Seen Together: How the Visual Co-Presence of Helpers and Victims Affects Social Media Engagement

This study investigates how the co-presence of operators and beneficiaries in nonprofit organizations’ social media post influences audience engagement. While previous research in charity advertising has extensively examined the impact of depicting people in need, particularly their facial expression, less attention has been paid to how viewers respond to the visible presence of frontline organizational staff. This work seeks to fill that gap by examining whether and how including nonprofit operators and volunteers in visual content affects engagement levels. To explore this, a field study analyzed 419 Instagram posts from seven Italian nonprofit organizations. We conducted a negative binomial regression analysis to assess the impact of operator-beneficiary co-presence on engagement metrics. The findings reveal that posts featuring operator and beneficiary together tend to receive lower engagement than representing beneficiaries only. However, in these co-presence scenarios engagement increases when the operators’ face is visible. Conversely, showing the beneficiary’s face is associated with lower engagement, thus challenging prevailing assumptions in the literature.