Typology of the Quiddity of Charity in the Virtual Network (With emphasis on the telegram messenger)

Introduction: Religious and cultural traditions alongside with technology has provided extensive facilities for development of charitable aids. The aim of this study is to understand the new quiddities of charity in virtual networks. This study has demonstrated that social aid has been influenced by technology in such a way that it has significantly changed our perception of charity in the past few years. The use of technology has increased the components of individualism and possibilities. In other words, it has changed the social group that used to be involved with charity and it has brought in individuals from different backgrounds seeking different varieties of charitable acts.

Methodology: Qualitative content analysis has been used as the main method for data gathering in this project. Deep data analysis has been done in order to extract and show the concepts of charity and the donor’s motivations.The data has been sampled from many different Telegram messenger groups of charity institutions.

Findings: On the baseis of social constructionism and deductive methodology, data is categorized in two main parts: Person-Centered data (which contains actions of a person who is identifiable without cohesive organization) and NGO-related data. Eight dedicated categories were associated to people-centered data, and twenty categories were associated with NGO-related data.

Conclusion: Technology has caused charities institutions to undergo a revolution from the traditional method they were pursuing which surprisingly has not ended badly for them. It has caused an increase in the number and specialization of NGOs in general so everyone can now donate to any institution that they want and can relate more to. Components of individualism, humanism, religion-belief, micro needs assessment, anonymity and impersonality have been changed in the NGOs from the way they were before and these are all thanks to the influence of technology in the people’s lives.