Social media use in local government: Linkage of technology, task, and organizational context

Dialogic communication on local government social media during the first wave of COVID-19: Evidence from the health commissions of prefecture-level cities in China

Although some scholars have explored the level and determinants of Dialogic Communication on Government Social Media (DCGSM), none have conducted their studies in the context of public crisis. The current study contributes to the understanding on DCGSM by 16,822 posts crawled from the official Sina Weibo accounts of 104 Chinese health commissions in prefecture-level cities during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results show that Chinese local government agencies have great variations in their DCGSM during the pandemic and the overall performance is poor. Furthermore, Chinese local governments prefer to conserve visitors and generate return visits, rather than dialogic loops development and the usefulness of information enhancement. The findings suggest that both public pressure and peer pressure contribute to the DCGSM of Chinese local governments during the public health crisis. In addition, the effect of public pressure is stronger than that of the peer pressure, indicating that local government agencies have experienced more demand-pull DCGSM.

What Drives the Influence of Health Science Communication Accounts on TikTok? A Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis

Medical institutions face a variety of challenges as they seek to enhance their reputation and increase the influence of their social media accounts. Becoming a social media influencer in the health field in today's complex online environment requires integrated social and technical systems. However, rather than holistically investigating the mechanism of account influence, studies have focused on a narrow subset of social and technical conditions that drive online influence. We attribute this to the mismatch between complex causality problems and traditional symmetric regression methods. In this study, we adopted an asymmetric configurational perspective that allowed us to test a causally complex model of the conditions that create strong and not-strong account influence. We used fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to detect the effects of varying configurations of three social system characteristics (i.e., an oncology-related attribute, a public attribute, and comment interaction) and two technical system characteristics (i.e., telepresence and video collection) on the TikTok accounts of 63 elderly Chinese doctors (60 to 92 years old). Our results revealed two pathways associated with distinct sociotechnical configurations to strong account influence and three pathways associated with distinct sociotechnical configurations to not-strong account influence. Furthermore, the results confirmed that a single antecedent condition cannot, on its own, produce an outcome, i.e., account influence. Multiple inter-related conditions are required to produce an influential account. These results offer a more holistic picture of how health science communication accounts operate and reconcile the scattered results in the literature. We also demonstrate how configurational theory and methods can be used to analyze the complexities of social media platforms.

Challenges in Government Inter-Organizational Information Integration in the Context of Measles Rubella Vaccination in India

Most of the countries are heading to Government 3.0 with the advent of Information Communication Technology (ICT). Information Integration has to be done with the support of different stakeholders for an effective e-Governance ecosystem. The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and high-end processors had solved the issues to some extent. But the socio-political intervention is making the Government Inter-Organizational Information Integration (GIII) difficult when information turns into misinformation. Misinformation in social network sites (SNS) is increasing alarmingly and is also affecting the healthcare sector. The study is focused on the trends in decreasing vaccination rates in India during the vaccination drive. Twitter data, news reports, and social media posts during the MR vaccination program in India are taken into consideration for the analysis. The vaccine hesitancy is also associated with political, religious, Psychological, and Economic factors. Government 3.0 has got its power to overcome the misinformation in the healthcare programs.

Digital communication in Swiss cities: A closer look at the low adoption and usage of social media platforms in a technologically advanced and innovative country

While a vast majority of local governments in Europe are communicating on social media, the situation differs in few states. Although Switzerland is often depicted as a technological advanced and innovative country, cities are still largely resisting the temptation to share information on social media platforms. In this study, we rely on a survey distributed to the communication managers of all cities over 10,000 inhabitants in Switzerland to uncover the reasons explaining this behavior. This approach is preferred to understand what motivates or prevents cities from communicating on social media, focusing mainly on perceptions of risks related to these platforms. Results indicate that some factors identified in the literature on public sector organizations slow down the social media adoption and usage at the local level; but interestingly, the conservative approach to social media preferred by numerous cities also plays a major role in explaining cities’ absence on these platforms.

