Social media in Egyptian government websites: Presence,usage, and effectiveness

This paper examines the presence, usage, and effectiveness of Egyptian government social media websites. The adoption of social media technology provides an illustration of the application of New Public Service (NPS) theory to public administration. The first phase of this study examined the presence of social media applications on these government websites. The second phase analyzed the use of Facebook by governmental entities in Egypt. The use of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were the top social media applications in Egyptian government websites, which is consistent with other government surveys of social media found in developed countries. In terms of effectiveness of these social media websites, they were used mainly to post information, with very little two-way interaction between citizens and government. The analysis in this paper shows that social media in Egypt is not much in line with the NPS theory.     

The impact of polices on government social media usage: Issues, challenges, and recommendations

Government agencies are increasingly using social media to connect with those they serve. These connections have the potential to extend government services, solicit new ideas, and improve decision-making and problem-solving. However, interacting via social media introduces new challenges related to privacy, security, data management, accessibility, social inclusion, governance, and other information policy issues. The rapid adoption of social media by the population and government agencies has outpaced the regulatory framework related to information, although the guiding principles behind many regulations are still relevant. This paper examines the existing regulatory framework and the ways in which it applies to social media use by the U.S. federal government, highlighting opportunities and challenges agencies face in implementing them, as well as possible approaches for addressing these challenges.     

Social media use in the U.S. Executive branch

In 2009, the Obama administration issued the Open Government Initiative that directed Executive agencies to improve transparency, openness in government, and public participation with government. The Obama administration views transparency and openness in government as a cost-effective and efficient process capable of improving public participation with government and public access to government information. To address the initiative in part, many agencies adopt social media as the means to disseminate information out to the public and to increase public participation with agency website content and activities. This exploratory study examines Executive agency use of social media and public participation with the media. Findings indicate that most agencies reviewed do use social media. The public does interact with the media and some agencies experience high overall participation levels; however, there are some issues with agency use of social media and public participation with the media.     

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

Social media technologies have begun to enter the governmental workplace as tools to accomplish improved public service and engagement. Widespread recognition of the potential of social media technology for achieving public outcomes does not match our understanding about how and why specific tools are being used for specific purposes. This paper makes use of newly collected national survey data from local government managers in five different agencies to address the questions: which social media tools are being used, for which tasks or purposes; and what organizational characteristics influence the coupling of task and technology. Findings reveal patterns of social media tool application for particular purposes, although organizations do not all use social media tools in the same way. Moreover, regression analysis shows that different organizational factors – work characteristics, innovativeness, technology and management capacity and stakeholder influence – predict each of the four technology–task couplings — social media for dissemination, social media for feedback on service quality, social media for participation, and social media for internal work collaboration. This study demonstrates that social media tools are not a monolithic group and calls for greater research attention to the complex interactions among social media technology, task and organizational context.     

Social media adoption and resulting tactics in the U.S. federal government

In 2009, the departments in the executive branch of the U.S. federal government received the presidential marching order to “harness new technologies” in order to become more transparent, collaborative and participatory. Given this mandate, this article sets out to provide insights from qualitative interviews with social media directors to understand the factors that influence internal adoption decisions to use social media applications, such as Facebook, Twitter, or blogs. Three distinct factors influence the adoption decisions of social media directors: information about best practices in their informal network of peers, passive observations of perceived best practices in the public and private sector, and “market-driven” citizen behavior. The resulting adoption tactics include: (1) representation, (2) engagement, and (3) networking. The findings point to the need for higher degrees of formalized knowledge sharing when it comes to disruptive technology innovations such as social media use in highly bureaucratic communication environments. Recommendations based on the lessons learned are provided for practitioners and social media researchers to develop social media tactics for different organizational purposes in government.     

Social media use by government: From the routine to the critical

Social media and online services with user-generated content (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube) have made a staggering amount of information (and misinformation) available. Government officials seek to leverage these resources to improve services and communication with citizens. Significant potential exists to identify issues in real time, so emergency managers can monitor and respond to issues concerning public safety. Yet, the sheer volume of social data streams generates substantial noise that must be filtered in order to detect meaningful patterns and trends. Important events can then be identified as spikes in activity, while event meaning and consequences can be deciphered by tracking changes in content and public sentiment. This paper presents findings from a exploratory study we conducted between June and December 2010 with government officials in Arlington, VA (and the greater National Capitol Region around Washington, D.C.), with the broad goal of understanding social media use by government officials as well as community organizations, businesses, and the public at large. A key objective was also to understand social media use specifically for managing crisis situations from the routine (e.g., traffic, weather crises) to the critical (e.g., earthquakes, floods).     

