Digital enablement: Social media for societal challenges

Recent advancement in technology is breaking the barriers to societal change. From crowdfunding for the underserved community to mobilization for political injustice, the rise of social media has opened up unprecedented opportunities to address a wide range of complex societal challenges. This dissertation aims to illuminate and contribute rich, empirically informed insights into the phenomenon of social media enablement for societal challenges. Specifically, this dissertation comprises three related but standalone essays that discuss the use and implications of social media in addressing three different societal challenges. The essays are preceded by a background review on the phenomenon of interest, a discussion on the research significance and an overview of the dissertation structure, followed by an overview on the research methodology. The first essay explores the use of social media for disaster response; the second essay explores the use of social media for environmental sustainability; and the third essay explores the use of social media for civic engagement. Collectively, this dissertation makes two contributions: (1) to shed light on the enabling power of social media in addressing complex societal challenges and (2) to advance future studies on the under-researched phenomenon of social media enablement for societal challenges