Government Data Performance: The Roles of Technology, Government Capacity, and Globalization through the Effects of National Innovativeness

The availability of open, relevant, and up-to-date public data is becoming an increasingly important dimension of national competitiveness and sustainable development. It serves as a foundation for novel technologies, such as big data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, to take root and flourish, and it can help improve the quality and efficiency of government decision making and render governments more transparent and accessible to the public. Often referred as Open Government Data, or OGD, governments around the world have committed resources to constructing various OGD platforms. However, building a robust and effective OGD system has proved difficult, as the promise of OGD has not been realized fully around the world. At this important juncture, this study aims to explore the relationship between national technological and organizational capacities and environmental factor and the quality of OGD systems. In addition, national innovativeness and the degree of “globalization” in a country and their moderating effects between the predictors and OGD performance are examined. Our findings indicate strong positive effects of national technological capacity, government organization capacity, and globalization on OGD quality and a positive moderating effect of national innovativeness.

Local governments' use of social media during the COVID-19 pandemic: The case of Portugal

While the use of social media by local governments has gained relevance in recent years, crises are critical situations that reinforce the need to reach citizens to disclose information, demonstrate the government's commitment, and increase the citizens' level of preparedness and awareness of resources. This paper examines the factors that influenced local governments' e-disclosure during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. To accomplish this objective, we systematically tracked every post published by the official Facebook page of 304 Portuguese municipalities between March 2 and July 5, 2020. The findings show that financial autonomy is the main predictor of e-disclosure, factors varied on the different phases of the pandemic's first wave, and sociodemographic factors became more prevalent as explanatory factors when the crisis worsened. Our study may help increase the level of preparedness during possible future crises. In particular, establishing communication strategies for prolonged public health crises, making financial resources available for the accomplishment of such strategies, and reducing the digital divide can contribute to more effective disclosure. Future research should explore the dynamics of disclosure during public health crises. This study also highlights the need to incorporate time in research that focuses on the determinants of e-disclosure that could also be tested in normal times.

Presencia del feminismo institucional en YouTube: estrategia de difusión de la información y ¿movilización de la ciudadanía?

En la sociedad actual el fácil acceso a la información online es una necesidad creciente. Sobre esta evidencia, y dada la escasez de investigaciones acerca de la información pública sobre igualdad de género dentro del espacio virtual, en el presente estudio abordamos el análisis de los canales de Youtube de los institutos de la mujer españoles. Así, y habiendo comprobado cuáles son las comunidades autónomas que cuentan con organismos de este tipo con canal propio, se confeccionó una ficha de análisis que, a través de una batería de indicadores, arrojó datos sobre la disposición, el uso y la gestión de la información, así como del tipo de contenidos, la interacción y el engagement generado. Fijamos el intervalo de estudio entre abril de 2018 y el primer trimestre del 2020. Los resultados muestran que, a pesar del importante trabajo realizado por estos organismos en el terreno de la igualdad de oportunidades entre mujeres y hombres, estos no están valorando en su justa medida las posibilidades que ofrece YouTube para consolidar su labor, ya que no suelen usar este medio con una intención comunicativa bidireccional ni interactiva con sus followers. De este diagnóstico, pues, se deriva una conclusión general: afianzar las políticas de igualdad requiere de la construcción de redes online que sean vehículo de información veraz y diálogo constante con la ciudadanía. De ello depende en gran medida el nivel de liderazgo de las instituciones que tratamos en nuevos entornos comunicativos, susceptibles de ser poderosos instrumentos para la lucha contra el sexismo y para el avance de la equiparación entre géneros.

Determinants of e-government implementation at the local level: an empirical model

Purpose

The empirical research of e-government at the local level has been the subject of many studies in the last two decades. The evidence collected by those studies constitutes a relevant opportunity toward the development of a theory of local e-government implementation. However, several synthesis efforts are needed before such a theory can be developed. The purpose of this article is to contribute to that endeavor by proposing an empirical model of the determinants of e-government implementation by local governments.

Design/methodology/approach

The empirical model results from the systematic revision of 59 primary studies published in scientific journals, between 2002 and 2018. As a starting point, a conceptual map relating concepts such as readiness, diffusion, adoption, implementation and institutionalization is presented.

Findings

There is a common set of determinants that explains local e-government implementation in general, and three other sets of determinants that contribute to differentiate each one of three e-government dimensions: e-participation, e-transparency and e-services.