Impacts of government website information on social sciences and humanities in China: A citation analysis

The purpose of this research is to investigate the current state and trend of government website information cited by social science and humanities (SS&H) journal articles in China. The Chinese Social Science Citation Index (CSSCI) was used as the benchmark and the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) journals as the reference samples. It analyzed 204,019 web citations (N = 5,063,237) found in 925,506 articles that were published in CSSCI journals during the 1998–2009 period. The findings unveil that web citations accounted for only 4.03% of the total number of citations (N = 5,063,237), and that citations of Chinese government websites constituted 6.6% of the total number of web citations (N = 204,019). The study disclosed detailed information regarding citations derived from ministries and commissions directly under the State Council websites (N = 69), government online media (N = 7), government website citation subjects (N = 21), and various types of government website information (N = 5). Although government website information has limited influence on SS&H, their impact is currently growing rapidly. In comparison with international research community, influence of government web information on Chinese social science is higher, while its influence on humanities is lower. Essentially, Chinese scholars put emphasis on citing information from authoritative central government websites or highly visible state-owned media information as supporting evidences in their articles. In general, the citation of information from Chinese government website tends to hot social issues of society. Finally, it is necessary to promote the visibility of local government websites, to develop policies and guidelines to encourage the disclosure and the diversity of data, so that there will be more citation balances between social and technological topics.     

A critical examination of social media adoption in government: Introducing omnipresence

As government agencies at every level are adopting social media tools, scholarship is emerging that indicates dialogic potentials meant to increase citizen engagement might not be met. With that premise, we take a critical examination of the way social media can increase capacity for engagement rather encourage collaboration, depending upon the way the tools are constructed. To do so, we expand Lippmann's notion of the phantom public to introduce the theoretical constructs of Omnipresent Citizens and Omnipresent Administrators. These people are everywhere but nowhere and embody characteristics of accessibility, desire to participate, and the possibility of remaining anonymous. Each has implications for citizen participation.     

Social media in public health care: Impact domain propositions

This paper investigates the impacts of social media use in Danish public health care with respect to capabilities, interactions, orientations, and value distribution. Taking an exploratory approach, the paper draws on an array of quantitative and qualitative data, and puts forward four propositions: social media transform the access to health-related information for patients and general practitioners, the uptake of social media can be a cost driver rather than a cost saver, social media provide empowerment to patients, and the uptake of social media is hindered by legal and privacy concerns.     

Social media,legacy media and gatekeeping: the protest paradigm in news of Ferguson and Charlottesville

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the site of intersection between legacy and social media, whereby it asks how local legacy media (St Louis Post-Dispatch and Richmond Times-Dispatch) invoked social media (Facebook and Twitter) discourse within their coverage of the Ferguson (2014) and Charlottesville (2017) events. It thus explores how gatekeeping is manifested and, consequently, how the protest paradigm emerged in a news landscape of proliferating social media. Thematic textual analysis indicates that coverage of Charlottesville and Ferguson clearly relied on indulging the social media sphere in important ways. Common themes of social media as multipurpose platforms, as interfacing with law and order, and as reconciling material and digital modes culminating in social activism were revealed. The study shows that the protest paradigm that has long characterized legacy media’s coverage of social protest is not as “pure” as it may once have been, since a social media component is helping define the contours and content of legacy media’s landscape.     

Local e-government 2.0: Social media and corporate transparency in municipalities

Various authors have highlighted the potential contribution of the internet to enhance the interactivity, transparency, and openness of public sector entities and to promote new forms of accountability. The search for new styles of governance which promote higher levels of transparency and the engagement of citizens is viewed as a way of improving citizens' trust in governments. As the social media are becoming ubiquitous, both academics and practitioners need some initial and reliable background data about the deployment of this kind of technology at all levels. The aim of this work is to provide an overall view about the use of Web 2.0 and social media tools in EU local governments in order to determine whether local governments are using these technologies to increase transparency and e-participation, opening a real corporate dialog. In addition, the paper tries to identify which factors promote the level of development of these tools at local level. Our results show that most local governments are using Web 2.0 and social media tools to enhance transparency but, in general, the concept of corporate dialog and the use of Web 2.0 to promote e-participation are still in their infancy at the local level.     

Understanding government social media users: an analysis of interactions on Immigration,Refugees and Citizenship Canada Twitter and Facebook

Social media is being adopted at a rapid pace by governments around world and across different levels of government. In Canada, federal, provincial and municipal governments created social media accounts in 2000s and are now using them to interact with the public. Studies to date, however, focus primarily on social media strategies and practices of government agencies while government social media users' behaviors and perspectives remain understudied. This study analyzes experiences of government social media users and how they interact on Twitter and Facebook accounts maintained by a Canadian federal government agency – Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). It also explores why users chose to interact on social media as well as their perspectives. The findings suggest that Canadian immigration agencies are using social media as a customer services tool, and migrant social media users are turning to government social media to hear directly from the government agencies and are expecting personalized answers.     

Social media communication strategies of government agencies: Twitter use in Korea and the USA

This study examines Twitter use by the central government in Korea and the federal government in the USA by employing the webometric technique to extract their Twitter activity (basic Twitter statistics such as the numbers of followers, followings, and Tweets) and the social network analysis technique to map the relationship between their Twitter accounts and the direction of outlinks in their Tweets. The results of the initial analysis indicate some differences in Twitter strategies between the two governments. For example, Korean ministries were well connected through a dense network, engaged in collective cooperation, and retweeted common content to reinforce their collective agendas regardless of their main administrative functions, whereas US government departments were less collective and more individualistic and retweeted those messages that specifically fit the purpose of each department. In addition, the results for outlinks indicate that US government departments preferred private sources of information, whereas Korean ministries, government sources.     

