline activities and extended through social media, may thus offer NGOs a practical and low-risk entry point into such informal coalitions.

Building on this foundation, organizations with more robust resources and risk management capacities can adopt a second, more expansive strategy: conducting large-scale, content-driven public education campaigns via social media independent of offline events, even extending to trending platforms like TikTok. While this approach offers greater potential to reach broader audiences, it also entails higher risks due to the lack of offline legitimacy as a buffer. Therefore, particular attention must be paid to message framing. Organizations are advised to focus on politically neutral but substantively engaging themes, such as green lifestyles, environmental practices, or community well-being, topics that align with widely accepted master frames in Chinese society, including harmony, nationalism, and developmentalism (Qiaoan and Saxonberg 2022). When carefully crafted, politically safe content can still facilitate long-term goals by cultivating environmental awareness, shaping collective discourse, and maintaining organizational visibility. As Zhuang et al. (2022) argue, policy influence under authoritarianism often unfolds over decades, and sustained public education is a necessary step along that path.

In sum, we propose a strategic attention management approach that adapts to varying organizational capacities and levels of political risk. While social media offers important opportunities for public education, it is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Its effectiveness depends on how deliberately organizations manage attention, integrate online and offline efforts, and tailor their messaging to the political environment.