Research limitations/implications

Because it was found that different determinants are associated with different e-government dimensions, future empirical studies should differentiate between those dimensions when studying local government.

Originality/value

This is the first study to attempt a synthesis effort on the determinants of e-government implementation by local governments.

Regulation and governance of the sharing economy by U.S. local governments

The sharing economy has disrupted industries and raises inquiries into the logic of existing regulations. Despite the varying levels of legislative status of the sharing economy, systematic research on governance that frames regulatory issues on such innovations has been lacking in the academic literature, particularly in the public administration field. In this research, we (1) examine determinants that influence the legislative status of regulations with a focus on sharing economy innovations in the U.S., and (2) explore the stakeholder groups that are perceived to be influential in shaping the regulatory environment among U.S. local government policymakers. The results indicate that stakeholder groups actively engaged in legislative lobbying as well as jurisdictional characteristics such as geographical region are associated with whether a local government is active in regulating the local sharing economy. This article offers insights into how policymakers govern the innovations taking place in their communities.

Citizens’ intention to use and recommend e-participation

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how citizens’ perception of empowerment can influence the intention to use and intention to recommend e-participation.

Design/methodology/approach

A research model is evaluated using structural equation modelling. An online survey questionnaire was used to collect data from 210 users of e-participation.

Findings

The results show that psychological empowerment influences the intention to use and recommend e-participation. Performance expectancy and facilitating conditions were the strongest predictors of intention to use; effort expectancy and social influence had no significant effect on the prediction of intention to use e-participation.

Research limitations/implications

The use of psychological empowerment as a higher-order multidimensional construct is still insufficiently researched. Future research may explore the effect of each dimension of psychological empowerment in different scenarios of e-participation adoption. Caution is needed when generalising our findings towards the adoption of e-participation in different locations or with different participants.

Practical implications

The findings can help the local governments to design strategies for the promotion and diffusion of e-participation amongst the citizenry. Those strategies should focus on citizens’ perception of empowerment, thereby creating a positive attitude towards intention to use and recommend e-participation.

Originality/value

An innovative research model integrates the unified theory of acceptance, use of technology and psychological empowerment; the last as a higher-order construct.

How to Foster Citizen Reblogging of a Government Microblog

This article examines the strategies used to foster citizens' interaction with government microblogs. While government agencies are urged to adopt social media, little is known about how citizens respond to those efforts. Using data collected from the publicity microblogs of prefecture-level municipalities in China, this article indicates that government microblogs can foster citizen-initiated interaction by acquiring microblog influencers as followers, diversifying the sources of government posts and posting more multimedia content. However, regularly updating a government microblog is not necessarily associated with citizen participation.

Voices in the cloud: social media and trust in Canadian and US local governments

Purpose

This study aims to examine how 20 local governments in Canada and the USA operationalize the government–citizen trust relationship through the administration of social media by answering two questions: Can local governments use social media to increase citizen trust? and if local governments can use social media, what can be learned about the administration of social media that results in an increase in citizen trust of government?

Design/methodology/approach

Based on a normative belief that increasing the trustworthiness of government is a desired outcome, the working proposition is that social media may offer a low-barrier method for engaging citizens and supporting trust-based relationships, if social media programs are administered in a way that operationalizes this objective. Using content analysis of data collected from interview transcripts and documentary sources, this exploratory, process-oriented study emphasizes the social, organizational and functional contexts of social media and social media as records.

Findings

The study found that most cities had extensive programs featuring multiple accounts on a number of common platforms. The cities maintained tight control over content, account creation and employee and audience participation to ensure compliance with federal and provincial or state legislation and to mitigate technology and content-based risks. The cities used social media to broadcast information, respond to service requests and provide issue management. Social media results were measured sporadically on an ad hoc basis for operational purposes and only two cities had dedicated procedures in place for managing social media as records. Contrary to previous research, this study indicates that fiduciary trust relationships do require trust by the agent (i.e. institution) and the principal (i.e. citizen).

Research limitations/implications

To increase generalizability, an effort was made to select cities that were demographically and geographically diverse by selecting a range of population sizes and locations. However, selection was skewed towards cities with well-developed social media programs, and as a result, over half of the cities were national, provincial or state capitals or larger population centres. While these cities experienced economic advantages, the participants in the study identified challenges around resourcing and capacity, and their responses are expected to be of value to cities operating under similar constraints. Additionally, this study represents a point in time, as social media use at the local governments continued to expand and evolve during and after the data collection period.