From e-government to we-government: Defining a typology for citizen coproduction in the age of social media

This paper examines the evolution of citizen coproduction in the age of social media, web 2.0 interactivity, and ubiquitous connectivity. The paper first discusses the re-emergence of citizen coproduction – whereby citizens perform the role of partner rather than customer in the delivery of public services – as a fashionable policy option in the face of persistent budget deficits and the advent of new channels for mass collaboration. Finding a plethora of competing labels, models, and concepts for coproduction in the age of social media, the paper proposes a unified typology to support systematic analysis based on the overarching categories of “Citizen Sourcing,” “Government as a Platform,” and “Do-It-Yourself Government.” To demonstrate its use, the typology is applied to leading U.S. government implementations. The paper concludes with a discussion of the potential implications for public administration, the remaining limitations and rising social concerns, and the possible emergence of a new social contract that empowers the public to play a far more active role in the functioning of their government.     

Social media campaigns,electoral momentum,and vote shares: evidence from the 2016 Hong Kong Legislative Council election

By studying candidates’ Facebook fan pages and rolling poll data during the Hong Kong Legislative Council election in 2016, this article aims at examining the relationships between candidates’ campaign performance on social media, electoral momentum, and vote shares. We contend that, under specific contextual conditions, social media campaigns could affect candidates’ momentum during the election period, which can in turn affect vote shares. We also examine how the relationships between social media performance and electoral momentum vary according to the candidates’ background characteristics, including age, political affiliation, incumbency status, and scale of the campaign of the political group to which the candidates belong. The results show that candidates’ social media performance can indeed predict vote shares indirectly via the mediation of electoral momentum. The predictive power of social media performance is stronger for pro-democracy candidates, incumbents, and candidates belonging to political groups with larger election campaigns.     

学术期刊与新媒体的融合:机遇·挑战·对策

分析媒体融合背景下学术期刊面临的机遇和挑战,并探讨学术期刊在媒体融合时代的发展对策.认为组建学术期刊新媒体产业联盟是学术期刊在媒体融合时代发展的一条新思路.还探讨学术期刊新媒体产业联盟的组成要素、运行特点以及组建的影响因素.     

Social media strategies: Understanding the differences between North American police departments

Within a short timeframe, social media have become to be widely used in government organizations. Social media gurus assume that the transformational capacities of social media result in similar communication strategies in different organizations. According to them, government is transforming into a user-generated state. This paper investigates this claim empirically by testing the claim of convergence in social media practices in three North-American police departments (Boston, Washington DC and Toronto). The research shows that the social media strategies are widely different: the Boston Police Department has developed a ‘push strategy’ while the Metropolitan Police Department in DC has developed a ‘push and pull strategy and the Toronto Police Service a ‘networking strategy’. The paper concludes that a combination of contextual and path-dependency factors accounts for differences in the emerging social media strategies of government organizations. Social media have a logic of their own but this logic only manifests itself if it lands on fertile soil in a government bureaucracy.     

Culture and comparative media research: Narratives about Internet privacy policy in Chinese,U.S., and UK newspapers

This article compares American, British, and Chinese news coverage of Internet privacy policies. Specifically, we examine media discourse about the “real-name” policies established by Facebook and Weibo. We find that U.S. and UK news coverage of Internet privacy policy is broadly similar, when compared with the more authoritarian–corporatist media system in China. British and U.S. newspapers were much more independent from state control, and were able to maintain a more critical stance than the Chinese newspapers. But there were additional factors that shaped the patterns in news discourse in complicated ways, which are related to (a) the difference between domestic and international news genres, (b) specific narratives about national identity, and (c) more general discourses about civil society, democracy, and the public good. We suggest that the range of comparative media research can be extended by paying attention to how these cultural factors interact with media system dynamics.     

Congress as publisher: Politics,institutions, and policy

Since the beginning of the federal government, Congress has functioned as its publisher — the manager and director of government printing operations. Initially performed by private printers through lucrative contracts, production was statutorily vested in the Government Printing Office (GPO) in 1860 to assure efficient, economical, and quality printing. Over the past century and a half, however, changes in technology, law, and constitutional relationships have eroded arrangements for the public printing system. Information products printed by GPO in the past may now be agency-generated and made directly available to the public through agency Web sites or social media, with the result that congressional general management of the publication system is seemingly decreasing, at least in terms of GPO workload, publication accountability, and document sales. While it is unlikely that Congress will reduce or vacate its publisher capacity anytime soon, some adjustment of the scope of that role and related management capability may appropriately be in order.     

New media producing new labor: Pinterest,yearning, and self-surveillance

Scrapbooks, a medium long used by women to curate experiences, employ a past-oriented affective capacity of remembrance. By engaging in modal analysis, this essay explores how the social networking site Pinterest, although visually similar to scrapbooks, instead offers a future-oriented affective capacity of yearning to its (primarily female) users. This temporal pivot and change in affective capacity engages women not in celebratory memory work but in a postindustrial, postfeminist third shift of labor curating yearning and self-surveilling.