Practical implications

This paper identifies three scenarios where social media content from local government accounts should be managed as records, including: the documentation of incidents, the on-going collection of city content from high-profile accounts and the “on demand” collection of citizens’ content where cities have asked for citizen input on topics or issues.

Social implications

This study provides an in-depth characterization of social media administration and use by 20 local governments in Canada and the USA. Considering the progress made by cities in e-government using their websites as a base, cities can develop greater capacity for open government, meaning wider participation by citizens in the decisions that affect them on a daily basis. To achieve goals of transparency, accountability and civic participation, cities will need to develop capacity around social media measurement, reporting and procedures for managing social media as records.

Originality/value

In providing a detailed and complete description of social media use in 20 cities in two countries, this study moves beyond a compliance- and requirement-driven approach to consider the larger question of government–citizen trust and the relevance of records within this relationship.

The Diffusion of Social Media Among State Governments in Mexico

Most of the research about how state governments use social media focuses on services, comparative perspectives or assessment of e-governments. The authors' focus is on the adoption of social media by state governments in Mexico. Many state governments may be slow to adopt social media due to a lack guidance on where their efforts may lead. The purpose of this research is to provide some insight into the factors affecting adoption of social media by state governments in Mexico. Guided by diffusion of innovation theory, the authors analyzed data from Twitter and Facebook accounts of all 32 Mexican state governments from 2010 to 2015. According to diffusion theory, the results find that only one state government in the sample is classified as an innovator, four state governments are early adopters, eleven are early majority, eleven are late majority, and five are laggards. The use of social media by state governments in Mexico is in its infancy, and there is a significant difference in the use of social media among the different states.

Political Discourse Strategies Used in Twitter during Gezi Park Protests

Along with the growing use of twitter as a tool of political interaction, recently, there has also been an attention in the academia to understand and explain how and why politicians use twitter, and what its impact on the political outcomes are. On the other hand, there has been little analysis about the content of the tweets that politicians from different parties posted during major political events. Accordingly, this study aims to investigate the discourse strategies that the top-level politicians of the party in power and of the main opposition party in Turkey used in their tweets during Gezi Park events in the summer of 2013. Findings from a hand-coded content analysis based on Van Dijk's framework (2006) indicate that while the most frequently used strategy was actor descriptions and categorization for both parties' politicians, burden strategy and lexicalization / metaphor strategy were used significantly more by the main opposition party politicians compared to the politicians of the party in power.

Social Media Usage in E-Government

When citizens are actively engaged in e-government processes as co-creators it leads to e-government development. Citizen participation in e-government is a recent phenomenon where government is seeking more involvement of citizens through different platforms. Whether citizens' participation through social media platforms leads to e-government development has been a debate in literature. In this research study, the authors investigate whether social media usage influences government's role in e-government development. Power distance between government and citizen also plays a role in deciding the extent of e-participation in e-government. In this study, the authors examine the relationship between social media, power distance, citizen engagement and e-government development. Using customer focus theory and agency theory, this study establishes that e-participation initiative by government acts as a mediator in the relation between social media usage by citizen as well as power distance to e-government development.

Assimilation of social media in local government: an examination of key drivers

Purpose

The government has included social media technology applications in the public sector as part of the fifth wave of information and communications technology adoption. Academic interest in social media in the government sector has been increasing. But there has been little empirical research on the assimilation of social media in the local government. To fill this gap, based on technology–organization–environment (TOE) framework, this study aims to investigate the key technological, organizational and environmental factors that affect the assimilation of social media in local government agencies.

Design/methodology/approach

To empirically test the model, a survey study was conducted. Data were collected from 150 government employees in the government department of X municipal government in China. The collected data were analysed quantitatively to answer five hypotheses using structural equation model.

Findings

The findings suggest that technology competence, top management support, perceived benefits and citizen readiness significantly influence assimilation of social media in local government agencies. Top management support is the strongest predictor of social media assimilation in a government agency.

Originality/value

This study is one of the first attempts that adopted the TOE framework to understand assimilation of social media in the local government. In addition, the effect of the four factors that include one technological factor, two organizational factors and one environmental factor, namely, technology competence, top management support, perceived benefits and citizen readiness, on intention to assimilate social media was investigated.

Stakeholder dialogue on Facebook

Purpose

German, Austrian and Swiss utilities are confronted with radical changes in the European energy sector. A dialogue between the utility companies and their various groups of stakeholders is gaining importance. Increasingly, utilities create their own Facebook presence enabling such a dialogue. Still, to the best of the author’s knowledge there exists no research which explicitly focuses the stakeholder dialogue of German, Austrian or Swiss utilities on Facebook. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyse Facebook as an instrument for dialogic communication in the energy sector.

Design/methodology/approach

An online survey was distributed to 1,280 German, Austrian and Swiss utilities, and 14 per cent of the utilities completed the survey, including 130 German, 19 Austrian and 25 Swiss companies. The participating utilities are primarily in public ownership.

Findings

The Facebook conversation of utility companies and their stakeholders meets the basic requirements of a virtual stakeholder dialogue. Nevertheless, less than half of the companies perceive their current stakeholder conversation on Facebook as truly interactive. Therefore, even if the basic requirements of a dialogue are met, most companies still do not seem to fully use the dialogue potential of Facebook.

Originality/value

This study provides first insights into virtual stakeholder dialogues in the energy sector. A suggestion to operationalise such a virtual dialogue is provided. Both operationalisation as well as the empirical results help researchers and practitioners to better understand virtual stakeholder dialogues.

CITY FEED

Crowdsourcing implies user collaboration and engagement, which fosters a renewal of city governance processes. In this article, we address a subset of crowdsourcing, named citizen-sourcing, where citizens interact with authorities collaboratively and actively. Many systems have experimented citizen-sourcing in city governance processes; however, their maturity levels are mixed. In order to focus on the service maturity, we introduce a city service maturity framework that contains five levels of service support and two levels of information integration. As an example, we introduce CITY FEED, which implements citizen-sourcing in city issue management process. In order to support such process, CITY FEED supports all levels of the maturity framework (publishing, transacting, interacting, collaborating, and evaluating) and integrates related information relationally and heterogeneously. In order to integrate heterogeneous information, it implements a threefold feed deduplication mechanism based on the geographic, text semantic, and image similarities of feeds. Currently, CITY FEED is in a pilot stage.

Exploring the role of social media in the G2C relationship

This paper reports on a qualitative study regarding electronic citizen participation. The study assessed how government agencies based in South Africa used social media applications within the government to citizen (G2C) relationship for electronic participation. Textual data was sampled from provincial and municipal government department’s social media accounts and analysed thematically. The study found that there is a discrepancy in the adoption of social media in metropolitan municipalities and provincial government departments. Contrastingly, citizens were shown to have increasing access to social media, which have become essential components of their daily lives. Furthermore citizens were willing to use the applications to engage with government departments, which were found to be responding sporadically. The paper argues that there is an opportunity for the public sector to include social media in their e-participation endeavours. Several guiding principles are also offered.

Towards a process of agenda setting driven by social media

Purpose

– This paper aims to provide an in-depth evaluation of how German and Austrian utilities use Facebook to engage stakeholders, including a look at the objectives pursued with the use of Facebook, addressed stakeholders as well as the provided information. German and Austrian utility companies are confronted with serious changes in the European energy sector. In this context, stakeholder theory emphasises the importance for utility companies to actively manage the relationships with the relevant stakeholders. Nowadays, a considerable number of these stakeholders might be addressed by using Facebook.

Design/methodology/approach

– The quantitative study includes 88 German and Austrian utility companies.

Findings

– Research findings indicate that Facebook is a common instrument in the German and Austrian energy sectors. It seems that so far, no real stakeholder dialogue has been achieved. Moreover, issues which deeply affect a wide variety of citizens are not emphasised on most Facebook accounts. Therefore, so far, the majority of utilities is not using the full potential of Facebook.

Originality/value

– By developing a process of agenda-setting driven by social media, the paper contributes to the existing literature and gives practical implications for public and private entities in the energy sector.